I just finished rewatching the entire series of Friends. 236 episodes. I never watched more than 1 a day and sometimes would go a week or longer without watching an episode so it took at least a couple of years.
May 6 was the 20 year anniversary since the airing of the series finale.
I’ve seen a few episodes here and there since then but I never did a re-watch from beginning to end. The show holds up for me. I think Season 5 is the best — every episode is a classic.
For individual episodes: the one with Phoebe’s “my eyes! my eyes!”, the one with Monica and Ross’s routine, and the one with “PIVOT!” are my favorite.
At work, if we’re ever in a meeting and someone uses pivot, my colleague and I will spend the rest of the day exclaiming “PIVOT!” with Ross intonation and die laughing every time.
We lost Matthew Perry during my rewatch. I had already decided to skip his memoir but I ended up getting the audiobook- which he reads. It wasn’t sad in the moment because while he was reading it to me, he was there. But the end was super sad because he was so optimistic about his future. I should rephrase this because the memoir itself is really sad. This guy had troubles from a young age and I think getting so much fame and money so early on top of that made things tough for him.
After all that I re-watched the reunion show which was aired in 2021 so the audience is sparse and many are wearing masks. The reunion show was so enjoyable and well done. I could watch the cast reacting to their own bloopers all day. The other night I dreamed I was watching Friends with Matt LeBlanc. He was very nice and we were both laughing hysterically.
I wish I had some clever concluding thoughts but as always, this has been sitting half-written for two days and if I don’t finish now, I don’t know when I can get back to it. I will say this, the show was whatever the opposite of a perfect storm would be: the creators, writers and cast were fabulous and came together perfectly. There is no other show like it.
