{"id":5512,"date":"2021-06-02T07:19:28","date_gmt":"2021-06-02T06:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=5512"},"modified":"2021-06-02T07:19:29","modified_gmt":"2021-06-02T06:19:29","slug":"old-friends-they-shine-like-diamonds-guy-clark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2021\/06\/02\/old-friends-they-shine-like-diamonds-guy-clark\/","title":{"rendered":"OLD FRIENDS: THEY SHINE LIKE DIAMONDS \u00a9 Guy Clark"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

OLD FRIENDS: THEY SHINE LIKE DIAMONDS<\/strong>*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* \u00a9 Guy Clark<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Norman Warwick<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

At a recent Reunion I met up again with all my imaginary friends, including Amy Amatangelo. I asked her what she is up to these days as I hadn\u00b4t seen her since she was a little girl not allowed by her parents to watch much television. She told me she is now the TV Gal\u00ae, a Boston-based freelance writer and a member of the Television Critics Association. I bet her parents love having to live with this as her career! From now on I\u00b4m going on to follow \u00a0her\u00a0on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0(@AmyTVGal).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was getting on towards the end of the night, and people were beginning to drift away as I bumped into her in the crowds milling around on the street outside. I asked Amy if she had enjoyed the event and whether she thought it had all been worth it. It had been a huge party, after all and must have cost a fortune<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4The answer to that most obvious question is no,\u00b4<\/em> she said \u00b4No the HBO Max reunion of Friends isn\u2019t worth the reported $2.5 million dollars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer each received to participate in the 1 hour and 44 minute special. (The accounting major in me wants you to know that is a rate of $24, 038 per minute).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amy certainly sounded like a tv critic with all the facts at her finger tips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a8I don\u2019t fault the six stars\u00b4,<\/em> she explained. \u00b4who, after all,  pioneered the \u201call for one and one for all\u201d salary negotiations in the series\u2019 heyday, for getting as much money as they could. But, let\u2019s be honest, unless they found the cure for cancer and figured out a way to end world poverty, nothing in the special would justify that outrageous price tag\u00b4.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I reminded myself, as I listened to Amy, that Friends: The Reunion<\/em> was originally supposed to air last May 27th, timed to the launch of HBO Max and the beloved sitcom\u2019s move from Netflix to the new streaming platform. Of course, COVID got in the way of those plans. And a funny thing happened on the way to this reunion: so many casts, from The Office<\/em> to The West Wing<\/em> to ER<\/em>, got together for free<\/em> to raise money for various causes. Granted these were over Zoom and not on some fancy set. But still, the novelty of cast reunions and table reads has definitely dimmed as we have awaited this re-union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Friends Reunion Special – Photography by Terence Patrick<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

But here the original sextet are back on the stage that made them famous with the set meticulously recreated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amy reminded me, though, that \u00b4the Friends haven\u2019t really left the public eye since the series ended on May 6, 2004. There have been successful second (and third and fourth) projects (Cougar Town, The Comeback, and Episodes to name a few), commercial endorsements, and countless tabloid covers. We already know who has aged well and who hasn\u2019t (or who has had good plastic surgery and who doesn\u2019t). At the beginning of the special, we are told \u201cSince the finale, the six cast members have been in a room together only once until now.\u201d But the fact that they haven\u2019t all been together seems more about busy lives than any bad blood. There are so many happy tears\u2014particularly from Aniston, Cox, and Kudrow\u2014during the reunion that you know the love the cast feels for each other is genuine\u00b4.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was just about to hail an imaginary cab as me and my imaginary friends say in my imaginary American home town when Amy suddenly demonstrated why she is called TV Gal by offering to run me through what she thought we had learned from attending the re-union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4There was very little new ground covered.<\/em> Unless you somehow didn\u2019t know that Schwimmer HATED Marcel the monkey, there\u2019s nothing new to see here. (Schwimmer is still furious about the creature all these years later, which is very funny). There are a couple of things HBO Max doesn\u2019t want me to tell you, but they are so low stakes, and its clear they are really grasping for the reunion having a big reveal.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friends<\/em> is still a really funny show.<\/strong><\/em> It\u2019s telling that I laughed the hardest during clips of the original series. All these years later, Scwhimmer screaming \u201cPivot! Pivot!\u201d LeBlanc lunging commando while wearing all of Chandler\u2019s clothes, and Kudrow screaming \u201cMy eyes! My eyes!\u201d is still hilarious. I laughed as if I was seeing these scenes for the first time.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t worry about James Corden.<\/em> Ever since the trailer dropped last week, fans have been in an uproar about Corden hosting the reunion. First of all, he\u2019s fine. It\u2019s not like he breaks into a song from Cats. But more importantly, he\u2019s only a small part of a show that jumps around among table reads, the cast on the set reminiscing and playing trivia, and Corden and the Friends outdoors in front of the iconic fountain with a masked audience. (I would have felt better if the reunion had stated their COVID protocols, but I\u2019m just going to assume there were a ton.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With one notable exception, the celebrity cameos are brief.<\/em> Some are blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-them. Some are only allowed to wave and not even talk. Many of the show\u2019s most famous guest stars and pivotal characters aren\u2019t part of the special.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe One Where Everyone Finds Out\u201d remains one of the best television episodes of all time.<\/em> It was a perfectly timed farce, and having the cast read through the pivotal scenes again was a sheer delight. Ditto for Aniston and Schwimmer recreating the moments that led up to Ross and Rachel\u2019s first kiss.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer Aniston refers to her ex-husband as \u201cPitt\u201d.<\/em> It happens so fast, but the cast is discussing all the great guest stars that appeared on the show and Aniston says, \u201cPitt came. Did one.\u201d As if it wasn\u2019t the biggest thing happening at the time and we all might have forgotten.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There were only happy memories here.<\/strong><\/em> If there was tension on the set at any point, you aren\u2019t going to find out about it here. Just the law of averages means there had to be some moments of unhappiness during the decade it was on the air, but not according to this special. Perry had some well publicized difficulties during the run of the show which are not referenced. (Perry\u2019s affected speech during the special is apparently due to dental work that was performed right before filming the special). If they ever fought, if they ever didn\u2019t like a story line, if any guest cast (besides the monkey) annoyed them\u2026 all of that remains in the Friends vault.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The show wasn\u2019t diverse but its fans are.<\/strong><\/em> Also not discussed is the show\u2019s problematic legacy. It was not diverse. It was, at times, homophobic. Plus, none of them could have afforded that apartment. But the special does feature fans of all backgrounds from all over the world saying things like \u201cFriends is what I came home to\u201c and \u201cThey have saved more lives.\u201d And it has some very famous fans: watching Malala Yousafzai and her best friend giggle over Friends was delightful.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The behind-the-scenes footage and bloopers are special.<\/strong><\/em> It\u2019s particularly lovely to see the cast behind the scenes during the filming of the series finale.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There will never be another show like Friends. <\/strong><\/em>It<\/em> averaged 25 million viewers a week. 52 million people watched the series finale. TV is way too scattered and diverse today to ever achieve those numbers.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, the cast is pretty clear this kind of reunion won\u2019t happen again. None of them want to revive  Friends. Everyone from the creators to the producers to the cast seems to know that trying to revisit these characters two decades later isn\u2019t a good idea. The lighting in a bottle magic of the series must be preserved, not corrupted. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Friends will always be there for us in reruns. It will always be finding a new generation of fans. Its humour is timeless. Technology and fashion will always evolve and change, but the way Friends captures the time of young adulthood is enduring.  And it\u2019s lovely to spend 104 minutes with the gang again. Could we be<\/strong> any happier?\u00b4<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a little girl who didn\u00b4t watch much television Amy certainly plenty to say about it these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, perhaps I should make my own confession now. I\u00b4ve never actually been invited to a friends re-union of any kind (go figure) and I\u00b4m not really in touch with any old friends. The re-union referred to here, whilst not one I was invited to, was something I was able to watch on tv and so, in the same way as millions of others, share a long, but vicarious friendship with Ross and Rachel, Chandler and Monica and with Joey and with Phoebe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amazingly, vicariously through those six people.  I have now made a new imaginary friend in Amy. She really is a tv critic and writes for Paste and now, whenever I watch anything on tv I wonder what Amy might have thought of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My new (imaginary) friend Amy Amatangelo is the TV Gal\u00ae, and a Boston-based freelance writer and a member of the Television Critics Association. Her piece in Paste on 28th<\/sup> May 2021 was my primary source for this article and you can follow all the latest TV news, reviews, lists and features at Paste on-line (TV)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friends: The Reunion\u00a0premiered on Thursday, May 27th on HBO Max in the USA and on Sky One in the UK.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Technology and fashion will always evolve and change, but the way Friends captures the time of young adulthood is enduring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5517,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5512\/revisions\/5517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}