Hi everyone! I'm so happy i found this community. I never actualy thought that there was a 'Friends' forum. I must admit that i'm a bit embarrased for looking for it now - when the show is over and only because i need help from the true fans of the show... Nevertheless, being 19 i grew up with this sit-come (although i haven't seen all the episodes, because i lived in Bulgaria and... oh it's a long story) and i must admit i love it. I've found my self in real life situations that resemble some of the episodes a lot of times. And when i actualy saw the last episode i was so touched that i wrote e goodbye letter to my friends and family (i had to leave BG in order to go to college). So, let me get to the point and stop with the long introductions :) I am supposed to do a presentation on tv sit-comes for my Electronic Media class. So if any of you might know something that would help - please share. I also wanted to include a few minutes from 'Friends' to actualy show why is this tv genure so popular. Which episode should i use for that? I'm open for suggestions, because it would take forever to get all of the DVD-s and see all of the episodes. Thanks in advance!

P.S. English is not my mother tongue, so please bare with me. Thanks!

I would suggest any scene that has the six friends doing something or having a conversation together.

You could use something from "TOW All the Poker" or "TOW No One's Ready," or you could use the opening scenes from "TOW The Sonogram at the End," "TOW The Thumb," "TOW George Stephanopoulos" or "TOW The East German Laundry Detergent."

Thanks man, I appreciate the help. I'l get the episodes you mentioned and see them all, in order to choose the best one. It's hard to select only a few minutes to represent several seasons of sitcomes. Oh, and thank you for being the only one to reply to this thread...

I'm pretty much the only one to reply to anything in this forum anymore.

Hmm, the series ended, but no one has died, come on... People shouldn't let the great sitcome fade out and be forgotten. No one watches "I love Lucy" but people still remember her, right?

Well, as great a show as "Friends" is, I don't think you can put it in the same rank as "I Love Lucy."

Pretty much all the Friends fans online have died out, except at Friends Boards, which is still pretty active.

Originally posted by slackermonkey
Well, as great a show as "Friends" is, I don't think you can put it in the same rank as "I Love Lucy."


I do. I think this show will live on as one of the all time greats! :D

"Friends" is my personal favorite sitcom, I would definitely rate it in the top 25 best sitcoms ever and it's guaranteed to live on in reruns forever, but I just can't bring myself to place it in the same class as something like "I Love Lucy." Maybe because it only recently ended and it's hard to see it as a "classic" already.

Hmm, maybe you're right. After all I'm studying about these things, but I have never seen an episode of "I love Lucy" :( Being born in 1985 and all that... And I’m not American, to top it off. But I do know that even if it is too early to consider "Friends" a classic, I'm sure it will be remembered. Maybe not the way that "I love Lucy" was, but still. After all, just look at this quote from an article:
"In monetary terms, Friends is the most successful sitcom of all time. By the end of the series the six main cast members were each paid $1,000,000 per episode. Advertisements for the series finale, which attracted an audience of over 52 million viewers, cost $2,000,000 for a 30-second spot in the United States and CAD$190,000 in Canada. The last episode was released on DVD less than a week after its broadcast."

It will definitely be remembered. Not as remembered as innovative, unique shows like "I Love Lucy," "All in the Family" and maybe even "Seinfeld," but it will be considered a classic in the next few decades.

Actually, in monetary terms, Seinfeld is the biggest show of all time. He made $267 Million in the final season.

Is Friends a classic?? Yes.
In the same vein as I Love Lucy?? No, but only for one reason -- ILL started it all. It was the first sitcom to be filmed with three cameras in front of a live audience.

It's definately one of the best sitcoms of all time, but it can't touch ILL for that one reason.

^ Exactly.

What defines something as classic isn't just how funny or popular it is, but how influential it was.

Well I'm not sure if "Friends" is in fact the most successful tv sitcom in terms of moeny, I just got this out of an article. But, if you read carefully, it states the costs for a 30 sec commercial spot and how much viewers it attracted, not how much money it made.... So I'm not sure if the article was wrong. Oh, and "i love Lucy" wasn't actually the first-ever sitcom. But it surely was the most popular in the 1950s, or so the articles say.

He didn't say "I Love Lucy" was the first sitcom, he said it was the first to use what is now the sitcom standard (i.e. filmed with multiple cameras, staged in Los Angeles, etc.), which it was.

They are all staged in LA? I didn't notice that O_O

There are some exceptions, but yeah, for the most part sitcoms are filmed in LA.