Friends was a game changer for sitcoms in the 90s. After the series was released, many sitcoms attempted to become the next incarnation by focusing on a group of friends and the problems that they faced daily (shows like The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother are good examples). However, while some of them are better in some aspects, leading to having a pretty big fanbase, none of them will be as popular nor they'll have as much impact as Friends did when it came out. One of the things that made the show so popular was the fact that in every episode of the series they faced different problems that many of us faced when we were that age. It was really nice to see a series that showed normal people having different problems. In a way, it proved that we weren't alone in life and with enough patience and hard work we could achieve our dreams. However, it was just a show in the end, and soon we learned that life wasn't easy. Granted some things are really good when you're on your early 20's, but most of it it's just hard work as you try to become a much more responsible adult. And while the show sometimes showed them facing real problems, it wasn't in a very realistic way. Here are 7 examples of it.
7. Jobs Don't Work That Way
One of the main plot points in the series was that some of them tried to get new jobs to maintain themselves (this one was actually a major point during the first season, especially in Rachel's case) while the rest of them tried to survive in their current works. In the later seasons of the show it proved that with enough hard work and dedication, you can achieve anything you wanted, you've just got to be patient and success will come to you someday. While the show gave proper escalation when it comes to how they climb up the ladder to success, it was still fairly unrealistic. One big example was with Chandler's work; in one of the seasons he was offered a big promotion, but for some contrived reason he decided to decline the offer. Naturally, they offered more and more money until he finally accepted, to the displeasure of his "friends." In real life however, the second he rejected the offer he would have been fired. At the best of cases, they just erase his name off the list of people who could do the job and they look for somebody else. But that's not the only time Friends have been unrealistic when it comes to jobs. In another episode, Monica became a food critic and was very harsh to a chef. Of course, the owner of the restaurant decided to hire her as their new chef. Because that's something that happens every day, isn't it? I still remember the day in which I did a bad review on a TV show so the executives of the network made me the new executive producer. If I tried to put in this article every single time the show was ridiculously unrealistic when it came to jobs this article would be 10,000,000 words long. So let's just say that despite that having one or 2 realistic moments when it comes to how works are (to be fair, Rachel's case was very well handled-except when she was fired for being in a job interview and she doing nothing about it) most of the times it was completely BS.