Posted by Diarmuid on January 27, 2002 at 16:34:31:
In Reply to: It's actually a pretty good show. posted by Emily on January 27, 2002 at 13:56:10:
It's really no mystery. They have the best joke-writing. Most US sitcoms are vapid and inch-deep (compared to the British ones). But they are much funnier.
Any Friends episode will have more truly funny lines per minute than any other sitcom. That's the only place where it's genuinely better than any other show.
There's the other thing, of all the characters bar Phoebe being fairly well-defined and somewhat rounded, flawed beings. Other sitcoms generally have characters with at most one personality trait: the cool one, the pathetic one, the sexualised one.
Matt Perry said the Friends are mostly exaggerated versions of the real person. That's why they ring true. The problem with Phoebe is she is originally portrayed as a pleasant, altruistic nine. In real life she is a more misanthropic being, like Ted Danson's role in Becker. See her in "The Opposite of sex"
> I don't say that about a lot of things, what with being an elite four and what have you.
> =oP
> But really. It's good stuff.