Friends and the Golden Age of the Sitcom

Title: Friends and the Golden Age of the Sitcom

Author: Joanna Hagan

Publication date: November 30, 2024

Publisher: White Owl

Genre: Nonfiction

Source: Net Galley

My Review:

When I saw Friends and the couch on the cover of this book, I immediately wanted to read it. I had never heard of Joanna Hagan, but I wanted to hear more about Friends and was curious about Friends and the Golden Age of the Sitcom.

"...sitcoms are a form of storytelling like no other. They're funny-or at least they're supposed to be."

I had not heard of many of the sitcoms mentioned in the book. While the book is a deep dive into each season of Friends, it's also a wealth of information about the sitcoms that came out during the same time frame (late 90s early 2000s) that Friends ran. 

Some of the shows that I did recognize and got plenty of space in this book were: Will and Grace, Scrubs, ER, CSI: Miami, Everybody Love's Raymond, Seinfeld, ER, Frasier, The Drew Carey Show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and CSI.

I was surprised by such an in-depth exploration of Friends that Courteney Cox's name was spelled wrong throughout the book. 

I can't tell if the author loved or hated Friends. I would think to dedicate a book to it, she would enjoy it, but she kept harping on how it all looks different through a modern lens. Friends is one of the few sitcoms mentioned in the book that is still loved and easily accessible today, and another generation has risen up and loves it as much as the original audience did (and still does). 

Pictures are included at the very end of the book. It would have served the book better had the images been in the story, not at the end. Also, while the author puts resources at the end, it is very generic, and would be impossible to say where she got her "specific" information from. For example, she gives a lot of statistics throughout the book, but her resources are not mentioned by chapter, she lists books, newspapers, magazines, and websites used, but no articles on the websites, which is a lazy way to back up your research.

I will say, the nostalgia I felt while watching Friends, especially the final season, I felt all over again reliving the moments that were shared in the book. While I didn't care about a lot of information shared in the book, I did appreciate and enjoy most of what was shared about Friends.

Thank you to Net Galley for the opportunity to read this book. I was not required to provide a positive review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

★★★/5

Synopsis (Goodreads):  

Friends ran for ten years, beginning in 1994 and airing its final episode in 2005. The show is inarguably the peak sitcom of its era. It's the most remembered, most quoted and so essential that companies have spent hundreds of millions on the streaming rights to Friends in recent years. But why does Friends mean so much to so many? What did this sitcom have that the other giant shows of that era didn’t?

This is a deep dive into the history of Friends, but it’s also the history of ten years of network television. How did the world of sitcoms evolve through that decade? How much of a show’s success is down to small details like schedules and syndication, and how much of it is down to the content itself?

The landscape of television has changed drastically in the years since the end of Friends, but the biggest show of sitcom’s golden age has endured like no other. This look at the history of Friends, its legacy and the history of television in general will show you why. Both why the television industry has become what it is today, and why Friends has survived long beyond its decade. This is a celebration of Friends, an interrogation of its success, and a history of television that explains much of what’s on our screens today.