Friends Indeed
As TV's hottest show starts its second season Thursday, here's a look behind the scenes.
By Gayle Jo Carter
It's chilly in cavernous Stage 24 at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, Cailif. But under the hot lights where Friends is taping its first show of the season--this Thursday's epiode--the six cast members are trying not to let you see them sweat. Makeup people dab their faces between scenes.
Onstage, Ross--the hunky-dory one played by David Schwimmer, if you haven't been keeping track--and a woman (we're not saying who) arrive at a gathering of Friends. "Sorry we're late," Ross deadpans. "There was kissing." The audience laughs.
"Let's try it again with the other line!" yells an assistant director.
Take 2: Ross and a woman arrive at a gathering of Friends. "Sorry we're late," Ross deadpans. "There was touching." The audience roars; there's even some applause.
"Cut. It's a take. Movin' on."
And so it went for nearly five hours. TV's hottest sitcom is sweating the details: This season, there's more at stake than 23 minutes of yuks. Most of the summer, Friends has been No. 1 in reruns, doing numbers not seen for a new comedy since Roseanne in 1988, according to Variety, the show-biz bible. The show's theme son, I'll Be There For You, was No. 1 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 radio airplay chart. And Friends, an album of music played on the show, is out next week.
Success like that makes TV execs see stars--and rejigger prime-time lineups. This season, Friends moves from last year's cushy post-Seinfeld/pre-ER 9:30 slot. Now the pressure's really on. NBC is banking on Friends to anchor its powerhouse Thursday lineup, but the cast wonders whether enough people will tune in at 8--or remember to set their VCRs. And there's some question whether the racy dialogue and situations will play well that early. "When innuendoes occut, it's something adults will laugh at and kids aren't going to understand," says Matthew Perry, who plays the wisecracking Chandler.
Appealing characters and snappy writing have gotton Friends this far. Things haven't reached the Sam-and-Diane (of Cheers) level, but a good portion of young, hip America is dying to know where Ross' romantic life is headed. To comlicate matters, his TV ex-wife, a lesbian, just had their baby.
Sound more like a soap opera than a sitcom? Well, you had to be there--like the 31 million people who were there for May's cliffhanger. Friends now is the top show among the demographically correct 18-49 audience, and even draws 2 million teens a week. To them, Friends' world must seem like heaven on earth. Some critics mock the show for its let's-sit-around-and-drink-coffee ambience, lack of career development, and apartments no slacker could afford. Too bad. Friends is the first show to tap the twentysomething world for laughs without being laughed off the stage.
Lisa Kudrow, who did some scriptwriting pre-Friends, defends the absence of a "huge premise." She notes that Cheers, whose slackers idled in a bar instead of a coffeehouse, also had no overriding theme. Both shows are "about people and what happens to them. I never felt you needed anything more than that."
The day after the taping, Schwimmer and Friends are back on Stage 24 to rehearse next week's episode. (Each is titled simply "The One With..." This is "The One With the Breast Milk.") With his sensitive-guy sexiness, Schwimmer has been called the show's breakout star. He says of the "sensitive" label: "I'm cool with that. I have high ideals when it comes to relationships and marrigae. My parents are still together, which is a miracle for my generation. Happily married. And a great family life."
At the moment, though, he seems anything but the sensitive male.