Matthew Perry

Everyone had their favorite character in Friends, although I’m not entirely sure who liked Monica most. For me, the best one was always Chandler Bing: sarcastic, ironic and perpetually outraged at some unexpected or unwelcome development. Naturally, in the safe and unchallenging world of Friends, there had to be an explanation for the character’s sardonic demeanor, and so his cutting sense of humor is explained to be a defense mechanism, derived from the hurt he underwent after his flamboyant parents’ divorce. But thanks to the peerless comic skills of Matthew Perry, the actor who played Chandler, any suggestion of laborious cod-Freudianism was swiftly dispelled. The character was, above all things, very, very funny.

Friends creator Marta Kauffman is very, very sorry. No, not for forcing us to endure the exhausting decades-long debate over whether Friends or Seinfeld is a better sitcom (the show about nothing wins without question, obviously). Instead, Kauffman apologized to the woke mob for not being nearly three decades ahead of her time. The fun-sucking left has for years complained that Friends is *problematic*. The show, they whine, lacked diversity and mocked and trivialized issues such as fat-shaming and transphobia. Kauffman says she finally took these concerns to heart after the death of George Floyd because the incident forced her to reckon with the way she "bought into systemic racism." Gag.

There has never been a sitcom as successful as Friends. Between 1994 and 2004, it was watched by 25 million people a week in the US. Seventeen years after the final episode aired, Friends was still the fourth most watched show in the world. So it’s no surprise that the new Friends: The Reunion is a big deal. One of my friends, a fellow super fan, told me she drank a bottle of wine before watching it and recommended I do the same. I lack self-control so drank two, passed out, and then had to face the 94-minute special sober and hungover. It was unclear what the reunion set out to be. An extended interview with the cast? A documentary about the show’s origins? An hour in and it still wasn’t clear.