4. Friends Has More Fun Outside New York
Ross wedding in London. Chandler and Ross trip to Vermont, in which Ross gets high on maple candy. The One in Barbados. Friends made the most of every single time they had the opportunity to escape New York for an episode or two, and they often became some of the most memorable times. In comparison, How I Met Your Mother largely has, like Lily, a within-10-stops-of-Brooklyn comfort zone. Despite Marshall and Robins respective homes in Minnesota and Canada, most of our glimpses outside New York are stereotypical and undeveloped, unavoidable when so many clichéd jokes about Canada in particular are made. When theres a sports bar to keep both characters happy right in New York, why develop their associations with home any further? Sure, the friends trip to London is fairly stereotypical, especially in Chandler and Joeys open-top bus trip, but they allow storylines to develop in these exciting and different places instead of just allowing the places to occasionally be part of the storyline.