I’ll Be There For You.

 

For me, watching television is a deliberate act. I’m not one who curls up on the sofa and surfs channels hoping to stumble upon something that appears interesting or to settle on something that is so obviously uninteresting. Whatever shows I do enjoy get watched online, per my convenience, when I have space in my life for them. The only exception to this rule applies to the NBA. I make my best efforts to watch most games in real-time. (ARE YOU GUYS SEEING HOW AMAZING MY BULLSIES ARE DOING THIS SEASON?! HELLO, D.ROSE FOR MVP ROUND TWO!)

But tonight, as the dark of night got deeper and I found myself tossing and turning in bed; I gave up wishing for sleep, grabbed an orange from the fridge and plopped down on the couch. Did you guys know that Friends now airs on Nick at Nite? Is this real life? Remember when the late night line-up was reserved for shows shot in black and white? How is a show from my childhood old enough to be featured on a network where-once-upon-a-time couples couldn’t be seen sleeping in the same bed? But I digress…

The cliche-laugh-track-fueled-half-hour seduced me in. As I giggled at the antics that took place in Monica’s rent-controlled purple apartment with copper saucepans and mismatched chairs, I began to slowly drift back to the young girl I was when I first watched these episodes. A bright-eyed kid impressed by the lifestyle of these characters whose job’s were a joke, they were broke, and their love life was DOA. As a kid, Friends served as part escapism and part hope.

As the episode continued, I began to remember what this time period had been like. This was 1998, when our biggest federal scandal involved the president’s sex life, when Jennifer Aniston was Hollywood’s golden girl instead of tabloid-fodder, when Cougar Town didn’t exist. This was when there was no war, no $13 trillion dollar deficit, no 8.5% unemployment rate, no housing collapse. We lived in a Disneyland of sub-prime mortgages and college loans, APR financing and shopping malls and our Boomer parents waved their magic Mastercards and told us that, someday, we could be anything we chose.

Suddenly, in this moment, this Friends episode started to become so much more to me. That’s just like me isn’t it? Taking something frivolous, enjoyable, and exacerbating it into something bigger, greater, bursting with meaningful undertones. This old episode featuring Ross flying into a public rage when someone steals his gravy-soaked turkey sandwich took me back to a time where the only thing I believed in was possibility. Exactly what I needed to remember now that the beginning and endings of my days are blurring together, my needs are ranked lowest on my list, and where work is consuming almost every waking moment. I’m reminded that as a young girl, sneaking upstairs to my room to catch the next installment in the Rachel/Ross love story, this is exactly what I imagined.

I imagined the thrill that would come from doing creative work that I would be underpaid for. I imagined all the sleepless nights I would endure because my thoughts would be far more interesting than anything I could ever dream. I imagined meaningful conversations with my own vapid self-absorbed Rachel and a burgeoning romance with my very own charismatic but slightly sardonic Chandler. I imagined my 20′s bursting with in-cohesive but enchanted moments of stress, delirium, and true bliss.

This little late-night getaway is taking me back to a time when my own adulthood was as much a fantasy as that half hour on NBC. Though stock-piled with pretty people in flattering lighting, Friends isn’t about success. This sitcom illustrates that even in our wealthy, sushi-eating daydream, life wouldn’t be perfect. But each moment would be worth it. And I think tonight, in the midst of my own personal, wonderful, professional hell, this was exactly what I needed to remember.

All these years later, as an adult, Friends is still providing me with a little bit of escapism and a little bit of hope.

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