The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - Bonus! Friends and the Golden Age of the Sitcom

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, usually read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week is a special bonus episode in which Joanna speaks about the release of her debut book, Friends and the Golden Age of the Sitcom. I’ll! Be! There! For! You!(And we’ll be back soon with more bonus material, and your regularly scheduled nonsense in September – apologies again for the long summer hiatus!)Buy the book/read more from Joanna:Joanna Hagan's website  Pen and Sword Books: Friends and the Golden Age of the Sitcom - Hardback Friends and the Golden Age of the Sitcom - Amazon.co.ukTwo-Hats Television - Joanna’s Substack Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretDiscord: https://discord.gg/29wMyuDHGP Want to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

It's very weird doing this when I'm also the guest. Let's just get meta with it, man. I'll put a different hat on. Hello and welcome to The Two Shall Make You Fret, a podcast in which we are usually reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discord series, one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. What are we talking about today, Francine?

Well, Joanna Hagan, today we are talking about you and your book because today is a special bonus episode to celebrate the release of your first book. My debut. Your debut, which is coming out on the 31st of July, as well as this episode, God willing. A bit of theoretical for both of those at this point, but it's definitely coming out soon, the book and the episode. It's like now-ish, right? So Joanna, what is your book called?

Friends and the Golden Age of the sitcom. Where is it available? Let's get the nitty gritty out of the way. All good bookshops, some terrible ones. Pen and sword books you can order directly. You can also order signed copies from my website. Although I can't promise super rapid distribution on those because that's very much a one being operation. But you have got a printer now.

But I have got a printer. I'm very prepared. Yeah, I've been trying to get Joanna to buy a printer for the last five years and it's finally happening. It's finally happening. I'm so excited about all the things I can print. Oh, what have you printed? Have we gone for like, MySpace era printing grainy digital photographs of your favourite bands and blue tacking them to your wall? Not quite yet, but give me a minute. It won't be long.

It won't be long. Nice. And speaking of nostalgia, what is this book about? Well, it's about friends and the golden age of the sitcom. No, it's a history of the TV show Friends, the 10 years it was on television. And what happened to television in those years, which is a really fascinating story of sitcoms and focused on American network television, because that's what Friends was. Yeah, it's an interesting story. It's a very interesting 10 years. What was it that kind of got you into that whole subject? Did you start off deciding

to write a book on Friends and then you ended up learning about all this interesting background or? Sort of that. I always knew if I wrote about friends, it was a show that didn't exist in a vacuum. And I couldn't talk about it without talking about I mean, what happened in the world at large, as well as what happened was happening on television. But the more I got into it, the more fascinating it was how much television changed over those 10 years, and I couldn't not write about it. And because I have the luxury of the luxury of an entire book on one show, each chapter gets to be a season of the show, which means each chapter gets to be a year, well, sort of it, because the television season runs September through May.

It's like a nearly a school year type thing. Yeah, it's very school year actually. Why sitcoms in particular then? As you were saying, like TV changed a lot during those 10 years, but were sitcoms a particular mainstay, an anchor of TV? Yeah, very much so. This is focused on American networks. At the time Friends started in 1994, there were four big American networks, which is NBC, which Friends aired on, CBS, ABC, and Fox, which was considered the upstart because that was new in the 80s. If you look at the primetime lineup, so primetime being from 8pm till 10, 11pm, but especially that two-hour block, the 8-10pm block, all four of these networks,

especially in the mid-90s, it's all sitcoms, especially Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, which were the big, the days where it was most important to have audiences because that's when there were more people who were the kind of people advertisers wanted to target at home watching television, especially Thursdays, which is something I talk about a lot in the book, Thursdays being a really big deal. Yeah, it was wall-to-wall sitcoms. By 2004, when Friends Ended, it really wasn't. So I say golden age of sitcom but the book is about how the golden age of sitcom ended to a certain extent. So when did it start?

Arguably I'd say the 80s slash 70s. I mean, sitcoms have always been a massive part of American television. You know, the first sitcom in America in the 50s. You notice these big trends in them, but they've always been a part of TV. Partly they're really cheap to make compared to like a big budget drama or even a small budget drama. If you think multicam was the really popular thing. So multicam sitcoms are things like Friends where it's filmed in front of a live studio audience. You have a stage like set and then there are like three or four cameras on it at once to capture lots of different angles as the show plays out. I never realized it was in front of a live audience for the longest time. Yeah. This is also the time now shows that have kind of recorded laughter is sometimes recorded

and added on afterwards. But some stuff is still live audience at Big Bang Theory, one of the more recent ones to still be multicam and live audience. Anything that has those sets with a really obvious missing fourth wall, that's live audience stuff. So it makes sense. They're cheap to make. It was a good way for writers to get started because the writers room system was huge at this point. So people would start out in comedy and work their way up and then go make shows on their own. Interesting. So the writers room thing actually you wrote about at reasonable lengths didn't you because obviously that's quite an interest of

yours as well. Yeah well because especially in the context of the recent television strikes we've had, the writers' strike specifically but Saag-Afdra got involved as well, one of the sort of strike actions, although it wasn't a primary thing on the ballot, was the writers's room system is slowly disappearing. It's something that hasn't ever really existed in the UK in the same way. This idea of you have a team of 10 to 15 writers who work on a show means that people can come in with very little experience. They can come in straight from university and they start as assistants and they start typing stuff and slowly they get to throw their own jokes in. I think things are a lot more interesting

when they're made collaboratively, which a lot of these writers rooms tended to be, although there'd be showrunners and overseers. There was a lot more opportunity to get into writing for television than now if you have these very closed, no writers room, three or four writers are hired and they're making an entire show. There's nowhere for someone to start pitching a couple of ideas into the room and work their way up. Was it quite an American thing? Yeah, it's always been more of an American thing, I think, because just the

way television's made in America is so different, the way sitcoms are made, especially if you compare, you know, the American sitcoms being made for network television, which meant they had to run from September to May, so they had to be 20-episode seasons. To the UK, which has never had that same kind of distinct TV season set up, so sitcoms are six episodes. It tends to be less so now, but definitely if you're looking at like 80s and 90s, it tends to be two or three people who made friends at Cambridge doing the Footlights review and then maybe made a sketch turned a sketch show that they took the Edinburgh Fringe into a show on the Bebe because they were friends with someone at the Bebe or their dance were.

Yeah, that's it. This is kind of how I imagined it all because I think my my knowledge of like writing for telly came from like Stephen Fry's autobiography or like, yeah. I'm not saying you know, America's vastly superior to the UK in every way and obviously there are UK sitcoms that I... You're not really. No, I'm not. That's exactly what you would say. There are obviously British sitcoms I love, but there's no denying that there's certain

amounts of nepotism and who you were friends with uni that have contributed to the UK comedy kind of not being very diverse on television for a very long time. And it's a hell of a thing to have a 20 episode season that is not shit. Yeah, it's something that really fascinates me about sitcoms. If you think, and Friends is a really good example of it, but there's a lot of other shows where you have 20 odd episodes, each one, once you take out the time use for ads, it runs between 20 and 25 minutes. Then within each of those 25 minutes, you tell at least one story, but usually there's a B

and a C plot as well, so three stories, all of which have a beginning, a middle, and end, have a three act structure. Then on top of that, over those 20 episodes, you create an overarching narrative. Red cord. Very red cord. I think it's fascinating. I think it's an incredible feat of writing. I couldn't do something like that. Yeah, you could. I mean, yeah, I probably could. I don't like to show off. Not one putting yourself forward.

No, no, no. As she said, the most humble of anyone to ever be humble. The important thing is that we are the scariest thing in this forest, John. You've got to put some desk-well references in there. Oh, yeah, obviously. Keep the audience happy. I'm sure I've crammed some in the book somewhere. Yeah, don't worry. I'm going to do that.

Do you have footnotes? I don't have footnotes for this one. I decided to sort of try and be restrained and could I work without footnotes because a lot of my footnotes were just me thinking of something funny and clever to say that I was very funny or clever. This is the reason I quite like Substack is because I can leave all that shit in as footnotes and like I don't need to edit to a word count so much. Yeah, I like Substack for that too.

Yes, by the way, everybody, as we're pitching Joanna stuff, follow her on Substack if you haven't already. Follow me on Substack. There will be a link in the show notes down below. A link in the show notes down below. I'm sure Francine will give me ample room for extra self-promotion at the end of the episode as well. Oh yeah, yeah. Ample, what's it called? A promo corner? That's a large corner. So sitcoms then? Yeah.

You're saying obviously they are a mainstay. They're a staple of US TV. But why do you like them? Why do you want to write about them? I just it's the thing I said before, this idea of writing all of these short stories and cramming them together. I find that fascinating. I also find it interesting that you can do so much with sitcoms. There's a very interesting debate at the moment. The Bear, which is a really popular show, nominated for lots of Emmys, but it gets nominated in the comedy category. The reasoning seems to be most of the episodes are half an hour or less and therefore it's a comedy, not a drama.

Yeah. It didn't sound like a comedy to me. It has its funny moments. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't, but it's a drama. But that's a holdover from network television where comedies were half an hour and dramas were an hour. So Friends had a half hour time slot, ER had an hour time slot. I think what you can do in that short amount of time is really interesting. The fact that you can do so much with it, The Bear is a really good example of it maybe going too

far and these rules lasting a bit too long, but at the same time, they do fascinating things within those 20 minutes of television. If you take sitcoms, if you take what's normally like, it stands for situation comedy, but the situations are normally really, really minor to the overall thing. The situation of friends is six people are friends with each other. Interesting. What a situation. The situation of something that's, you know, arguably more complex and got very meta, like how I met your mother, this idea that it is this one person telling a story and it has this framing device ends up being so incidental

to the actual show. But my rant about the finale of How I Met Your Mother can wait for a future book. Yeah. And then I suppose like, mockumentary style is the other. Yeah, you have the stuff like The Office and Parks and Rec and that was like a really new style of comedy. You also have things like Scrubs, which was really unique at the time because it was a sitcom, but it was single camera. Yeah, and lots of first person. Yeah, lots of first person, lots of shot one camera at a time and then editing all these cuts together and no live audience. It was heavier than a lot of sitcoms. It was willing

to go to darker places, but it would have existed without all of this stuff that came before it. It's a medium that I think gets to grow and change like a lot of other mediums don't because you think of sitcom as something with a fairly rigid structure, A, three acts and B, three walls and a live audience. It's really fascinating watching how much it's changed from that. Cool. Scrapped actually had that one episode where it pretended to be a sitcom, didn't it? Like an old-fashioned sitcom. Yeah. When I was working on the book, actually, I talk about Scrubs a little bit in the book and it was on at the same time as Friends. Some of the later years, they overlapped and

it was on the same network. I really wanted to talk about that episode, but I know that episode didn't air until after Friends finished. I wanted to shoehorn in. I couldn't work out how until I got to an episode of Friends that had Ken Lerner on as a guest. He's a funny actor. He's principal flutie in Buffy for those who watch Buffy season one. But he was also in the episode of Scrubs. He plays the sitcom writer that sort of sparks this whole fantasy thing so I was really sort of he's turned up that's enough that's enough. My segue is a- You were my shoehorn sir.

Yes he was my shoehorn he allowed me to segue and I got to write about that which is a really great little episode of scrubs. Shoehorning a segue we're mixing our metaphors but I love it. No me I'm never one to leave a metaphor unmixed. And so like speaking of like experimental episodes and like evolving the genre, etc. Did Friends kind of do a lot of that stuff? Why did Friends particularly catch your imagination? I mean why Friends is the whole question of the book. Oh fuck. Sorry, we've gone down the rabbit hole now. No. The reason I picked Friends when I wanted to write about this era of television is there

were so many great shows that were on that era and Friends isn't the only one we remember from it. Obviously, there's Seinfeld and there's Frasier and then later on we have Scrubs as we talked about, there's Will and Grace. But Friends has just lasted in a different way to any of these other shows. There's just still such a huge fan base. There's still just merch for it in random high street shops. There are Lego sets. I know there are Lego sets for other shows. I know there's been a Seinfeld one and a Frasier one, I think. Yeah, but you'd still find people to buy the Friends one. been a Seinfeld one and a Frasier one, I think.

Yeah, but you'd still find people to buy the Friends on. I just, Seinfeld's a really interesting point of comparison because arguably it was a much bigger show when it was on at the same time as Friends. When the Friends reunion aired on HBO in 2021, millions and millions were spent on it and it was watched by millions and millions of people. When Curb Your Enthusiasm ended with effectively a nod to the finale of Seinfeld, even when Curb Your Enthusiasm effectively had a Seinfeld reunion, it just wasn't as big, there wasn't as much money to spend on it. It was never just had that same kind of ravening horde. And so that was what I wanted to look at, why has Friends survived in public consciousness in a way like no other show has? Can you give us a sneak peek of why?

Spoilers, spoilers. It's all in the confusion. I don't think there's one answer to it. I think part of it is that it is surprisingly timeless. You start noticing the lack of technology a little bit and when that technology is actually mentioned, it suddenly becomes very not timeless. There's a great moment where Chandler lists off all the specs of his new computer and says it can play Doom, which is a game that can now famously be run on things like thermostats and digital pregnancy tests. Well, at least he picked one that's still famous. Well, at least he picked one that's still famous.

I'm very glad he did. I didn't have to explain what Doom was. But you don't really notice, you know, texting is not used as a plot point. There's a pager maybe in a couple of episodes, there's people using payphones more than we would see. Answer phone is a plot point once or twice. That could still happen. And we know what a voicemail is. And I think there's something to that about it. It's quite rewatchable because it doesn't totally feel like a time capsule. Yeah. I think the fact that... Lean on pop culture.

Exactly. It was, and it's not overly high concept, it is six people hanging out and going through various things, but it's mostly six people hanging out. So it makes it something very comforting to watch. And it stuck the landing landing. I think that has a huge effect on a show's legacy is how well it ends. I think Friends had an incredibly good finale. It had an incredibly good pilot, one of the best sitcom pilots of all time. It had an incredibly good finale that managed to tick all the right nostalgia buttons. I think if Friends had had a bad finale, it wouldn't be remembered as fondly. I did really enjoy your breakdown of both those episodes.

They are excellent. Lift the curtain here. In fact, I'm not going into this completely blind reader. Listen, I've read the book. You were the first person to read the book in its entirety. I was. I've enjoyed it then. I've had a few, but I don't count. No. Well, I mean, you wrote and read it at the same time. It's a very different experience.

God, I hate reading my own writing. Oh no, it's awful. Okay, okay. So you mentioned that there's a lot going on during the decade that Friends is on, and I mean, in the real world, on round world. On round world, as it were. And so yeah, I mean, it is, isn't it? It's 94 till 2004, a lot changed. A huge amount changed. Bear in mind, there was probably more technological advancement in that decade than, I mean, it's sort of exponential, it's increased more and more and more since then. But if you think about technology at the beginning of the 90s, the

beginning of the 2000s, it's massive. Bear in mind, one of the things sort of sad but interesting to write about was thinking about 9-11 and the impact that had, specifically the impact that had on network television and shows that were set in New York, although they weren't being made there. Most of the shows on NBC set in New York were filmed in LA on very nice warm stages. Was that the case for Friends? Yeah, that was filmed in LA. Very few of these shows ever did anything like in the cities they were set or on location. Frasier famously filmed one episode on location in

Seattle. It was the 100th episode. Friends went on location when they filmed the episodes that were set in London. They actually went to England and filmed there. Yeah, that would be hard to do from LA. That would be very hard to do from LA. But yeah, that would be hard to do for Mellé. That would be very hard to do for Mellé. But yeah, things like the impacts of 9-11 on television, but then the larger impact that had on the world at large when things became more inshler and more concerned, the war in Terrier and the political rhetoric around it, it was huge.

And it was largely kept out of Friends, wasn't it? Like- They made a very conscious decision. Friends did, Will and Grace did. It was signed by the finish by them, but Will and Grace was another big one where they didn't acknowledge it happening. They took shots of the towers out of the interstitial things that were used. There were lots of behind the scenes nods to it. You'll see all the actors are wearing like, the characters in the show, they're wearing like, Fire Department of New York t-shirts and caps.

And they have like I Heart New York and some of the skyline on the whiteboard in Joey and Chandler's apartment. Yeah. And they invited people who'd been affected and families of people who'd lost their lives to come and watch some of the live recordings. But they, yeah, they decided to keep it out of the show and let that show be in a New York where it didn't happen. That's kind of a decision a lot of shows had to make again in 2020, wasn't it?

Yeah, whether to make the pandemic part of your story or not, especially shows that are contemporary. Yeah, it's the right word, I think, but I hate that too. Yeah, it doesn't sound real, does it? In fact, yeah, I think we had a big conversation, I think during lockdown of did we want to see this depicted or not? Yeah, and I think we changed our minds after a year or so. I've seen a few, I think it kind of helped that TV wasn't being made. So there was a lot of stuff that could kind of go past it or do time jumps or something. I've seen shows that did handle it with varying degrees of success. The morning show actually managed to make it a part of the show and make it quite

interesting. But that sort of part of the spin off that show is incorporating real world events and how a newsroom would react to it. Yeah, the nerd one you got me into did it quite well. Oh, Mythic Quest. Yeah. Oh, their pandemic episodes were amazing and that one does make me cry a lot. Yeah. Oh, good old belly repressed trauma.

We've got a few. But then again, so yeah, and aside from like the tragedy of it all and yeah, like the bad stuff, but for our friends also just kind of stayed, as you said, timeless through not making a big deal of big societal or big technological changes. And yeah, that just kind of bled through into the real world. Yeah, it got to continue and be consistent. And it's a massive bugbear of mine. I've written about it on my sub stack. Remake type shows now reboot, sequels, that kind of thing like and just like that. The Sex and the City one is one of the worst for it. Work really hard

to go look, we're modern. Look at these modern things we've incorporated like cell phones and non binary people. I was about to say the two genders. That doesn't work. For once that doesn't work. One time that doesn't work. And I think, you know, Friends has not had a reboot. It's never going to have a reboot. It better not, no. No, it won't. The creators have been vocal about that, something I talked about in the book as well. They don't want to open that up again. It does not need it, especially now

Matthew Perry's passed away as well. Yeah. But yeah, so there's none of the sort of, not that I think you should keep modernity out of things, but there's nothing self-conscious about it. When you get to the later seasons and technology has moved on from the earlier seasons, they just don't really make fusses about it. Yeah. Do you think some of it's luck? Because I wonder sometimes, like if I read a bit of 70s sci-fi or something like that, and there's something that's dated quite badly, and I think sometimes that's just bad luck. Because this is something that did not carry on or evolve. That was just completely left.

I think some of it's luck. I think the fact that it started being made at a time where just technology wasn't such an essential part of people's lives that there was no reason to make it more of a thing in later seasons because it worked perfectly well without it and it wasn't unrealistic. It was still sort of pre people looking at their phones all the time. There is stuff in it that is dated and you know, that doesn't work well with a modern audience, but that was also shitty at the time. You know, there's fat suits and transphobia and homophobia out the zoo. So that's not so much luck as attitudes have changed. I mean, those things are present in a lot of TV shows. Yes. From that era. You can't really escape it. It's horribly

depressing. It is. It is. The 90s were a time. That they were. That they absolutely were. So going on to like the actual process of writing the book, because our audience are perhaps more interested than most in inside baseball type stuff. What was your research process like? It was very weird. Because I sort of got into a bit of a rhythm and then horrible life things happened and then got into a bit of a rhythm and then horrible life things happened. And that happened a couple of times.

Just got into the rhythm. Yeah, yeah. I literally like when I signed the contract for the book, so I'd already written an opening chapter because that was a sample that was part of the pitch. I signed the contract on the Thursday, went to celebrate my new book deal on the Saturday and sprained my ankle. And that was the sort of first week of writing was, how do I do this propped up with my current computer setup? I too find my ankle very necessary, was't I? Joanna has a ridiculously tall table. Yes. This would not be as much of an issue for most people.

It was weirdly more of an issue than it should have been. But the rhythm I got into the process of it, I started out with just so many handwritten, bullet-pointed lists. Part of that was doing a chapter breakdown for the pitch so I could sort of say these are the things I'm going to talk about in each chapter that I didn't stick to religiously. I had a list of books I wanted to read, some of which were books that were written directly about the show and some of them were more broader interesting industry ones at the time. Athy Perry's autobiography was very helpful and also just an amazing read. He's an incredible writer. Top of the Rock by Warren Littlefield, which is an oral history of the early 90s at NBC,

was really fascinating and a really helpful thing for the process. For each individual chapter, I would have a look at when Friends was on, physically in the week chapter, I would have a look at when Friends was on, like physically in the week, then I would have a look at what other shows were particularly highly rated that year, what else was around it in the schedule. Then I would go and watch that season of Friends and take a lot of notes that I would actually barely use. It just helped me get some ideas into my brain. Then I would create a watch list and watch at least a few episodes of certain other shows. So like the year I was, I watched create a watch list and watch at least a few episodes of certain other shows. I watched quite a lot of Fraser and Seinfeld as I was writing,

but things like especially making sure I went and watched the Seinfeld finale when that was on. I kind of just ate, slept and drank sitcoms for the most of the year. Just lived the 90s for a while. Yeah, very much so. Whenever I wasn't actually actively watching for the book, I also had them as my background noise shows. Things like Frasier and Will and Grace I would end up watching too much of. I feel like it's still better for you than Supernatural, but yeah. Yeah, it's better than watching 15 seasons of Supernatural, which I've done recently.

I do that. Then I would go and put together all of my notes from that and I would have a look at, okay, here are the things that happen in that season of Friends I want to talk about. Then I would go and look at things that happen in that season, that year that I want to talk about. Then I would try and smush those together so So it made sense was vaguely chronological, but also I wasn't leaping wildly from idea to idea. And then I would trawl through newspaper archives to find reviews. I also because I wanted to write about airing in the UK that meant trawling newspaper archives to find out what time it was on in the UK because well, you can look at the American primetime schedule was neatly organized on Wikipedia per year. you can look at the American primetime schedule is neatly organized on Wikipedia per year.

No one's going to have to do it for the UK. No, no, especially because UK doesn't again have that like September to May season. So it was literally looking at like TV listings in newspapers from 1997. And trying not to get distracted by 1997. I got so, so distracted doing that. But I'd also go through, you know, a lot of American review stuff. I'd look at the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly and see what was written about that season, especially when it was on. Because I really wanted this idea of like what the critical response was to it. And then eventually, I would have to stop researching because at some point research does become procrastination. And I would sit and write

a draft of a chapter and it would generally be awful. Those first drafts really were. And then I would put that draft in one window and open up a new document and retype the entire thing. By the end of that, it was sometimes legible. Nice. There were sentences and everything. And I'd taken out most of the all caps in square brackets, fix this sentence, it's a WAF. Not all of them. Some of those stayed in right until the final edit before it went to the publisher, but I usually could get most out on a first pass.

It was pretty like affirming to read that Terry Pratchett also had square brackets saying, put something funny here in his draft. It was very reassuring. I'm glad I'm not the only one. I remember mentioning doing that on the podcast actually. One of our listeners emailed or tweeted or something and said, why don't you just use the notes in the Google Docs? No, I need it there in the text confronting me. It's in a note, it's kind of off to one side, I can ignore it. I need capital letters in the text telling me what a wanker I am. Just I'll only fix things if I feel spiteful about it. I need to be slightly annoyed at my past self for calling the sentence whaff.

Love that for you. How's the therapy going? Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is this is therapy. Sorry, you are my therapist now. Did you not know? How do you feel about that? Not great. No offense. No, no, absolutely. This is a good good segue. No. So an exciting part of your research process was was a trip and a broad trip. No, wait. The New York trip wasn't research.

Oh, I confused myself with a New York. As I said, I was like, No, wait, you were talking about Gossip Girl. Okay. That was a well, that was a weird thing. So I went to New York back in April for a Buffy event. And turned in your final way after I turned in the Friends book that was all done and dusted. But I originally said, I was going to treat myself to a trip to New York when the Friends book earned out its advance. But then this opportunity came to go for a Buffy event, and I could technically call it research for the book I'm currently working on. I still owe myself another trip to New York, but it's a bit pointless going to New York to research Friends because,

as I said, it wasn't filmed there. None of it was filmed there. It's the't filmed there. None of it was filmed there. Is the fountain there? No, that's a, it's loosely based on one that's in Central Park, but that fountain does not exist in New York. It's on a soundstage in LA. I was reading, no, watching a short interview with Bibi, Lisa Kudrow, talking about the filming of that scene. The what, the fountain? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The opening fit. And she was talking about how Chandler was like the saving grace of the whole thing because they were all fucking fed up, like of the whole

thing. Like they were there for ages and they were wet and they were cold and they didn't really know each other yet or their characters yet. And they were just made to like force dance for ages and ages. But Chandler kept making these sarcastic, Matthew Perry kept making these sarcastic comments in between takes that actually had them doubled over laughing in those shots, they ended up using some of them. It's very sweet actually a lot of the stories from set, especially when they were recording through like rough times, he was kind of the guy trying to like he was very class clown and trying to keep everyone happy. The first episode, because they stopped production when 9-11 happened, and

then they went back and had lots of increased security measures and stuff. The first episode recording back was, this would have been season eight, there's a Halloween episode where Sean Penn guest stars. I can't remember the name of the episode, but that was the first one they filmed. There's Matthew Perry in a giant fuzzy bunny costume. And him and Lisa Kudrow were running around like having tickle wars whenever the cameras went on. To the point where he flinched when Sean Penn went past him terrified he was going to tickle him. The Trauma Bunny. We all need a Trauma Bunny in our lives.

Oh, Matthew Perry. Yeah. So yeah, that, I don't know whether I'm gonna leave this in the podcast, but that happened like right towards the end of your editing process, right? Yeah, technically. No, I haven't gone to the editor yet, but the manuscript was handed in, I was done with it. And that was, so the night before the news break that he passed away, I may or may not have had a couple of drinks. I'd gone home and I dosed off on the sofa. I woke up at about two in the morning and that horrible, disorientated, oh God, where am I? Also, I need to drink eight pints

of water immediately. I looked at my phone and realized, A, it's two in the morning. B, I've got a couple of messages. Who's texting me at two in the morning, and C, oh, look, breaking news. That was how I found out he passed away. I woke up the next morning and thought, oh, God, how much do I need to edit the book? I didn't do a massive edit over the book. I just added a paragraph towards the end explaining what had happened. Yeah. Something that didn't change his... It didn't change his relationship to being on the show. No, it doesn't change his legacy at all. I did also quite hungover write a sort of obituary piece for him on my sub stack as well,

which I don't recommend doing. But yeah, it was really shocking and it was really sad because I spent so much time, it's very parasocial relationship, getting to know these people while writing about them and writing about 10 years of their lives and Matthew Perry more than anyone else because I read his autobiography. And because his personal life was maybe the most relevant to filming and things. Yeah, yeah. And so yeah, it was just really upsetting. It hit me harder than like celebrity deaths normally would. Not like Terry Pratchett level because that was just on a different level, but it was emotional.

Yeah. Yeah, no, it was even for me actually. Well, also, yeah, and this thing about friends having this massive legacy and still being so popular means he's kind of just been this permanent fixture of our lives in a weird way. Yeah, it is a weird way, but it's true. Yeah, all of them are for sure. To the point where I think, you know, people took the whole Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt thing a lot more personally than you might with almost anyone else. And again, there's part of it being of its time as well. You know, they were in the public eye

when tabloid magazines had so much power. a way. Not that they're not still a thing and they don't still exist, but it's a bit more online gossipy clickbait than it was then. Then you had them actually being him coming on the show and then performing together and stuff as well, which I think added another level to it. They really were huge for sitcom stars, weren't they? For TV stars. Well, I mean, Brad Pitt was a movie star. Oh, the Friends cast. No, I mean the Friends lot. Yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, they were huge. There's a bit, and I really like sort of how I wrote this paragraph. I'm just showing it now. Okay, smug. No, but I talked about it in the book and it was an excerpt I published on my sub stack recently. James Burroughs, who is someone I talk about about a lot in the book, he's like a very, very acclaimed sitcom director and he directed The Pilot and a lot of the first season of Friends. They're all cast and they were getting ready for the show to kind of start. He flew them out to Vegas on NBC's Private Jet and sort of just took them partying and going out for nice meals and stuff for a few days. And he said to them, coming back, look, we've done that now because

you are never going to be able to do that again. You are just never going to have this level of anonymity. Like I know my sitcoms, you are going to be incredibly famous. Less than a year later, they were on the cover of Rolling Stone. You'd have individuals from sitcoms who became very big names like Jerry Sanford and Larry David obviously became household names in a variety of different ways. Being you from I Love Lucy. Yeah, very much so.

I forgot the name. Lucy. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I don't think anyone else and there was this lightning in a bottle cast. There was this show focused on 20 somethings who were all absolutely stunning. I don't like to say anything nice about Ross, but David Schwimmer is very pretty, especially in those early episodes. Yeah, I guess so. I go through phases of which front I have a crush on.

That's fair. It's hard now in the early seasons because they're so young. They are so young. Matthew Perry does still get on top for me. Intellectually, I definitely always have the biggest crush on Mashie Perry. I do remember being 11 or 12, maybe a bit younger, and realizing for the first time that one of them was the most handsome and it was Joey. And I was like, Oh, yeah, I'm discovering crushes.

I have a big soft spot for Matt LeBlanc as well for being very willing to sort of take the piss out of his time on Friends. He did episodes, which is a really great show. As you created by David Crane and Jeffrey Clarke, David Crane being one of the creators of Friends and his partner Jeffrey Carrick and he plays himself. He plays himself as it was a really good show. It's got Tamsin Greg and Steve Merchant in it. So that's already me. So yeah, but Matt LeBlanc just being willing to spend I think it was six years it was on playing himself but playing himself as an entitled asshole. Like just the worst human being. I know it was a real like redemption arc after the Joey spin-off, though, wasn't it? Oh, the Joey spin-off. The spin-off was so bad that Kevin Bright, who worked with Conan

Kaufman, was the executive producer and co-ran Friends for 10 years, then did the Joey spin-off and then never works in television again. Oh my god. He genuinely went, no, done with that, out of the industry. He kicked himself out. Oh yeah, no, done with that, out of the industry. Oh, he kicked himself out. Oh yeah, yeah, no, he left television. This cursed fox. I will, I will complete transparency now.

I watched every episode of Friends, quite a lot of them more than once. I forgot to mention in that research process, I also made sure I had the entire show on DVD and any episodes that had DVD commentary. I also made sure I watched those. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I watched a lot of television. You've made me tired saying that. I didn't watch all of Joey. I watched some some bits of it on YouTube. I watched quite a lot of Joey as it came out.

Oh yeah, I remember watching the first season when it aired. There wasn't a lot on Tallyberg's now. No. And it was nice to see Martin LeBlanc like, Hey, I know him. It was on Channel five in the UK Channel four didn't even get the rights to it. Yeah, amazing. Which kind of should have because it did so badly Channel four didn't want the rights to it. This was, you know, I think it might have ended up on Sky first because Sky sort of did have friends for Oh, no, sorry, I'm missing memory now. Four had gone back to having the digital rights to friends by the

time it ended because they had E4. But yeah, they didn't bother trying to get Joey on Channel 5. For non-English listeners, Channel 5 isn't where you want to end up. Our equivalent of network television is terrestrial. So BBC one and two, ITV, channel four, channel five. I say channel five is the equivalent of Fox in its youngest days or the UPN right before it fell apart. If you're an American listener. Yeah, there was some fun stuff on that. I don't even know if it still exists. It does still exist. Okay, I recently got live television again for the first time. For somebody who's a massive TV nerd, I haven't had live television for about 10 years. Because I've just lived

in places where it was too awkward to plug in a freeview box and I realized it was easier to just watch everything on like streaming and catch up. Yeah, I don't. I've got a TV license because I watch iPlayer. Oh yeah, I've always had a TV license. I haven't plugged in the aerial since we moved here like eight years ago No, but I've got Sky now so I've got Life Telly again Oh That's very exciting

I miss fancy remote It's very, it's got games on it Anyway, sorry I've derailed us what are we talking about? Sorry Netflix has games now, I'm sorry yes So now I thought this would have been a better segue five minutes ago, but talking of the best looking friend, I'm going to do a quick fire round at you with such annoying questions as who is the best friend? Rachel.

Definitely Rachel. Okay. Why? I think her story arc is the most interesting. You know, she goes from this spoiled pampered person who can't go a day without a credit card to not just like a decent career in the fashion industry. But yeah, fuck it, I'll raise this baby by myself. Okay, I'll go away. What? I love it. I think she's a really great bit of character growth. And like, I just Jennifer Aniston is so beautiful. Worst friend.

Oh, Ross. Yeah. Just do you want to explain? No, I think the show explains it pretty well. Um, although I honourable mentioned to Phoebe who is also just a screaming asshole for a lot of the show. I mean, I love her. I can't remember any of the bits where she's a dickhead. I'm sure you're right. She's just weird and mean about things. But you know, I think she best and worst is also very, very relative terms because I like all of them. And I think it's all interesting writing. And Ross is objectively the worst.

Yeah. Best side character. Oh, Janice. Oh, yes. I just I think she's so fun. And I think she managed to, right until the sort of one last cameo she did, I think she managed to avoid flanderization very well. They always managed to give like a little bit of depth and funniness to her character as a side bit. Yeah, it's like they make the funny thing with her flanderization always from the start, wasn't it? But then you get reminded that it's Chandler who's being the dick.

Yeah, and like she's a very human character. Yeah. I just like that. I forgot to put this in the list, but best celebrity cameo? Oh, Bruce Willis. Okay, yeah. I love it so much because he ended up on the show because he lost a bet with Matthew Perry. Yes, that's right. Yeah. And then he's completely willing to be ridiculous and cry for Elsmond and sing Love Machine to himself in the mirror and then donated his whole appearance for his charity.

Oh, what a day. Tom Selleck surely gets an honourable, is he a cameo at this point? Yeah, he's not a cameo. He was a recurring, I think technically the term is recurring. He was great on it. I mean, what a mustache. Oh, what a mustache. Also, one detail I really like. So in the end of, God, I'm forgetting now. I think it was end of season, when Chandler proposes to Monica, so end of season six. I believe it's season six. I'm sure someone correct me if I'm wrong. I should know. They wanted to bring Tom Selleck in and kind of do this like a slightly love triangle, something that gets

in the way of Monica and Chandler getting engaged stuff. Tom Selleck said, I mean, I'll come back, I'll play Rachael again, but I want to see the script first and I don't want to be a dick and I don't want to get in the way of their relationship because I like what you guys have done with the two of them. And so he does come back in a very nice way. CHARLEYY That's cute. So they were trying to do more of like the Phoebe later on with David. NICOLA Yeah, they actually they planned on having this Phoebe, Monica standing there with two guys on one knee and they basically did exactly that with Phoebe in a later season. So they got to still use it.

CHARLEYY Make more sense. NICOLA Which speaking of, I've seen this less celebrity cameo and it was more, with Phoebe in a later season. So they got to still use it. Make more sense. Which speaking of I've seen is less celebrity cameo and it was more he auditioned for Joey didn't get the role and then came back as a recurring guest star but David Hanker's area. I loved him. Loved him always delighted. Always delighted when Hanker's area turns up in everything actually. Yeah. I mean, I love Paul Rudd, but I was rooting for. I was a little bit as well. Okay, best season.

Oh, tricky. But I think I'm going to go with five. Okay. What happened? I can't remember what happened with five. Give me your own mark. If I'm remembering right, and again, I wrote this book, but it's been a while since I've read the book slash Watch Friends. Season four ended with London with Take the Rachel rather than Take the Emily. Season five is the one that ends in Vegas. Again, if I'm remembering correctly. Season five, it opens with Rachel, oh, I'm still in love with Ross and I should try and get back with him. That last maybe two episodes before she goes, this is so dumb and you're trying to sort things out with your wife who you really screwed

up with. No, we should not be doing this. Then Ross and Rachel is just off the table for the rest of the season. It comes up at the end in Vegas because they get married while drunk, but it's off the table. This is after two and a half seasons of back and forth. It's really nice that they put that to one side. Instead, the big focus for the season is Channah and Monica and their secret relationship and then it coming out into the open. I think the Channah and Monica sneaking around and everyone finding out and then making everyone else find out is just a really fun arc. Yeah, they didn't do the comedy of Iris thing too clumsily. No, they did it well. And I think it's also just the show has like hit its stride so far.

Season five is kind of amazing. Like a lot of shows just don't get to last that long. So I think it really, although saying that I may be talking about season four rather than season five. And again, I'd need to go double check the numbers right? Don't even know if we'll have checked by the time this goes out. Absolutely. I definitely will have done. I won't forget this conversation as soon as it ends. You can you can kind of tell everyone's comfortable with each other but no one's bored yet.

Best episode? Oh, that's really difficult. I mean, because I've now just talked about it, the one where everyone finds out is a very good episode. And that is very comedy of errors, very, very chasing each other into little rooms. But if not that then I'd say the pilot as I said earlier, I think it's a really perfect pilot. Every character gets... Do you remember watching the pilot? No, you were born in 92.

I did not watch the pilot live. I would have been three when I had in the UK. We didn't see the pilot first when I watched Friends. I sort of fell into watching it on reruns. And then I didn't I didn't the only episodes I watched live were in the final season. Yeah, same. Yeah, any younger generations listening to this podcast should know that we couldn't just go back and start from the beginning. Yeah, it's not like it was on Netflix or something. I just had to wait for the beginning to come around on Channel 4. Yeah, I don't even know if it was available on video by that point. But it's not something you

could afford as a kid. It did get a VHS release in the States. I don't remember if it did in the UK now. I know it got a DVD release in the UK eventually. I did have videos for it. I can't remember if they were out by the time, like I'd started watching on telly. Because I did have a couple of friends videos eventually. Yeah, I either had video. No, I had DVDs. I had some friends DVDs, I think. I know I had DVDs. I had some friends DVDs, I think. Anyway, best other sitcom of the era we're covering?

And this is just personal preference, but I would say Frasier, because I love it deeply. And it's clever and funny. Peri-girl-punters roles is one of the greatest gifts to humanity at all time. Yeah. And an honourable mention to Will and Grace because I know it's very cringy looking back on it now, but it was kind of groundbreaking. It was cool. And it had Megan Mullally in it. Yes, who we adore. Who we do deeply adore.

Right, so to wrap up Joanna, what's next? I accidentally foreshadowed with my what the fuck were you doing in New York section. So the book I'm currently working on which is actually due in in two months and has more than two months of work left to go on it so that's going great. American teen dramas from Sunnydale to Riverdale. So it's a history of teen dramas on American television. As the title implies, I start at Buffy and I end up with Riverdale. It's less focused on one thing than Friends. I go across a few different networks, although I'm more focused on one of them. Obviously, I talk about a lot of different shows, more than a roof and just in the chapter listing because I can't help myself. It turns out it was also much

bigger scope. Couldn't write it in the same amount of time, but there we go. That will hopefully, fingers crossed and provided I don't go too far over deadline, be out next year through Penance Old Books. Cool. Cool. For the time being, listeners should look at your book, which is probably out now. Probably out now. I love the confidence we've got in this. This lack of confidence is just to do with-

I'm going to make you a social media pack. We're probably out now. I'm selfish. Just to clarify to listeners, it's just I don't know how much longer things will take at the printers before everything gets- You can definitely pre-order it now. You can definitely pre-order. Yeah, you can order slash pre-order Friends in the Golden Age of Sitcom now from lots of good retailers. can order slash pre-order Friends in the Golden Age of Sitcom now from lots of good retailers. We'll pop a couple of links in the show notes. As plugged a few times, you can also follow me on Substack, which I've been a bit lax with

this year, but I do like to post updates out there and thoughts about the television I'm watching. Listen to the truth, I'll make you frat. I'll talk about the television I'm watching. listen to the true Shemekki Frow I talk about television and watching her. Especially if you're on the Patreon so you get the uncut thing because Joanna doesn't know how much I cut out of the soft open. No, I never hear the edited soft open. I assume you cut most of it because I don't shut up. I mean, neither of us do. Quite a lot of it does need to go just for... Otherwise the episodes would be two hours long and the first 40 minutes would not have

anything to do with Discworld. But basically, I don't need to watch telly because Joanna does it for me and tells me what happened. Yeah, I am Francine's television. Yeah, okay. I think that'll do us for today. Yeah. We will be back with some Discworld stuff soon. We're very sorry that we haven't. There's been stuff. There's been lots of stuff. I

moved house to run a big house. I had some family stuff that meant I've been back and forth from Jersey a lot. We've got convention coming up this weekend. That's exciting in Birmingham, sunny, but actually sunny Birmingham that looks the forecast. Yeah, it looks like we're Birmingham, sunny, but actually sunny Birmingham that looks the forecast. Yeah, it looks like we're yeah, so it's that if you're gonna be there. Yes, if you if I'm not business coming out before the convention. Yeah, no, I want to get this out on Wednesday.

Cool. Amazing. Yeah, if you are going to be in Birmingham, come and see us. I mean, if you're gonna be in Birmingham at the convention, like if you're not there for the convention, maybe don't come all the way to the Hilton just to see us. It'd be weird. Just wait through the window. It's fine. Don't worry about it. Yeah. Totally normal. Absolutely nothing to worry about. We're going to have an episode recorded live at the convention for your lucky years. We will have some other bonus stuff out hopefully, but we'll be back properly in September with Dodger. We're back in the meantime with all sorts of bonus nonsense. Please buy my book or not being such about it. Buy my book. I work very hard on it. Tell other people

about my book and encourage them to buy it. Yeah. Get into Friends if you're not. Even if you're not that into Friends, I think it's still an interesting read. I think it's an interesting 10 years that tells us a lot about what happened with television more recently. Oh, oh, are you saying it has some salient points for modern life? I think it might do. Oh, all right. But I wouldn't promise. I never promised anything about salient points for modern life. In the meantime, dear listeners, you can of course join our Discord. There's a link down

below. Follow us on Instagram at The Truth Show, Make You Fret, some Twitter and Blue Sky at Make You Fret Pod on Facebook at The Truth Show, Make Youfret. Join us on Reddit at r slash ttsnyf, email us your thoughts, queries, console, snacks and friends references. The TrueShelf Makeyfretpod at gmail.com and support us financially. Go to patreon.com and follow us at the TrueShelf Makeyfret where you can exchange your hard-earned pennies for all sorts of bonus nonsense. Please do that just in case my book doesn't sell. Until next time, dear listener, don't let us detain you.