ok, so i worked last night and didn't get to see the friends finale. i taped it and avoided all television when i got home so the news and late nite shows would not ruin anything for me. i just watched it and...boy am i disappointed.

i know finales are hard to do right...and i know friends has not been quite as funny as it was in the beginning...but i really expected more. i watched the show every week for the first 3 seasons until it started losing steam around the 4th. i wasn't watching regularly anymore but i'd catch it on occasion and it just didn't have 'it'. then, sometime between the last season and the one before that it slowly started getting new life. last season was really good which gave me hope for the final season and when this season started there was a lot of potential. so what happened?

its like they were smothered by the fact that they were ending. and then, when it did end, nothing was different. yeah, yeah, yeah, chandler and monica "had" twins and moved out of the city. its not like they died, for god's sake! they'll still see their friends. as for the other friends...well, nothing. a whole big bunch of nothing. the writers milked the ross/rachel thing until the very last second and what a let down that was. a much better ending would have been for rachel to get on the plane after telling ross that she does love him but can't make a decision like that on the spur of the moment. an open ended finale with the two would have been much better since their whole storyline history was open ended.

what happened to the other characters? um...nothing. joey is still dumb and hungry, only in his early thirties its just not cute. phoebe is still an idiot savant. but that's just it...they just never developed an ending for these two. there role in the final episode was aiding in the finalities (of which there were none) of the other friends.

i guess we can't all have endings like cheers or the golden girls. real endings with real guts. this episode was so weak...it might have been written by david schwimmer's "ross".

a final edit
[This message was edited Fri May 7 8:08:24 2004 by SassyBritches]

It should have ended with Lisa Kudrow waking up next to Mira Sorvino..."Oh my God, Romy...I totally just had the weirdest dream that I lived in New York City...it's weird because it went on for like years, but I've only been asleep a few hours...let's fold scarves!"

i so would have enjoyed that more than what they gave!

See, I was quite pleased with this final Episode. I've watched Friends the whole way through and actually think seasons 4-6 were the strongest. Season 5 contains some of my favorite episodes of any comedy ever. I thought this season was quite bland though and it was a good time to end it.

I found it fitting to keep this episode like the other 10 years. No bizarro twists. Things fitting nicely together. I feel if Ross and Rachel would've been left open-ended, the world would've cried foul.

There wasn't much closure with Phoebe and that was too bad, but I loved her bursting into song and driving the cab.

As for Joey, we all know he's keeping on in his new show. I think it would've been fitting to at least mention that in this final Friends episode.

My favorite moments actually came between Joey and Chandler as they were alone in the apartment after the destruction of the foosball table.

I think the ending worked so well with me cos it reminded me of things from my past. As I've spiraled closer to 30, I moved out of a house I'd lived in with 5 people for years and then bought a house. I've watched friends have kids, marry and move out to the suburbs. I've had plenty of awkward and touching "goodbyes." While these people are still in my life, it's a MUCH different way than when we were all single, young, crazy and living within a few miles of each other in Uptown. It's all been changes that are part of life and were needed, but they drastically altered what my daily life was about.

I think that's why the little things from this episode like leaving the keys to the apartment worked so well for me. It was a little statement that represented the end of an era for the Friends. No big drama was needed, for me, to drive this point home.

Anyways, I've been talking about this all day so I'd better stop now!