Friends obviously has a lot of issues, which are very obvious in hindsight and probably should have been obvious at the time too, and yes the characters are caricatures that can be hard to empathise with - but none of that is really the point for me, as a sitcom based around character-driven gag-writing itās pretty untouchable (not seen Seinfeld though), it sets the standard for that kind of line-line-punchline format, and it does it consistently for ten years.
Iāve said before, but all these American network studio sitcoms are basically the same but reskinned - Friends, Frasier, BBT, whatever. Swap out the references and the setting and the character quirks and itās the same muscle and skeletons underneath, and itās hard to argue with the fact that Friends did it all the best.
