The One Where 'Friends' Ended 20 Years Ago

It's legacy is complicated, but you can't deny its impact

20 years ago this week, the show Friends aired its series finale. I truly hate that it was 20 years ago, because I still remember it so vividly. I was 18, and the night the finale aired, my dad and I were frantically trying to fix our home computer after it became infected with a virus (probably from the music I illegally downloaded from Kaaza) so we were going back and forth between dealing with the computer and watching the show. The show was still such a juggernaut when it went off the air that it seemed wild to end it, but I also know that it was the right decision to make. They had given us all they could, and it was better to go out on top.

Friends has an incredibly complicated legacy — a product of its time that certainly hasn’t aged well when you hold up the modern magnifying glass to it. (To be fair, even shows made a couple years ago don’t hold up to the current moment; we’re always moving forward.) Regardless of how you feel about it from that angle, you can’t deny that it was a tentpole of 90s pop culture. How many people tried to copy Jennifer Aniston’s “The Rachel” or yell “PIVOT!” The phrase “How you doin’?” is a firm part of the cultural lexicon. We still use gifs and memes from the show for a reason. If you don’t know the chorus to “Smelly Cat”, you’re lying. Taylor Swift even performed it with Lisa Kudrow live during the 1989 tour back in 2015. There is no doubt that Friends left an indelible mark on us, forever changing the kind of impact tv shows could have on the culture.

I was eight years old when Friends premiered. I had a little black and white tv set in my room, and my parents would let me stay up and watch it in bed. It’s been a million years, but I can still remember laying in bed and watching it. As I got older, I didn’t tune in every week, but I definitely watched all the big episodes. That’s why I was watching the series finale — there was no way I was going to miss saying goodbye to the characters I literally grew up with. The characters were examples of the adulthood I longed for and aspired to. I absolutely saw myself as Rachel, and honestly that hasn’t changed.

By now, I’ve seen every episode of Friends so many times I’ve lost count. It’s always been in syndication, so it’s never been off the air. My ex bought multiple seasons through iTunes before streaming was a thing, and we’d watch it when we were bored. When I lived with my parents after my son was born the cable options were limited, and I would watch the two hour blocks they’d run the show in every day. My son loves the show too, so we watched it together on streaming, but he usually wanted to watch his favorite episodes, which means there are some I’ve seen more than others. Because of how much I’ve seen the show, I have a lot of critiques about it now that I didn’t have when I was younger. Sit down, this may take a while.

For a show about a group of friends, they sure don’t act like friends! They all spend a lot of time being lowkey mean to each other and not particularly supportive of each other. I always come back to the episode where they all get into an argument because half of the group makes significantly more money than the other. The ones who are in the higher income bracket are practically hostile about the fact that they have more money and shouldn’t be made to compromise for their “friends” who can’t constantly afford to spend money. That’s fucking weird to me. Maybe it’s because my friends and I were all broke in my 20s, but we would never make each other feel bad about how much we made.

There are a lot of shows about groups of friends, and of course those friends have their spats, but you always got the sense that they loved each other and had each other’s backs no matter what. I don’t get that feeling from the Central Perk crew, who would throw each other under the bus with a quickness. They were more inclined to step up for each other if there was an outside threat, but even then, it felt like only sometimes, and definitely more in the earlier seasons. I will say that it felt like Chandler and Joey were the only ones who were truly besties.

Don’t even get me started on the Gellar siblings. They are the most selfish, irrational, unreasonable people! Neither of them are good romantic partners, because it has to be all about them all the time. Ross was the worst boyfriend to Rachel from start to finish. They should not have had a kid together, and I don’t think I’ll ever not be mad that she got off the plane for him. I truly hope that she did still go to Paris, maybe just on a later flight. Because if she gave up her dream job for that self-centered idiot, I will riot. I could keep going, but I think y’all get my point.

There is only one relationship on the show that feels like it’s an actual partnership, and that’s Carol and Susan. Now before you start saying “But Sa’iyda, you’re only saying that because they’re lesbians!” hear me out. I don’t remember paying much attention to Carol and Susan when I was a kid. But as I got older, I started to notice them because they seemed like the most normal ones of the bunch. I don’t know if it’s by design or not, but they are the most adult, the most mature, and even though we never see them at home without one of the main characters, I feel like they make more of an effort to have a proper adult relationship. Is it because they’re lesbians? I couldn’t tell ya. For Carol it’s probably because she’s in a relationship with an actual adult and not an overgrown man child. 

Beth and I have talked at length about Carol and Susan and the way the show handled them and their relationship. She hates it, because she feels like their being lesbians was always played for a joke, which subsequently meant that the writers believed lesbians were a joke. I, on the other hand, am firmly in the camp that the joke wasn’t necessarily the show mocking lesbians, but we’re viewing them through the lens of a shitty man who can’t get over being dumped. Carol and Susan are an example of a life that was possible for women who felt trapped in their lives at a time when it didn’t feel possible.

Even if you feel conflicted about them, you can’t deny their significance. Theirs was the first lesbian wedding on tv. Friends was the anchor of NBC’s “Must See TV” — a slate of their biggest shows, that everyone would crowd around the tv to watch. Thursday night at 8pm on the biggest network for sitcom television and you have a lesbian wedding? That is HUGE. New York Times Bestselling author Kristen Arnett wrote a great essay about the wedding episode this week for Autostraddle. Give it a read.

When I was younger, if you would have told me that my life would be more like Carol’s than anyone else’s, I would have been like, “Nah.” And then I found myself officially coming out at 31 with a four-year-old and trying to date women while co-parenting with my ex-boyfriend. Suddenly, I understood differently. I know how tricky it was to navigate all of the feelings and perceptions and opinions in a time where being a late in life lesbian was more accepted. I cannot imagine what it must have been like in 1994, when it was still possible that you could have your life ruined by being out. Carol was doing something incredibly brave by choosing to keep her baby and co-parent with Ross.

He could have taken their child and she would never see it again. That still happens! I know people who have had brutal custody battles after coming out and getting divorced. I say all the time that I’m so lucky I was already raising my son by myself when I came out. Because if his dad did try to pull any funny business, I had evidence that I had been doing all the work his whole life.

There’s a moment in the episode, “The One with the Birth” where Carol is in labor and Ross and Susan find themselves locked in a janitor’s closet. Ross and Susan have a naturally antagonistic relationship and are arguing about their place in Carol’s life, and subsequently the baby’s life. Susan is lamenting the fact that she doesn’t have a clear role in the family she’s creating.

“There’s Mother’s Day, and there’s Father’s Day…there’s no lesbian lover’s day!” she says emphatically. 

“EVERY DAY IS LESBIAN LOVER’S DAY!” Ross yells back.

The co-parenting relationship between Carol, Susan and Ross is something never seen on television in the 90s. I mean, it’s still something rare to see on tv, despite the fact that there are so many late in life lesbians out there. You got glimpses of it on Grey’s Anatomy with Callie, Arizona and Mark, but they killed him off when Sofia was pretty little, so we never got to see how that worked out when decisions needed to be made.

But imagine what it must have been like to see that kind of co-parenting situation in the 90s! I wonder how many women found the courage to live their truths after seeing that kind of representation on tv. 

It’s funny because whenever Beth and I talk about it, I will constantly remind her of how much our life is like what we see in that co-parenting relationship. “You are Susan! This is your life now!” I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said that. I’ve never talked to my ex about my sexuality or the way our co-parenting relationship now mirrors what we’ve watched on Friends so many times. But I can 100% guarantee that he probably has some of the same feelings as Ross, even though we had been broken up for four years when Beth and I started dating. It can’t be easy to see someone else come in and be the full-time parent to your kid, especially if it’s a boy. We don’t get to see Ross’s relationship with Ben much because of child labor laws and tv shows, but also, that’s not the point of the show. But I bet he probably only sees Ben occasionally and that Carol and Susan do the bulk of the parenting. Susan is probably more of a dad to Ben than Ross is, and it probably makes him crazy.

I always imagine Carol and Susan in bed at night after having to deal with Ross and the others and talking the same kind of shit about him that Beth and I do after we deal with my ex. 

“God, can you believe that I was ever with him?” Carol asks.

“Thank god you’re a lesbian now,” Susan replies, kissing her forehead.

Not being main characters gave them the opportunity to be the adults on the show the main characters purported to be. Even if I wasn’t a lesbian, I would be able to recognize that now. But it’s especially clear now that I’m in a relationship now that feels so much more grounded than the one I was in with my ex. It’s amazing how living your truth does that.

I’ll always love Friends for the show it is. To this day I can still recall dialogue or situations that happened on the show and compare them to things that happen in real life. Anytime I see the final moments of the series finale, my eyes instantly well up. I think it’s a testament to the show that there are still ways to find it relatable 20 years after it went off the air. But I also think that we can watch it for what it is and be glad that we’ve made such progress and grown up a little bit.