To be fair they lived 5ft away, it may as well have been one big apartment. And one of them was a chef.
Still. Who does that.
Before the internet was widespread, it was extremely common for people to actually hang out in person. The show is set in an era where the internet was something you went out of your way to connect to, not something that was already integrated into every single device you used.
Especially since they all lived so close together, it’s 100% believable that they’d hang out together regularly. People also forget that the show takes place over multiple years, and we only see 20’ish episodes per year. Assuming each episode takes place across two’ish days, they’re still only seeing each other two or three times per week. If I lived across the hallway from my best friends, I’d probably hang out with them a few times per week too.
This is especially true from Chandler and Joey’s perspectives, where Monica’s kitchen is only like eight steps away from their own kitchen. Why bother cooking yourself breakfast, when there’s a professional chef willing to do it for you, and all you have to do is open two extra doors?
Ross doesn’t live in the same building. Later on he moves into the building across the road from them though. Phoebe lives elsewhere as well.
The expectation that you could get an apartment that size in central NYC without being a billionaire is also a lie
I think they explained it, the reason they could afford it was because Monica’s grandmother lived there, and they’ve been paying 1950s rent because of rent control or something. Something similar for phoebe as well. Anyway show never explains how joey/chandler/Ross can afford those big houses.
I quite like the way How I Met Your Mother handles this - the size of the apartments is the narrator misremembering. There’s an episode where the characters have been viewing a house in
New JerseyLong Island - they return to the apartment and it’s portrayed as the size it realistically would be.Can you tell which episode it is? I’ve tried watching some but couldn’t find it.
It’s in the intro to S07E11. Took me a while to track it down!
Thanks for tracking it.
Some of that is due to the realities of filming in a stage made to look like an apartment as you need the space for the camera crew to fit. This everyone lives in massive places.
That’s completely not the reason. How other shows manage to show small apartments and poor people houses?
Showing regular people living in big apartment is more appealing to the public. Shows from the 70s or before were more realistic. Mary Tyler Moore was living in a small apartment and sleeping in the sofa despite having a regular job. In All in the family, they were financially struggling especially because of the 70s inflation. Lucy and her husband were living in a small apartment.
Things did change in the 80s and we started seeing families living in big houses with cars. Even Roseanne who normally depicted a working class family was living in a big house and could afford many things.
you think you know better than someone who worked on tv in NYC at that time?
Mary Tyler Moore’s show never had the expectation of holding six or more people in the same room like friends.
All in the family took place in a house. Im not sure how you miss this. It’s in the credits.
Lucy and her Husband never had more than a handful of people on screen at once. They dont need the space Friends does.
Friends needs a space for the main cast plus partners and that requires a larger space plus the ability to fit crew which requires large places. The bit about rent control makes perfect sense if you have experience with NYC real-estate.
There were many episodes where there were more than 6 people in I Love Lucy. I mentioned All in the Family because it was realistic and was showing people financially struggling even with two jobs. They lived in a house but it was small with one bathroom.
Even Seinfeld had a small apartment. Many other shows manage to show people living in small apartments. And even with rent control, it isn’t realistic at all.
So that is clearly not the real reason.
Again their living room had to fit six or more. There are episodes where they have six people in Lucy’s house but rarely is it more than four or five.
Seinfeld had 4 main cast and they rarely had anyone else in their places other than the main 4. No one needed to fit a dozen people in a room.
Were you renting living space in NYC in 1994? I was.
Do you know anyone with a ridiculous place because of rent control policies? I know several. Everything about the show makes sense within the context of the time once you realize that eight or so people need to fit on the stage in many scenes
So writers are like “we will write a sitcom about this poor family of 10. Let’s give them a big house to fit them all”. That is ridiculous.
I won’t continue debating with you. I am amazed at how are you trying to justify everything about the show. Actually you are like the ones I saw on the fan sub on Reddit.
Anyone showing up at my apartment to hang out while I’m waking up and getting ready for work is going to get chopped in the throat, that’s my time for rage and hatred for existence.
Interesting. I have friends eating breakfeast at my place before work one or two times a week.
You may hate on me now.
what time do you get up, and what time do you all head for work?
We get up at 6 and we head to work between 7 and 9.
So depending on the day and person its just a quick coffee. But on other days we have time for bread and croissants.
I hate the damn french with their stupid labor laws that let’s you have somewhat of a life.
Oh, we hate the french too! So we made even more even more laborate labor laws to outdo them!
🥐 = french
King of the Hill showing a group of childhood friends living next to each other, having time almost every day to just hang out near their homes and drink, went from just being a quaint little detail from when I watched it when I was younger to being an almost dreamlike aspiration as I move further into adulthood.
There’s a certain amount of discourse in KotH fandom around exactly how all four childhood friends came to buy houses on The Alley behind Rainey Street. Apparently the canon is hazy and inconsistent, though I can’t remember the details.
Another total lie is almost every TV show character drinking bottled water now. You could legitimately give this the benefit of the doubt as purely a production issue, because it’s a simple way to avoid rigging a functional sink on the set with a working tap - I mean, the transporter on Star Trek was invented to avoid shooting lots of shuttle takeoffs and landings. But product placement is also such a big thing now, I’m dubious.
It was astounding to me to find out that plastic bottles have only existed for some 45~ years.
Plastic bottles became common more like 60 years ago. They were invented in the 1950s but were too expensive for a while. I remember as a kid in the 60s there was a commercial where somebody dropped a bottle of shampoo, which normally would have been glass, and was amazed that it didn’t break. This stuck in my mind all these years because of a standup comic named Norm Crosby. who told on a talk show about this scene actually happening to him at the grocery store. The lady in front of him dropped her shampoo, so he picked it up and re-enacted the commercial - “It didn’t break… It didn’t break!!!”. He was hoping for a laugh but she just glared at him and said, “Gimme da soap.” Anyway, that’s how I know plastic bottles were being popularized in the mid-60s.
I think the bigger lie is you can live in New York City and almost never interact with a person of color, but ok.
What time do they start work? 11am?
They wake up at 4.
That was part of a joke at the start of an episode. Everyone complained that their boss didn’t like them and Joey (working at the Central Perk at that time iirc) pointed out “yeah I wonder why none of your bosses like you. Maybe it’s because it’s Wednesday 12 pm and you are hanging out at a cafe”.
What they don’t mention here is that these guys get up at 6:00 AM, have lunch at 7 and leave at 8
this whole show is fake af
What show is this?
Friends.
That’s supposed to be a new your city apartment lol
Lmao I love it. Everyone has a gigantic apartment or mansion no matter what their job is.
Do we ever see Phoebe’s apartment?
Ross and Monica’s parents were well-off and Monica’s apartment is actually her grandma’s rent controlled apartment I think?
Rachel’s dad is loaded but she wants to be independent so she… Stays with Monica
Chandler has a well-paid job and is likely paying more in rent than Joey for their place in the earlier seasons.
Really, Ross (and maybe Phoebe) are the ones who make no sense. Ross likely has child support payments and let’s be honest, not THAT great a career
I never understood how far away Ross was supposed to live from the others. Ostensibly it’s in a different building but he’s always round at their place so presumably he commuted to see them, unless it’s literally just around the corner. So where did he find time to do that?
I thought he was directly across the street. There are some storylines involving looking across into the other buildings’ windows.
That’s after he buys a new place, past the halfway point of the show.
Chandler being able to afford paying for rent AND providing for Joey is also incredibly unrealistic.
Canonically Chandler is actually super rich from his mysterious nerd job and just lives frugally, and Monica’s giant-ass apartment is rent controlled and inherited from her grandmother.
This actually used to happen when I was younger. I miss having friends and being able to just hang out in our free time. I miss having some usable amount of free time. Adult life sucks and sometimes I just feel like I want to jump of the Balcony and end it all since I’ll never get the good times back and I’ll never have anymore in the future.
Sorry you’re feeling like this mate, hope you catch a break soon. Wish I could go back to my late twenties too sometimes.
Sucks to think about, especially since relative to the past we are in the most prosperous times, but people used to be happier in generations prior because they had cheap third places to go to, had a purpose and community.
And now our lives are surrounded by substitute and vicarious experiences that will never afford us true fulfillment. And like a drug, it saps us of the motivation to actually change any of it.
Convenience at an all time high, wealth inequality at astronomical levels.
Times are different, complaints are valid
Fight for the future you want everyone to have
I loved Friends, but yeah, the whole show was a big fat lie and I hate I dont live in that world
So no one told you life was gonna be this way.
👏 👏👏👏👏
One too many 👏
I know it is popular to shit on Friends these years, but I think that it captures the growing up part of life pretty well as the show is basically about capturing a snapshot in time of a group of friends when they were the closest before adult life tore them apart. Because that is how the show ends. They all grow up, have adult responsibilities, different priorities and they all leave the apartment complex to start new lives away from one another.
In my 20s I had a group of friends for awhile and we would hang out in each other’s apartments all the time, sometimes we would sleep over at each other’s places and have breakfast together before heading to school. We would go on picnics and excursions together. All pile into the old, rusty car that one of us owned and drive somewhere.
We had a pub we liked to visit semi-regularly and we were pretty 50/50 men and women.
When we got our degrees, most of us packed up and left. We are now in our 30s and some have had kids in the meantime while most of us have grown apart. Some of us still keep in contact and hang out when our schedules permits it, but it isn’t like it was when we were in our 20s.
To me, Friends is an idealized version of the friends group stuff in your 20s. To me it isn’t as unrealistic as it’s being made out to be nowadays, but it is idealized.
I treasure the few years I got to have good friends and classmates that I loved to hang out with and treat as family. No matter how much time passes, whenever we get to meet up again, it is almost like no time has passed at all, and that is such a great feeling, even if we only get to see each other like once a year.
Reading that first paragraph makes me physically sick to my stomach. The impermanence of everything is killing me. There is no point. I cannot find a point of my own. It’s legitimately driving me insane.
I think the impermanence of life is one of the most difficult things to accept, but once you do, there is some beauty to it too.
I think it is or at least should be one of the biggest motivators to try and live in the now. I have been the most happy, when I try to live in the now and appreciate what I have right now. It takes a bit of practice but it is doable and it a great antidote to anxiety and depressive thoughts in my experience. You cannot live in the now all the time, but aiming toward it, is a good way to spend the limited time you have in this life.
Big hugs to you.
It’s not how human beings are supposed to live. We’re supposed to have that close-knit friend community our entire lives. People had this up until only 100-200 years ago or so. People in little farming villages were able to have a stable friend group for their entire lives and have time to interact with them. Kids didn’t serve as a substantial barrier, as the friend group helped raise the children. This is how children are supposed to be raised. It’s supposed to take a village.
It’s only our hyper capitalist economy that atomizes us and forces us to scatter to the winds, endlessly chasing job after job in far flung cities, never able to settle down and form real community anywhere.
The way we live is deeply unnatural and fundamentally at odds with human nature. It’s no wonder we’re all mentally ill.
I mean, you can still live like that if you want to, for your whole life if you want to. Move into or start a housing co-op. Even kids don’t get in the way of this. We’re supposed to raise kids in a village. That’s how children are meant to be raised.
Nah, I’m good. My comment wasn’t meant to be this sad woe is me rant. It was a critique of the meme since I did have friendships like that in my youth and just like in Friends, my friendgroup(s) split up when that period of our lives ended and we went on to start our adult lives.
It is a completely normal part of life. I don’t see it as a terrible thing.
I used to live in a condo with some friends, and there were others in our friend group that would randomly show up throughout the day. The doors were always unlocked, so friends would just walk in. Sometimes it would be early in the morning and would hang out while I made myself breakfast. Sometimes it was late at night after they partied and needed a place to crash.
Seems similar to what you mentioned, I relate. Like you said, Friends was idealized, but not unrealistic.
Yeah, I think those memories are to be cherished. Your apartment setup back then genuinely sounds like a setup for a wholesome sitcom xD
It’s stuff like that, that makes me have very few regret from my 20s because I full on just wanted to make friends and throw myself into a bunch of scenarios with them while I had the chance and was still young.
When I hit 30, I was like “I’m ready to move forward”.
Still miss it sometimes. That closeness and the goofy shit we got up to sometimes. Also just the hanging out on those lazy evenings. Good times ❤️
