All progress is war on the past and millennials are particularly merciless combatants. The arrival of Friends on Netflix UK has had this neo-Victorian generation reaching for its fainting couch. Through woke eyes, the hit NBC sitcom isn’t a diverting entertainment but an artefact of racism, sexism and homophobia.
If you were a twentysomething during its initial run, or a teenager dreaming of being a twentysomething, Friends was more than just a sitcom — it was a lifestyle choice. This is a polite way of saying it wasn’t terribly funny, except in broad and winsome moments, but it sold a frothy fantasy of deferred adulthood and we were buying. You weren’t supposed to question how Rachel and Monica, a waitress and a chef, could afford a two-bedroom loft in the Village or what sweet terms of employment allowed Chandler and Ross, an IT manager and palaeontology professor, to spend all day nursing mochas in Midtown.
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