Stephanie Bourbon: Why FRIENDS Worked So Well We Still Love It

LB’S NOTE: One of our fave TV writers-illustrators-screenwriters-vloggers, Stephanie Bourbon, talks about her “favorite show, ever” and why it still works so well.


FRIENDS — Pictured: (l-r) Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay, Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing, Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green, David Schwimmer as Ross Geller, Courteney Cox as Monica Geller, Matt Le Blanc as Joey Tribbiani — Photo by: David Bjerke/NBCU Photo Bank

by Stephanie Bourbon

Today I’m talking about my favorite show, ever, in the history of shows, and there are a lot of great TV shows out there but this one is special, to me, and about a billion others.

Yes, I’m talking about FRIENDS

Why did it work so well?

Why do we still love it?

What did they do differently?

I’ll tell you the first thing that they did was they created real characters and every single thing without exception that happened in that show was based on character.

There were jokes, don’t get me wrong but mostly there was character. Chandler was the jokester and he made a lot of “jokes” but it was WHO he was as a person.

Monica didn’t joke. Rachel didn’t joke. Ross didn’t joke. Phoebe didn’t joke. Joey didn’t joke. They were just themselves and thus they were funny.

It’s funny because they were real people repeating the same mistakes over and over hoping for a different outcome. Some say this is crazy and others say this is the definition of comedy.

The writers of this show got it right every time. Even the bad episodes were great. Really, there were no bad ones, but some of the episodes stood out.

Recently watching the reunion special on HBO Max I learned that millions loved episodes that I didn’t love as much and many loved the ones I also loved. But, really…I love them all.

Let’s break it down. 

This is your cast….

Read it all at stephaniebourbon.com

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