Friends...or not
I saw this article about the declining interest in and importance of friendship linked on Tumblr earlier and thought it said some interesting things. Even if you don't agree with everything in it I think it brings up some really basic points about how relationships tend to get weighted now. Especially the way that romantic relationships and marriage for a lot of people are expected to take on a lot of the job that friendship used to have.
While I think the article is describing the truth in society at large, it's not my experience. I mean, I'm single so that could be one reason why I think friendship is important. But I would say that my close friends feel the same way. What's more in my experience that doesn't really change for us when we're not single. I don't mean that in the casual "bros before hos/chicks before dicks" way of just not throwing over your friends for a boyfriend--though I have been shocked to see people actually do that in my life. But in the deeper sense of considering friendships relationships that you value and work on the same way you would other ones. They talk about friendship as important.
When I think of that view of friendship not being important I think of something kind of weird--it always makes me think of the last episode of Friends. Which I didn't actually see, btw, but when it was on there was a ton of buildup and everybody was talking about it on TV because it was going to be such a big deal etc. Now, one thing that annoyed me about it is that it followed that cliché that so many long running sitcoms do where they think it's important to spend the last episode destroying the situation of the situation comedy. Probably because so many really memorable last eps in sitcoms did that--Mary Tyler Moore, MASH, (heh--Newhart!). And some of them used that idea to really do something amazing. Like Newhart will always be rightly remembered as a great joke. And Blackadder's final episode, imo, manages to hit you in the way MASH's hugely hyped finale only dreamed of doing.
But these shows all really supported the sadness (or in Newhart's case just surrealness) of the ending. It bugs me when people seem to think they *need* to destroy the premise just to make people cry about the show going off the air. Which is how the whole concept of Friends seemed to me. Where that connects to my original point about friendship, besides just the obvious title of the show, was that the main game changers of that last season seemed to be Monica and Chandler who adopted twins and needed to move out to the suburbs.
Now, I have nothing against living in the suburbs. But I do tend to find the assumption that this is what you "should" do to be a little silly. Particularly on a show that spent however many seasons showing Ross's son Ben and later Emma perfectly happy growing up in Manhattan. What I found so hard to take with Monica and Chandler, though, was that they kept presenting the move out to be so much better for their kids. There was a lot of talk about childhood clichés that I don't think are very true anymore, with kids riding their bicycles unsupervised and free and all that. And whenever they talked about I couldn't help but think...wait, so you think it's really important that your kids live in a big house with a big yard and streets with less traffic. And it's not important that you're leaving behind your whole support system of loved ones?
I mean, this wasn't even questioned on the show that I remember. It seemed like it was going with the understanding that you have friends when you're single and then when you start a family you move away to some isolated place where you don't know anyone (weren't Monica and Chandler going to wind up living next to Chandler's ex that they'd intentionally avoided for years?) because that's how to be a grownup. Meanwhile I'm thinking that if these kids grew up in the city they would have cousins (Ben, Emma and Phoebe and Mike's kids when they had them) constantly in their life, plus 3 uncles and 2 aunts who were constantly around. You couldn't buy that kind of loving, supportive environment yet it didn't even seem like it was considered a loss to these kids. Because...lawns! It's not that the show was outright saying that you were supposed to leave friendship behind, but I honestly don't remember them ever bring up the distance as a huge sacrifice and loss in the kids' lives.
Obviously you can make friends in the suburbs, but these people had been almost exclusively interested in each other for their entire adult lives and it takes a while to build up the kind of friendship they had. Maybe that's one of the things that makes How I Met Your Mother more of a comfort show. We already know that this bunch does not see friendship as something that fills your time until you get married. These people will always be amongst the most important relationships in Ted's life.
While I think the article is describing the truth in society at large, it's not my experience. I mean, I'm single so that could be one reason why I think friendship is important. But I would say that my close friends feel the same way. What's more in my experience that doesn't really change for us when we're not single. I don't mean that in the casual "bros before hos/chicks before dicks" way of just not throwing over your friends for a boyfriend--though I have been shocked to see people actually do that in my life. But in the deeper sense of considering friendships relationships that you value and work on the same way you would other ones. They talk about friendship as important.
When I think of that view of friendship not being important I think of something kind of weird--it always makes me think of the last episode of Friends. Which I didn't actually see, btw, but when it was on there was a ton of buildup and everybody was talking about it on TV because it was going to be such a big deal etc. Now, one thing that annoyed me about it is that it followed that cliché that so many long running sitcoms do where they think it's important to spend the last episode destroying the situation of the situation comedy. Probably because so many really memorable last eps in sitcoms did that--Mary Tyler Moore, MASH, (heh--Newhart!). And some of them used that idea to really do something amazing. Like Newhart will always be rightly remembered as a great joke. And Blackadder's final episode, imo, manages to hit you in the way MASH's hugely hyped finale only dreamed of doing.
But these shows all really supported the sadness (or in Newhart's case just surrealness) of the ending. It bugs me when people seem to think they *need* to destroy the premise just to make people cry about the show going off the air. Which is how the whole concept of Friends seemed to me. Where that connects to my original point about friendship, besides just the obvious title of the show, was that the main game changers of that last season seemed to be Monica and Chandler who adopted twins and needed to move out to the suburbs.
Now, I have nothing against living in the suburbs. But I do tend to find the assumption that this is what you "should" do to be a little silly. Particularly on a show that spent however many seasons showing Ross's son Ben and later Emma perfectly happy growing up in Manhattan. What I found so hard to take with Monica and Chandler, though, was that they kept presenting the move out to be so much better for their kids. There was a lot of talk about childhood clichés that I don't think are very true anymore, with kids riding their bicycles unsupervised and free and all that. And whenever they talked about I couldn't help but think...wait, so you think it's really important that your kids live in a big house with a big yard and streets with less traffic. And it's not important that you're leaving behind your whole support system of loved ones?
I mean, this wasn't even questioned on the show that I remember. It seemed like it was going with the understanding that you have friends when you're single and then when you start a family you move away to some isolated place where you don't know anyone (weren't Monica and Chandler going to wind up living next to Chandler's ex that they'd intentionally avoided for years?) because that's how to be a grownup. Meanwhile I'm thinking that if these kids grew up in the city they would have cousins (Ben, Emma and Phoebe and Mike's kids when they had them) constantly in their life, plus 3 uncles and 2 aunts who were constantly around. You couldn't buy that kind of loving, supportive environment yet it didn't even seem like it was considered a loss to these kids. Because...lawns! It's not that the show was outright saying that you were supposed to leave friendship behind, but I honestly don't remember them ever bring up the distance as a huge sacrifice and loss in the kids' lives.
Obviously you can make friends in the suburbs, but these people had been almost exclusively interested in each other for their entire adult lives and it takes a while to build up the kind of friendship they had. Maybe that's one of the things that makes How I Met Your Mother more of a comfort show. We already know that this bunch does not see friendship as something that fills your time until you get married. These people will always be amongst the most important relationships in Ted's life.