Bizarro World

Hey everyone. It has been a long time since we rock and rolled. Sorry about the delay. Nothing really new or exciting has happened since then. Became another year older, am getting close to starting another school year (my room is looking like a real classroom now), and Hawkeye Football is only a measly 26 days away!

Anyways, tonight I was waiting for the first NFL Preseason game to be played on ABC and a rerun of "Friends" was being played on the local affilate. When I watch "Friends" I chuckle but I never really got into it. In fact, I think "Friends" gets overrated many times, taking away from underrated "Frasier," which ended the same year as "Friends." At this point I do realize the hate mail I will receive from this, and all I say is bring it on. It was/is only a decent sitcom for these reasons (I understand I don't have a lot of reasons, just good ones):

1) The show became more of a drama than a comedy. Are Ross and Rachel finally going to get together? Will Monica and Chandler move away? Why didn't we just make it an hour long and call it a thirty-something Dawson's Creek? The comedy was lost in trying to make a story line.

2) This is the biggie. It seems as if "Friends" was set in a Bizarro World (yes, that is also a Seinfeld reference because Seinfeld is quite possibly the best sitcom of all time). How many times did we see an African-American character or even just an African-American extra in this show? I think Ross had an African-American girlfriend toward the end, but that is it. The situations they were in were "real life" but how many times does something happen to you and you say "Boy, that was just like that one episode of "Friends" were such and such happened to so and so."? You almost never do. How about this one, the main thing that made me think about this blog. They had a lot of guest stars on "Friends." In the episode I watched tonight Susan Sarandon guest starred. Great, but when trying to connect with the viewers and be more of this world rather than bizarro t.v. world, a guest star never played themselves in the show. For instance, on Seinfeld a guest star comes on for a cameo and they usually played themselves. Corbin Bersen, George Wendt, numerous Yankee players, Keith Hernandez, and while it isn't really him they have a guy play George Steinbrenner. It was "real world" and you could connect with what was happening to them and knew the people who they were talking about/encountered as themselves. In Bizarro world, the gang of Friends was living in NYC but never really made reference to events of the city (the Yankees, the Mets, the mayor, etc.)

I know, you can complain I'm being nitpicky, but it is true. When I watch, I do chuckle. BUT I don't feel a connection to the show because they are in Television Bizarro world and not a show in our world. Okay, I'll quit complaining now. Enjoy Friends next time you watch!