How "Friends" framed alcohol so negatively

[TMC]

http://decider.com/2015/11/05/friend...ium=SocialFlow

If there’s one thing New Yorkers like to do — other than constantly complain — it is to drink. A lot. Probably too much, in fact. Which is why, while going back through Friends on Netflix and Seinfeld on Hulu, I couldn’t help but notice that New York-based network TV shows have lied to the rest of the country for decades about what it’s actually like to socialize in this giant watering hole of a metropolis.

Last year, when I went for my annual check-up, my doctor inquired about my alcohol consumption. “How long have you been living in New York? How many drinks do you consume per week? Have you ever felt drinking is a problem for you?” Over five years, not exactly sure, and in college maybe — but doesn’t everyone have a drinking problem in college? Even after concluding that I’m healthy as a horse on the outside and that my drinking is a non-issue “by New York standards,” my doc suggested (probably since I’ve been dwelling in this sobriety-challenged city for half a decade now) that I sit in for a sonogram and have a look at my internal organs. To my surprise (and relief, I suppose), the sonogram technician asked if I had recently moved here. “You don’t have a Manhattan liver,” he joked. “Not even close.” Maybe it’s my valiant genes, or perhaps I’m just lucky. But after being congratulated on my lack of cirrhosis, I couldn’t help but think about how drinking in New York City has rarely been depicted in an accurate light outside of paid cable programming.
This undeniable fact makes revisiting Must See TV by way of streaming nothing short of maddening. In the case of Seinfeld, it isn’t simply the sitcom’s choice to rarely have any of its four main characters consume alcohol; it’s also the framing of alcohol as the cause of all narrative turmoil, which we see season after season in Friends.

For all of its groundbreaking qualities, depicting social drinking was not one of Seinfeld‘s strong suits. In fact, the series all but ignored the concept altogether. Sure, we see Elaine, George, or Kramer (as well as their dinner dates) with the occasional glass of wine (which they rarely so much as sip). Jerry, on the other hand, very seldom indulges; he prefers the jolt of energy he gets from canned soda or coffee from Monk’s over the downer qualities of alcohol. Not once in the history of Seinfeld’s nine seasons does Jerry get drunk. In fact, he’s only seen consuming one beer in a singular episode: Season Seven’s “The Shower Head.”

Friends, on the other hand, regularly features alcohol consumption across its ten-season run, albeit in a pretty poor light. The maddening part of this whole rediscovery, however, isn’t the the series’ unfairness to the notion of social drinking — or the fact that alcohol is featured but very rarely drunk. Rather, it’s the inaccuracy of creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane’s representation of New Yorkers through this very special group of West Village-inhabitants: they don’t need to drink to have a good time, but when they do, the very structure of the series is changed indefinitely. Thus, Friends, time and again, uses drinking solely as a dramatic narrative device. Consider the five following scenarios in chronological order: