Filmsane

Ok…. You’ve probably heard the news. Almost 16 years after the series finale of Friends, there will be a reunion and all 6 actors are going to reprise the roles.

The special will be filmed at the original sound-stage, Stage 24, on the Warner Bros. lot and will be directed by Ben Winston with Friends executive producers Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman, and David Crane returning to executive produce.

That’s right. Matt, Lisa, Matthew, Courtney, Jennifer and David will be back (this time in May on HBO Max, and yes the actors are going to be paid a lot of money), but let me tell you why I think is really a bad idea.

This is not one of those “Please don’t ruin my childhood“ statements. Hardly. And although Friends was a huge and loving part of my childhood I’ve never considered too sacred and untouchable that it shouldn’t be replicated or imitated. Heck, Will & Grace did an admirable job at continuing the story without too much hoopla, but I feel that’s not going to be the case with Friends.

And yes, I’ll be the first to admit that all of the story-lines and plot twists were NOT consistently good in the whole 10 years that Friends was on air. The Rachel/Ross arch was annoying from the beginning and it stayed annoying until the end, they turned Joey’s character into a comically stupid shell of a man-child (instead of the lovable goof that we all knew and loved before) and don’t even get me started about the abundance of celebrity guest stars that accompanied the 6 Friends in the later seasons.

If you ask me, i think that a tell tale sign of the decline of a once respected TV show. The early symptom of an ailing TV show if you will. When they stop having fantastic ideas, and they just bring a bunch of celebrities in order to boost the ratings. Brad Pitt was in one of the Friends episodes, Bruce Willis was in several and by the season 8/9/10 there wasn’t an episode without one such celebrity.

Look, some of the actors already had their mini revivals on Ellen and Jimmy Kimmel, and I must say that although it will be filmed on the same sound-stage as the original series, it just won’t be the same. Yes, I’m certain that Jennifer has had the best career post Friends, but the rest of the 5 actors have been struggling to say the least. They’re older now, they’ve been out of the public eye for years now and some of them haven’t had a hit TV show or hit movie for almost a decade. You can really smell the desperation in this decision.

But why am i mostly skeptical about the Friends reunion special? Well, if you read past the salaries that each of the actors will receive for this reunion, you’ll notice one simple word that’s been repeating all throughout the news. Unscripted. Yeah, that’s right. The Friends reunion will be unscripted, and if you look up the meaning of the word Unscripted, you’ll notice that it basically can mean one of three different things.

Improvised situation comedy

Reality television

Documentary television

No, I can safely say that it won’t involve some type of documentary TV format, and I think that it will be a mix of Improv and reality TV. Something that we’ve had an abundance of in the past 16 years or so, and something that’s been considered trash for the better part of these past 2 decades.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was wrong come May, but I think I won’t be in this case. The reunion will be a total disaster and can’t wait to write a post called I TOLD YOU SO!