Adios Amigos
So I watched the final Friends episode. I thought it was pretty good. Predictable, funny at times and sad in a way. The kind of sad that you feel when you are moving, and look at your empty house or apartment and realize that whatever kind of times you had in that place, they are part of history.
Here is a kind of interesting article in Slate about the show that makes a point about my generation compared with the baby boomers:
So I watched the final Friends episode. I thought it was pretty good. Predictable, funny at times and sad in a way. The kind of sad that you feel when you are moving, and look at your empty house or apartment and realize that whatever kind of times you had in that place, they are part of history.
Here is a kind of interesting article in Slate about the show that makes a point about my generation compared with the baby boomers:
In contrast to the doggedly preprofessional grads of the 1980s who couldn't wait to put on a tie (male and female alike) and enter the hyperadult world of investment banks and law firms, our business-casual class has circled happily in a post-collegiate holding pattern long past graduation day, whether by installing Fooz-ball tables in the workplace or by glorifying immaturity in branding ("Yahoo!," "Fat Bastard Chardonnay"). And so has Friends.Anyway, the first part of that reminded me of something that Scott said in Fortune magazine a decade or so ago when they did an article about Boomers vs. Busters, which was what they were calling the Gen X back then. The article mentioned how our generation was a little more laid back and into quality of life, rather than that whole go-go 80s lifestyle. But then I wonder if that wasn't more a function of the slowdown in the early 90s, because by the late 90s many of my generation were burning the candle at both ends.
In the '80s, the thirtysomething crowd was, well, thirtysomething. In that prime-time drama, two navel-gazing married couples dealt with self-consciously adult issues like infidelity and on-the-job power struggles while the couples' unmarried friends were portrayed as vaguely subversive and wacky. On Friends, it's just the opposite: Even when the Friends marry or have children, they still (until Thursday, anyway) live like students. Rachel and Ross' hang-out time with the rest of the gang has barely been affected by the birth of their daughter, Emma; the main upshot of Monica and Chandler's wedding has been to further confuse sometime viewers as to who is living in which apartment.
