Today marks the ten year anniversary of the first day we all woke up without Friends in our lives. On May 6th 2004, the most enduring sit-com in the history of television screened its last ever episode (to date, anyway, despite the annual clamour for its stars to stop trying to make movies, or moonlighting in other inferior TV shows) and left a gaping hole in the schedule that was almost too great for even The Big Bang Theory to fill (in the Uk at least.) That Friends continues to be such an enduring presence and cultural phenomenon is testament to just how important it was to its fans: it was more than just a TV show, which is precisely why the re-runs, which run multiples times a day and fill thousands of scheduled TV hours are so veraciously watched even a decade on, and with very little chance that every single one of them hasn't been watched before. Without realising it, we all made Friends the epi-centre of our collective universe: Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Monica, Chandler and Phoebe became as important to us as our real friends, and far more reliable in some cases, and with every essential lesson the show's wisdom imparted on us, it became eminently clear that the show, which its unprecedented popularity, was basically the I Ching for an entire generation. And most importantly, we continue to live by the rules and lessons that the show left with us...
25. The Dorks Really Can Get The Girls
Friends was basically a lesson for every socially awkward, gawky dweeb with a bad hair-cut, questionable taste in fashion and painful senses of humour that no matter how desperate things might initially seem, you could well be an Ugly Duckling struggling to find your true handsome form. And when you do, you might have something incredible waiting for you... And even better, they'll probably be just as dorky as you under the pretty surface. Oh, and if you're a fat child, convinced that nobody will ever love you, bear in mind that you might well turn out pretty well when you grow up a bit...
