Friends, Still

I’ll prove it simply: there are exactly three things that matter in this life. Double cheese on a pizza is always better than single. Any decent party needs Ladyhawke playing at least once an hour. And Friends is unquestionably the greatest TV show ever made—still, forever. Or at least it ties with Skins and The OC. You know what I mean.

I hadn’t been outside much the last couple weeks. Partly the weather in Berlin was garbage, partly I had projects that actually mattered or so I told myself. Really I’m just someone with no friends who’d marry his laptop if it were legal. So I did what any reasonable person would do: I watched all ten seasons of Friends back-to-back. All of them. And now I can’t get my head clean of it.

The title song burrowed into my brain like a parasite. I started greeting my IKEA lamp with How you doin’? Last night I dreamed I was on some detective adventure train crossing the Orient with the whole cast—sandwiches, murder, guitars, the works. Mischa Barton showed up and took her dress off, but that’s normal for my dreams.

My best friends and I used to cast ourselves in the show. Ham-Eniz was Joey, Mille was Chandler, and I got stuck being the goofy Ross. At least he got Rachel.

No other show on earth taught me as much about how to actually live as this one. Six people in New York. The idea that friendship and love are the whole point. That most of the things that wreck you can be solved by talking it out and hugging. That you need a little Joey in you.

If I had my way they’d never have taken it off the air. And we can all agree to forget that spinoff garbage in Los Angeles—that doesn’t count. Everything that’s tried to grab our hearts since is just a pale copy of the Central Perk gang. Our lives got measurably better the moment they decided they’d be there for you. Because they will.