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[Odler]

http://www.jeanlouie.com/

May 9, 2004

The Friends are gone. Like Ellen de Generis put it: ?They will be missed on Thursday nights; we will have to catch up with them, at 3, 5, and 11 every day.?

Why did we like them? For the very reasons sitcoms are liked: because they are funny, and because we identify with one character. Which of the Friends are you? I am Ross.

Ross, the nerd, can never understand why people around him act differently than the "good" characters in the books, or in the movies. Why would anyone think and act below the guidelines of a code of sincerity and generosity? Ross does not see beyond the surface of human nature; he could not see a lesbian in his first wife, when all the indications were clear. He is not an idiot, but like him, I would not expect the unexpected.

Like Ross, I am completely, totally in love with Rachel. She is cute, wears short skirts, she sounds spontaneous, naïve, innocent, and exudates the need to be protected. It does not cross Ross? mind that Rachel is probably the most manipulating, self-centered creature who knows the right button to push to have him, once again, at her knees.

In my life, I got attached to three sitcoms. All three answered questions to which I could not find answers anywhere else.

The Cosby Show, in the 80s, showed me the path to my social future as a black person in America. Raised in the Caribbean, in an intellectually universalist Euro-centrist society, I came to America, and found myself pigeonholed as a black person.

Suddenly, I was no longer ?allowed? to like some actors, singers, genres, and people. I was to act black. Cosby solved the problem for me. The show told me where to live, what to do, what to become, in terms of being accepted by myself, by whom I look like, and by whom I must live with. Thanks Cosby.

In the 90s, Seinfeld showed me how to near 30, be single, date the world, and feel ectasic about it. I felt like Jerry. Why, in the world, every woman has something wrong with her? Why, in the name of God, can?t we just blend three or four of them and build a good one?

Finally, Friends came. I liked the free-spirited, let?s-live-life-while-we-can attitude of the bunch. Friends advocates we can act as retarded and not really be one. Look at Phoebe, at the beginning of the show, she was a near-homeless hoodlum who talked of the time she stabbed a cop (?He stabbed me first?); by the end, she was the most stable of all.

Friends, like Sex in the City, like Will and Grace, displayed a life style, and was not shy about it.

Goodbye Ross and Rachel. Goodbye Friends.

Which of the Friends are you?

(OdlerRobert Jeanlouie, Sunday, May 9, 2004)