A reboot should factor in Time’s changes for the viewers

Lucie McInerney, The Independent

It all began with three simple words: “Big news coming…”

The next thing you know, all hell breaks loose — the sixth Friend, Matthew Perry, finally joins Instagram (I know — you had been waiting with bated breath) and the story breaks that all the Friends have signed up for an hour-long reunion special.  Reboots have been really popular over the last few years. In cinemas you can revel in Greta Gerwig’s truly excellent re-visiting of Little Women or submit yourself to 101 minutes of torture by enduring Dolittle, showing the truly breathtaking scale of how well or how spectacularly badly a remake can go.

It says a lot about the extent to which Friends is rooted in people’s affections that they can’t let it go and want it to come back in any way possible, be it an hour-long special on HBO Max or just a photo of the gang having dinner on Instagram.

Maybe it reminds us of what seems like a simpler time, when US presidents merely lied about what they did with interns or whether or not there actually were any WMDs. The decade of Friends covered everything from the world’s introduction to Riverdance to the new millennium and, of course, 9/11.

So it could be argued that people wanting Friends back so badly is part of a bigger yearning for that supposed simpler pre-9/11 life.

What is it about nostalgia? It can be an overwhelming sensation — the results of which can be downright dangerous, particularly in the field of entertainment. Just look at the state of the Fame, Footloose and Point Break remakes. We enjoyed all of these movies so much when they first came out, and grew to love them all the more as time passed since their release, that they occupy a special, untouchable place in our hearts. Any attempt to remake them, to better them, is really just doomed to fail.

The last time a new episode of Friends debuted on television, George W Bush was president of the United States, Tony Blair was still prime minister and the United Kingdom was still very much in Europe. The world has moved on. A lot. And yet, Friends only finished 16 years ago.

Surely there should be some kind of tacitly-agreed amount of time before anyone can consider a remake of anything? (There could be special dispensations, but I anticipate this being a rigorous process.)

The ironic thing about my frustration with the notion of reboots is that I will, without fail, turn on an episode of Friends when at home alone and keen for the company of a TV programme in the background. I know all the jokes, all the plot “twists” and special guest stars — but it’s familiar and happy and downright comforting. Though let’s be honest, the last couple of seasons weren’t great. Joey and Rachel – an item? What even was that??

The danger of remaking a show like Friends is that they literally rehash what was done previously and fail to take in that the world has moved on and the same old jokes just don’t cut it anymore. And the lives of six friends in their forties, with kids and responsibilities who don’t all live in the same apartment building, means a very different dynamic to the one that just about sustained ten seasons the first time round.

The show’s creators know this as well — at a panel event to mark the show’s 25th anniversary in September, executive producer Marta Kauffman said, “We will not be doing a reunion show, we will not be doing a reboot. The show was about that time in life when friends are your family,” adding that life changes when your family becomes your family.

Friends is now family for many of us: we grew up watching it, we got jobs and started careers re-watching it, we were so invested in the characters and what would become of them, that we cannot but be let down by how it’s brought back to life.