NAME: Friends
AGE: 10 years
NATIONALITY: American
CLAIM TO FAME: Most famous comedy serial on television coming to an end.

IT’S all over for Ross, Chandler, Rachel, Phoebe, Joey and Monica. The adventures of Central Perk and all the misgivings of being twenty something in New York have finally come to an end.

Friends, the hit comedy serial that has a following of millions in numerous countries around the world, finally concluded this Thursday, bringing to an end one of the most popular comedy serials of this generation. And the critics loved it too. For during its ten years on air, Friends was nominated for no less than 55 Emmy Awards, including six for Outstanding Comedy Series, an honour it eventually grabbed in its last season. But, if one takes into account the fact that, for the past nine seasons, the show was in the Top Ten list, one wonders, why the honour hadn’t come their way earlier?

The series focused on the friendship of three men and three women who share their life’s experiences and its joys (sometimes sorrows) with each other, either at their homes or at the sofa at Central Perk. The six included Monica, a chef with an obsession for neatness and order in her life. She is married to Chandler, a dry wit who is never at a loss for words. Then there’s Joey, a womanizing actor and Rachel, Monica’s best friend from high school. By the way, Rachel was once married to Monica’s hapless brother Ross, a paleontology professor who has been divorced three times. And lets not forget Monica’s ex-roommate, Phoebe, an eternally optimistic folk singer and massage therapist.

Throughout its running, the show never had any one, singular lead. And maybe that was its secret recipe. For Friends eventually came to represent a whole generation of young people, struggling to make it big in their lives and at the same time, being there with each other through and through. All the six equally represented the essence of being ‘stuck in second gear’, as the title song indicated.

However, now that the series has come to a close, the six have finally decided to head their separate ways. But Friends’ farewell may also have signalled the end of a great TV genre. Critics point out that with the show’s end, and the conclusion of Fraiser as well as The Drew Carey Show, comedy may well be on the way out. Television networks in the US are now in a fix. No new ideas seem to be flowing and nothing new is on the horizon. It may well be that we’ll be relegated to a whole new age of soap operas, dramas and reality shows.

Still, we can always take comfort from the fact that there’ll always be CDs and DVDs of Friends around for our humour hungry souls. Maybe, our Friends aren’t gone after all! — M. Ali