A big show deserves a big reunion, and few shows were bigger than "Friends."
The show had a colossal 10-year run on NBC and was a titan of television, pulling in an average of 25 million viewers a week back when network shows could pull in an average of 25 million viewers a week. And since the show signed off in 2004, fans and the internet have been clamoring for some sort of reunion, because the two-year run of "Joey" was not an acceptable substitute.
With last week's massive "Friends" reunion, they get their wish.
The nearly two-hour special reunites the six cast members — Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, Courtney Cox and Matthew Perry, as if you needed any reminding — and runs them through a gauntlet of nostalgia. It's a reunion special, a clips show, a table read, a real-time behind-the-scenes glimpse at the reunion, a variety show, a cast Q&A and more, all rolled into one.
It's the "Avengers: Endgame" of reunion specials, the final closing of the book on "Friends." And it both ups the ante for and closes the door on future reunions of its kind, because it will be difficult to pull off something of this magnitude again.
Nothing is truly ever over until the reunion. Bands break up and reunion talk starts immediately. (See Oasis.) Shows go off the air and fans crave a reboot. (See "Gossip Girl.") Movies gain a cult following and studios mold a sequel. ("Hocus Pocus 2?" Really?)
No one is ever really ready to say goodbye to the things they love, and the memories they cling to in their minds tend to highlight the good and phase out the bad. So we demand that the band gets back together to give us one last hurrah, even if nothing is ever as good as it was the first time around.
There were plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the "Friends" reunion. For one, it's been 17 years since the show went off the air. The television and media landscape has changed drastically in the time since then, so much so that the reunion landed on the streaming service HBO Max and not on NBC.
The "Friends" are never going to be quite as we remembered them. And what is there to have them do, a one-off episode? A mini-season, a la "Gilmore Girls?" A full-on reboot, a la "Will and Grace?"
What producers settled on, a hodge-podge of reunion tropes, works surprisingly well, save for the "live" hangout with James Corden, because a little James Corden goes a long way.
We first see the cast arrive one by one on the show's set, where the memories come flooding back to them, like when Cox used to cheat by having her lines written on the objects in front of her, or the time LeBlanc saw Cox's cheat and took the liberty of erasing them for her. Classic LeBlanc.
There's a warmth and a shorthand among the six cast members who experienced the "Friends" phenomenon together, and while it's been a long time since they've all been in a room together — we're told in the show's intro they've met up only one other time since the finale — they quickly fall into old rhythms, like former classmates at a high school reunion.
Of the six of them, LeBlanc seems the most comfortable and at ease, followed by Aniston and Schwimmer, with Perry on the far end of the spectrum. The erstwhile Chandler Bing seems the most troubled, the one who both needs the reunion the most and who might be the most triggered by it, and he has several moments of honesty that cut through the warm fuzziness of the reunion and take it somewhere real, and somewhat uncomfortable.
The first happens when the cast members are all joking with each other about who talks to whom the most, and Perry interjects with a terse, "I don't hear from anyone." The line gets a laugh but hangs for a second before he shrugs his shoulders, leading you to believe he's being honest and not simply landing a punchline. The other comes when he talks about how bad he needed the audience to react during show tapings. "I felt like I was gonna die if I didn't get the laugh," he says, the desperation of his confession temporarily dampening the mood in the room.
But the mood is mostly upbeat, and Perry lands several zingers throughout that prove his comedic instincts are still sharp.
The special manages to touch on the show's legacy — it taught members of BTS the English language! — while reminding fans of its biggest moments (the clip of Joey putting on all of Chandler's clothes is shown, and then later reenacted) while also finding time for a parade of guest stars and celebrity cameos.
It's like producers built a funhouse for the cast members and had them walk through it while filming their reactions. And in so doing, both the cast and fans get the closure they needed. Aniston and the gang no longer need to be asked the "so when's the 'Friends' reunion?" question during every interview and appearance going forward. It happened, it delivered, it's over, move on.
On the other hand, this really raises the bar on "The Office" reunion. Good luck on that one, guys.
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