I'll Be There For You: The ultimate book for Friends fans everywhere

I'll Be There For You: The ultimate book for Friends fans everywhere
Kelsey Miller

‘Funny, enlightening and incredibly well-researched’ Emerald StreetOver twenty years since its low-profile debut and Friends is as enduringly popular as ever. But has it stood the test of time? Are some parts of it more problematic than we remember? And who was the cast’s least favourite guest star?Join Kelsey Miller as she answers all of these questions and more. And as she relives the show’s most iconic moments, examines some of its controversies, and shines a light on the many trends it inspired – from oversized coffee cups to the much-copied 90s haircut, ‘The Rachel’.Weaving incisive commentary, revelatory interviews and behind-the-scenes anecdotes involving high-profile guest stars, I’ll Be There for You is the most comprehensive take on Friends yet, and the ultimate book for fans everywhere.

Copyright (#ulink_189518d8-4d7a-598d-98f0-651293d09fd2)

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Kelsey Miller 2018

Kelsey Miller asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9781474086158

Dedication (#ulink_544fc638-8948-5968-9e70-20db4df20ef3)

For my friends

CONTENTS

Cover (#ulink_593d016d-16be-5e91-9200-2fad5413a016)

Title Page (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#ulink_02f7fda9-0107-5ee3-9f52-c1cef50aded6)

Dedication (#ulink_20878727-5ad9-5ee0-aec3-ca8cd9a62889)

Introduction: The Sweet Spot (#ulink_d6c0cbe7-520f-53f6-9d58-eb2ff65a40cc)

PART 1 (#ulink_92bd9e7d-928e-581f-b358-27b764a0ce8a)

1 The One That Almost Wasn’t (#ulink_0ea1e219-4592-5473-9302-04fbfdcd6fb1)

2 The One with Six Kids and a Fountain (#ulink_01d168e2-59ed-57c6-83ea-b2aa32a8c194)

PART 2 (#litres_trial_promo)

3 The One with Marcel and George Clooney (#litres_trial_promo)

4 The One Where Two Women Got Married (#litres_trial_promo)

5 The One Where We All Got the Haircut (#litres_trial_promo)

6 The One After “The One After the Super Bowl” (#litres_trial_promo)

7 The One Where They All Go to London (and Everywhere Else in the World) (#litres_trial_promo)

PART 3 (#litres_trial_promo)

8 The One Where Everything Changed (#litres_trial_promo)

9 The One Where Nobody Died (#litres_trial_promo)

10 The One Where It Ended, Twice (#litres_trial_promo)

11 The Comeback (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

Source Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

Interviews (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION (#ulink_1ab0b67e-bf4f-5bf2-8976-24b21774f5a5)

The Sweet Spot (#ulink_1ab0b67e-bf4f-5bf2-8976-24b21774f5a5)

A few months ago, I walked into the gym, hopped on my usual machine, and thumbed the worn-out little button on the monitor up to channel 46. It was very early evening—a kind of magic hour at the gym. The place was packed, but oddly quiet, save for the whirring of stationary bike wheels and rhythmic thumping of sneakers on the treadmill. Gyms in New York City have a reputation for being scene-y and intimidating, full of athletic wunderkinds and sweat-free medical marvels eyeing each other as they deadlift a thousand pounds and do pirouettes in the mirror. On the whole, this reputation is shockingly true. But not at 5:30 p.m. At that hour of the day, all is calm and no one is judging. And every TV seems to be tuned in to a basic cable channel, as New Yorkers unwind with some cardio and reruns. That day, I walked in and saw the usual array of familiar faces lined up above high-tech machines: some folks watched Grey’s Anatomy, others preferred Law & Order. Some even tuned in to Family Guy, right out in the open. Really, there’s no judgment at 5:30. Personally, I always went right to channel 46, where every afternoon TBS ran Friends.

I’d started this routine a few years prior, around the same time I started working out regularly. I was in my late twenties, and up until that point, exercise had been the kind of thing I did either obsessively or not at all. Like most young women (at least the ones I knew), I’d thought of working out as something you did to try to look better, or to “cancel out” the dollar-slice pizza you ate on the street with your friends after five glasses of revolting wine. Now, I’d entered a new phase of adulthood. I ordered the good pizza and ate it at home with my long-term boyfriend—and not too close to bedtime, or we’d both need a Zantac. I exercised for actual health reasons, like a grown-up. It was boring and consistent, and I actually liked it. There were other things I didn’t like about getting older (like always having to keep Zantac in the house), but the gym wasn’t one of them. Because there, every evening, I could turn on Friends and hop back in time for a moment.

Channel 46 became the nostalgic escape hatch at the end of my grown-up workday. I would pedal away on the Arc Trainer, watching the episode where Monica accidentally dated a teenager, or the one where Chandler got stuck in an ATM vestibule with Jill Goodacre. I didn’t even know who Jill Goodacre was, really. I just knew she was a Victoria’s Secret model in the ’90s, and rewatching the episode was like returning to an era when both she and Victoria’s Secret were hot pop-culture references.

I’d never counted myself among the die-hard Friends fans, though of course I’d watched it. I was ten years old when it debuted in 1994, and in college when it ended. During those years it was one of the biggest shows on television—one of the biggest cultural events, period—and its enormous impact was baked into my DNA like radiation. I’d gotten The Rachel in middle school, I’d watched the finale with a group of weepy girlfriends, and if pressed, I could probably remember all the words to “Smelly Cat.” But that was base-level Friends knowledge, which was, frankly, hard to avoid having. The show was always there, one way or another. I’d find it on hotel-room televisions in the middle of the night, or hear the theme song in a grocery store and get it stuck in my head for days. Friends became an easy reference point in conversations. (“You know, Adam Goldberg. Dazed and Confused? He was Chandler’s creepy roommate with the goldfish? Yeah, that guy.”) I’d never owned the DVDs, but they always seemed to be around, either left by old roommates or brought in by new ones. When the show came to Netflix, on New Year’s Day 2015 (after months of hype), I tuned in for a hungover rewatch. So had all of my colleagues, I found out at work the next day. The true devotees hadn’t even waited until morning. They’d started shortly after midnight and watched until sunrise. I enjoyed revisiting the episodes occasionally, but I assumed I was a Friends fan the way everyone kind of was.

At first, the gym reruns were just an entertaining little addition to my cardio. Part of the fun, though, was watching it the old way—on actual television. I liked the inconvenience of it, even the commercials. I liked not being able to choose which episode I watched. One day, “The One with the Cake” came on again, and I had a thought I hadn’t had in years: Oh, man, I just saw this one. Even the annoyance was a comforting throwback.

Soon enough, I found myself timing my workouts to line up with the reruns. I knew the TBS schedule by heart, the distance between work and the gym, and the exact time I had to leave the office in order to make it in time. A few years later, I was a full-time freelancer, working from home, and it became even easier. All I had to do was wake up earlier so I could wrap up work by 5:00 or so, and I would make it to the gym just in time for “The One with Ross’s Sandwich.” By now, I could admit the truth: 5:30 p.m. had become my new prime time, and Friends was once again Must-See TV.

Let’s be clear: I did other stuff, too. I had a life. I was a writer, living in New York City. I had my own nice apartment (not Monica nice, but no one had that). I got to live in it with my very nice boyfriend, who soon became my very nice fiancé. I had my hardships, like everyone does, but I had much more to be grateful for. You couldn’t have paid me to go back and relive my twenties—especially not those early years, eating drunk pizza on the street. So why, as I inched into my thirties, was I suddenly clinging to a twenty-year-old show about twenty-something people?

I didn’t figure it out until that day a few months ago, when I breezed into the gym, turned on Friends—and it wasn’t there. Something had happened. Channel 46 was no longer TBS, but some god-awful sports network. I frantically clicked through the channels, mentally drafting an email to gym management about the great wrong they had done in changing cable providers. I looked around at my fellow rerun-watchers, expecting a row of outraged faces, but found none. Maybe I’d been wrong about the 5:30 crowd and the slightly embarrassing bond I thought we shared. Was I the gym weirdo? A good ten minutes passed as I stood motionless on the machine, absently thumbing the buttons and staring, wide-eyed, into space. (Yes, for sure, I was the weirdo now.)

In that moment, I thought of all the other times I’d gone back to Friends reruns: sick days, sleepless nights in unfamiliar hotel rooms, the day I got rejected by [insert job and/or romantic prospect]. It was a soothing balm on a lousy day—that much I already knew. But I’d also returned to Friends during periods of deep sadness and anxiety: while mourning the death of a grandparent, or waiting to hear back on biopsy results. On days like that, Friends wasn’t numbing, but comforting and warm. I leaned on the familiar jokes and unabashed sincerity. And I was not the only one. In the weeks after my little mental meltdown on the Arc Trainer, I spoke to others who said the same. Usually, it would start with my shame-faced confession: “So, turns out I’m emotionally dependent on a sitcom! How’ve you been?”