Friends

[John F Carr]

Review of "Friends" (NBC Thursday 8:30 EDT)

This show is about 6 young friends living in the city. Time will tell how
much they are individuals and how much they are merely caricatures. TV
Guide tends toward the latter view and also suggests it is, like "Ellen",
somewhat of an attempt to copy "Seinfeld". There may be some truth to that
statement (part of the opening credits sequence is similar in style to
"These Friends of Mine") but Friends is not a clone of either of those
shows and I think TV Guide was overly pessimistic. There is plenty of
room for several shows in this genre.

The writing was generally good and funny but the pace of the show wasn't
quite right. It needed slightly different editing and some rewriting to
merge scenes together. The show is about friends talking to each other;
too many scene changes work against that and make it more like a series of
short jokes. Even though they are good short jokes I think the show would
work better with fewer one-joke scenes.

I have one specific editing comment: they should have cut out the scene
before the second commercial break (Jennifer Aniston sitting alone by the
window). It doesn't belong. Serious and sad scenes can work in sitcoms
("The Torkelsons" was a good example) and comedy in dramas (the episode of
"Reasonable Doubts" with Paula Poundstone was better and funnier than any
of the 4 sitcoms that preceded it that night) but you have to set it up
properly.

These aren't serious complaints. It's not the best show on TV, and I
suspect it may end up relying too much on weird characters for humor (Lisa
Kudrow in particular), but it has potential. I give it a "B" grade and
rank it above any of the other new comedies I've seen this year.

[As so much depends on taste here here are some of my favorite shows so you
can judge if my tastes are similar: Mad About You, Frasier, Wings,
Seinfeld; The Commish. Some of my favorite cancelled shows of the past 5
years: Flying Blind, The Torkelsons, Bob, The Powers That Be; WIOU.]

--
John Carr (j...@mit.edu)

[Moses]

I never watched it, but this post should be memorable in the Usenet history.

1994年9月26日月曜日15時57分58秒 UTC+8 John F Carr: