Friends

[treky]

what does everyone think about it coming back for another season? I just hope it gets better, in terms of plot. It's really started to "jump the shark" this season. They should never have started pairing them off! Monica & Chandler wasn't bad, but now Ross & Rachel! Let''s just HOPE they don't get Joey & Phobie together. They've already done away with the original premise, and what made it so good. "six single, young adults."

[Nanny Fine]

FRIENDS is just as good now, if not better.

The show has progressed so very much.

Do you not think that over 9 years life would not change? How has your life changed in 9 years? I would be so disappointed to see Rachel still waitressing at Central Perk instead of going on to pursue her career in the fashion industry or to see Monica still wearing the foam boobs at the 50's restaurant instead of head chef in an exclusive restaurant.

Pairing Ross and Rachel off isn't a new thing. I'm not sure by your post if you are a new FRIENDS fan or if you've followed the story from the first episode (like me ) but Ross and Rachel have been a "thing" for years and the show to me would have been a waste all these years if Ross and Rachel don't end up together. She's his lobster after all ;-) (Quoting Phoebe there!)

I'm thrilled the gang will be back another season. I look forward, and have looked forward, to Thursday nights for 9 years. Now I can again for a tenth.

[dlemond]

To each his own.

I know this show has had to change with the characters aging and marrying and making babies and all, but that does not mean that it is just as good.

For what it is, it's fine, certainly a decent show.
But in my opinion it is probably at its worst in terms of what I find appealing, humorous, and enjoyable.

This is the first season where I stopped watching.

[Nanny Fine]

Oh it's fine! I hope I didn't come across crass, I didn't mean it to be that way if so.

I'm just glad to see the natural progression of the characters and I still enjoy the show every week.

[RainMan]

Originally posted by Will and Grace Rox
Oh it's fine! I hope I didn't come across crass, I didn't mean it to be that way if so.

I'm just glad to see the natural progression of the characters and I still enjoy the show every week.

I wonder what the "Friends" Ten Year Reunion Show will look like in 2013? Or maybe even 2014 or 2015 or 2016 IF THE SHOW EVER ENDS!



Nate

[Brian Damage]

I say if it still has strong ratings(which it does)that means that plenty of people still like it. Why not keep going?

[Janice]

Originally posted by Brian Damage
I say if it still has strong ratings(which it does)that means that plenty of people still like it. Why not keep going?

That's right. Love or hate the show, who can argue with that logic? The show's a cash cow...the jewel in NBC's crown.
Cheers ran 11 years, and NBC offered Ted Danson the highest amount of money ever (at that time) to continue. Frasier's been on forever too.
Simple logic, if it has good ratings and makes money, it stays.

[treky]

yes, unfortunatly, in TV, money talks. Only in TV, they also go by the ratings. Look at the shows that people liked, but were cancelled after only one or two seasons, and the shows that outlived their welcome, like "Friends" is in danger of. To be fair, though, television is a buisness that relys on what people like, and you can't please everyone, and they have brought back some shows that people wanted. What people don't understand, though, is they can't bring back EVERYTHING. I stick by my original post, but if you disagree, hey, everyone's entitled to their own opinion! Everyone's different, & that's what makes the world go round, and what makes this country great! OK, I'll get off the soapbox now!

[Brandon]

Originally posted by Brian Damage
I say if it still has strong ratings(which it does)that means that plenty of people still like it. Why not keep going?

Yeah, but sometimes, it's a good thing to cancel a show (that has had a long run) when it's #1... that's what Jerry Seinfeld did with 'Seinfeld'.

[Janice]

Originally posted by Buffy&Angelique
Yeah, but sometimes, it's a good thing to cancel a show (that has had a long run) when it's #1... that's what Jerry Seinfeld did with 'Seinfeld'.

You're right. Seinfeld wanted out, but if were up to NBC, they would have kept the show going. They offered him a record $5 million per episode.
What Brian and I are saying is that from the network's standpoint, it's a good business decision to keep a hit show on the air.
___________________________________________

Friday, December 26, 1997

Seinfeld ending production this spring

NEW YORK (AP) -- As the Soup Nazi might put it: No more Seinfeld for you!

And no more soup-er Seinfeld ratings for NBC, which will lose the show at the centre of the most profitable night of TV in the United States.

Jerry Seinfeld rejected NBC's offer to raise his pay from $1 million to an estimated $5 million per episode next season, which would have been a record payday for a series.

"I wanted to end the show on the same kind of peak we've been doing it on for years," Seinfeld said in Friday's New York Times. "I wanted the end to be from a point of strength. I wanted the end to be graceful."

But now NBC could pay a much heavier price: the network's prime-time ratings supremacy.

Viewers will pay, too. They will be deprived of laugh-filled new adventures for Seinfeld's self-centred, urbanely bumbling New Yorkers: Jerry, a stand-up comic (played by stand-up comic Seinfeld), along with neurotic George (Jason Alexander), bizarre Kramer (Michael Richards), and Jerry's high-strung ex-girlfriend, Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).

As the hateful mailman Newman, Wayne Knight has had an ideal opportunity to observe the group dynamics.

"They continue to stick around with each other because each of them is someone they've stuck with for years, even though they can't quite justify it," Knight said in a recent interview.

And so the ninth season will be the last for the sitcom that made catch phrases out of "not that there's anything wrong with that" (being gay, that is), "master of your domain" (a sly euphemism for resisting the urge to masturbate), "yada, yada, yada" (blah-blah-blah), and potato chip "double dippers" (germ spreaders).

The show claimed to be about nothing, and nothing was too trivial to inspire half an hour of humor. One episode had the cast repeatedly trying to buy soup from an authoritarian chef.

The show became a major profit-maker for NBC (an estimated $200 million a year) and came to represent the 1990s just as surely as The Cosby Show marked the 1980s and All in the Family the '70s.

It was the ultimate water-cooler show, a topic of conversation at work on Friday mornings. (In fact, a Milwaukee jury awarded $26 million to a Miller Brewing Co. executive in June who was fired after telling a female colleague about an episode in which Jerry forgets his girlfriend's name and remembers only that it rhymes with a part of the female anatomy.)

The Seinfeld foursome has won 10 Emmys and is currently No. 2 in the U.S. ratings, behind NBC's ER.

Oddly enough for a series that celebrates greed, selfishness and yada, yada, yada, the choice for its creator-star was one of love versus money -- and love won. Seinfeld called his sitcom "the greatest love affair of my life," telling the Times: "We all felt we wanted to leave in love."

Some viewers have groused that this season's Seinfeld hasn't been up to snuff. But it is certainly near, if not still at, its peak, and it bids farewell in the grand tradition of such leave-'em-wanting-more favorites as Mary Tyler Moore, MASH, Cosby and Cheers.

[Central Perk]

Well Friends is a big hit for NBC so why not keep it? I mean NBC's main purpose is to make money and succeed with good ratings and Friends helps NBC do that.

This season has not been all that great, imo. The ideas have been decent but they haven't really been putting in humor the right way. I like the idea of adding Gavin as a character but as someone to come between Rachel and Ross...Didn't this happen last season with Joey?

[Eddie Haskell]

Personally, I gave up on the show two years ago and thought it had already started to go downhill before that. Every once in awhile I throw it on when I feel like being tortured and sure enough, I still think it stinks. This is my opinion and it doesn't matter to me what other people do. I do agree that if it's a money maker, then the network will keep it going, but for my tastes, I'd like to blow the set up with everyone on it.