A dirty job so HERE I AM!!
Of the original six only one (by some way the least repellent, I always felt) has ended up w.someone outside the original six – that boringly nice and blah guy who in this ep talked her OUT of her proposed comedy namechange (a namechange which wz funny cz of Kudrow’s timing and sheer glee). It’s telling that Phoebe’s strand here was the least meh (though its closure wz yuck). OK Rachel wz dumped by Ralph Lauren and rejected by Gucci, but is just abt to start dating Bloomingdales Paris ‘ so how’s that a change? The others all have their pathologies intact, and unexamined as such (well, I guess at a stretch you could argue that Joey’s endshot phonecall w.the eight-year-old girl was a subterranean critique of the roots of his sexuality…) Longrunning series endings on TV are hard, bcz they have to acknowledge a reality outside the Shaping McGuffin (Buffy’s wz of course exemplary ‘ the entire final series devoted to exploration of how the characters realise, react to and transform the McGuffin). The underlying engine of Friends wz basically ‘Afraid of being nothing much yrself? = it’s OK to laugh at outsiders as scary weirdos’ ‘ and within this fairly hateful ambit it was always well-written. But the ‘hasn’t been yr month or even yr year’ rang more and more hollow as their upscale comfort-bubble grew ever more cushioned. Seinfeld w.Hugs and Learning, to spell it out ‘ and these guys had several years to build on the lesson of how Seinfeld ended. OK bored now.