BLOG 152: With Friends Like These?

"Watch me and you will overcome the anxieties I have just reminded you of." Michael Schudson

A constant source of trauma for my thirty something friends are the never ending re-runs of Friends on TV. It’s like the TV equivalent of the picture in the attic in reverse... like my friends become the picture and Dorian Gray is the TV show. Now I know that sounds strange, but a thirty something girl with a mouthful of Doritos waving a glass of wine at my TV while shouting abuse at an old sit-com is MUCH stranger.... believe me!

Oh where do I start?...
Oh yeah...the beginning....

Elisha was a fresh faced 18 year old who was ‘helping’ my next door neighbour, Mike, through his text-book midlife crisis. The neighbourhood I lived in at the time was certainly upwardly mobile...some would even say posh... but certainly not upwardly mobile enough to be in the bracket whereby a man could deal with the his diminishing youth by purchasing a supercar or a speedboat (thus Mike worked out his issues by enjoying Elisha’s youth). I’d sometimes bump into her as I disembarked my Thursday night train home from town. It seemed silly to shadow each other on the 10 minute walk from the station so over time, we’d walk up together and chat.

Elisha out grew Mike’s mid-life crisis, and I moved from that address years ago... but Elisha and I have remained friends. The thing we both always remember is that our friendship formed over a series of 10 minute walks from the station on Thursday nights. And yes... It is rather precise to remember which night of the week our paths use to cross.

But we both remember it so well as Thursday nights back in 1994 were the nights when everyone used to hurry home from town. As on Thursday nights in 1994, Channel Four were broadcasting a little American Sit-Com called Friends. It was the one night in the week when the fashionable place to be was at home. Mid Nineties - we ALL watched Friends.

Of course Friends stopped being made some years ago. When it stopped fresh faced Elisha was 28... which means that at time going to press she’s now a resolutely a thirty-something (and still younger than Mike was in 1994!) [Sorry Leish! Couldn’t resist].

However, the other night Elisha was round at my place, and I had E4 on in the back ground as we lay waste to a couple of bottles of red. And suddenly we became aware of The Rembrandts singing "I'll Be There for You". We looked up and there was a very young looking Monica trying to convince her older boyfriend Richard that their future couldn’t support his plan to have no further children.

“Jeez!” said Elisha “How long ago was this?... ninety five, ninety six?”

I shrugged. I kind of lost track of TV during the late 90’s due to juggling having a relationship, child, home and career to run. I stuffed more Doritos in my mouth in lieu of answering and hoped the question proved to be rhetorical.

“You know what I hate about this programme having never gone away even though they stopped making it eons ago?” Elisha (or more probably the wine) asked tetchily.

I realised she wasn’t being rhetorical after all so made some crunching noises that could be mistaken for me participating in the conversation.

“The fact they look sooooo YOUNG! I mean... look that’s Courtney Cox right?... and there she is playing a young girl dating an older man... Hell, when this episode was out I was thinking it was kind of cool she was doing with Richard what I was doing with Mike... Now she’s playing that bird in Cougar Town...suddenly now she’s the old person sniffing after young meat... when did THAT happen! Honestly... I hate these re-runs... they remind me I’m getting old.”

The wine was making her quite passionate about her little rant, so I flicked over to a music channel and refilled our glasses. The evening got back on track, despite the rather unattractive vision of Elisha shouting at Courtney Cox for reminding her that the 90’s (and therefore her youth) was a substantial chunk of time ago!

Being older than Elisha I had to subdue a little giggle... it’s a time worn passage that for each and every one of us some icon from your youth will pop up and remind you of one of two things. One... time passes seamlessly. Or. Two... time ravages ruthlessly. And the sight of someone from your youth will make you stop and take stock of where you are at now. Sometimes you do a little pointless comparison (which is always daft when it’s you the ordinary bod versus some ex-idol from the entertainment world!)but most of the time we hav to acknowledge that time stands still for none of us...getting older is what we do. Happens to us ALL.

However, something happened today that made me realise what Elisha was saying was actually a different point all together.

And it happened because I stumbled upon an even older example of ensemble cast TV.

A few years before Friends there was a drama series called ‘Thirtysomething’. It was pretty much ground breaking stuff, introducing intelligent scripts to US TV series and picked up a whole heap of awards during its half decade run. However, when it stopped being made it kind of vanished (along with all of its alumni)from the public conciousness.

Like almost everyone else, I’d forgotten completely about Thirtysomething. It was TV of it's time... although the ‘ground-breaking’ way it was shot was amazing at the time, it would look dated today as technology has moved on. Another problem is that the late 80’s and early 90’s really were the years that fashion forgot so adding that to the jerky camera angles practically guarantees that it wouldn't screen well on today’s high definition television. The fact that none of the ensemble cast went on to achieve anything of note after the series ended certainly meant that rerunning Thirtysomething would not a priority for any TV schedule here in the UK.

But... totally by accident while channel surfing at the wrong end of the dial(the Gold channels)... on flickered Thirtysomething. I wasn’t really paying much attention to what I was doing and probably would have surfed on by but a piece of dialogue made me stop. What made me look up was a conversation the three female characters were having in a kitchen about a character that was off screen. It was as intelligent and as beautifully written piece of dialogue that you would find anywhere... and it was as relevant to today’s women was it was for the ones it was written about/for. Thirtysoemthing was on my TV!...I looked up at the screen. And there they were... Hope, Melissa and Nancy discussing Suzanna. And what got me was not the stonewashed high waisted denim, the satellite dish earrings or the fact the state of the art kitchen they were talking in seemed to be constructed entirely from pine with little barley twists (though it was a bit of a distraction)... but the fact they all looked ... SO YOUNG! (Bizzare because when it was originally broadcast here, I recall thinking that they were all so OLD).

It was exactly what Elisha was trying to say about the re-runs of Friends. In real life she is way (and I mean WAY) younger than the actress playing Monica. However the episode she was almost watching at my house was probably 15 years old, making the older actress YOUNGER than her eternally. It kind of shifts your perspective watching something you originally watched thinking ‘these are older people’ when a significant period of time has passed from when you first viewed it– especially if you are now older than character you see on screen.

I rang Elisha with my light bulb moment and she laughed. (It took a while as she had little recollection of the entire evening as there really were far too many bottle of wine). However when she did finally get on the same page she did make me laugh when she said:

“At least the Thirtysomething cast had the decency to retire from public life and spare you the spectacle of watching them publically prune up, bulk up, wrinkle up, gray up - or in the case of the Friends-girls get ridiculously younger than when it all started – I tell you I can’t wait for Autumn this year when Friends finally stops being re-run over here”

I really didn’t have the heart to tell her that actually it’s just the end of the terrestrial contract. It seems come autumn Friends are just switching over to cable and that there is every chance that Elisha is just gonna keep getting older than Monica for a LONG while yet!

Makes it all just a tad sinister when you think of the portrait of Dorian Gray and suddenly hear the Rembrandts chirpy lyric:
“I'll be there for you
Like I've been there before”



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