I feel a little bit like the crew and I are part of a great
sitcom like FRIENDS. We’re comfortable; we’re funny; and we’ve had seasons
where you were like “Alright already!”, but you tune into us every week just
the same. Also, no matter how long you watch FRIENDS, not all threads tie up
and some things are still left where you know there are more stories to see.
Only you know that if you try to have a spin-off from this fabulous sitcom
(i.e. your own blog), it’s probably going to go a lot like that tragic season
of JOEY. It’s just not the same.
Sadly, ten years later, I still miss FRIENDS. I still
wouldn’t
mind some made for TV movie of FRIENDS as a reunion. I’d love to see
how the twins are doing; if Ross and Rachel are still together; and if
Joey—bless his heart—actually ever made it. I also figure in ten years—and I’m
sure less—I will wish the Romance Writer’s Revenge will have a “made for blog”
reunion and catch everyone up on their shenanigans. But we probably won’t.
Here’s why: we all saw the Dukes of Hazzard reunion movies. Exactly. And the
Little House on the Prairie. And the—you get the idea. Reunions are for
reliving things that happened, but the fact is we’re all quite destined to
having even greater things after this blog. (And we’ll be much more successful
at it, I promise, because I’m pretty sure no star from FRIENDS actually went on
to another successful career in which anyone actually wants to watch the end
product. We’ve only been on air for half the time—and we’re much funnier. We’re
going to be okay. More than okay. We’re going to be kick-ass ninja awesome.)
So in ten years there won’t be a RWR reunion because there
won’t be a need to relive the good times. In ten years we’ll be counting up our
stack of books published between us, pointing at the awards on our mantels, and
talking about the new book we’re writing that is the best thing we’ve ever
done. Because that’s what writers do. We’re always producing the next big
thing.
So our RWR followers who have sailed with us all this time:
thank you, from my heart of hearts. Your kind attention and hearty discourse
made the RWR the best place to be. And to my pirates, keep sailing ahead. Our
best pirating is still before us—and you’re some of the best pirates I know.
So up for discussion: does anyone else miss FRIENDS or
is it only me? (That 70s Show and The Big Bang Theory helped immensely with the
loss, I must say.) Any good “reunion” shows that didn’t botch it? What is the
next big thing you’ll be doing when you leave the ship?
25 comments:
Never watched 'Friends'... What can I say?
Well, I hear Firefly did a good job at a sort of reunion show... I do like it when Entertainment Weekly or TV Guide or Oprah brings everyone from a show together for a laugh... I really enjoy watching actors show up on different shows, playing different people...with a wink/wink...nudge/nudge.
As few us? We'll have a reunion...someday we'll all take a cruise together, get really drunk, take pictures and embarrass ourselves on FB. Because that's the way it's DONE!
I watched Friends when it was earlier Friends. I didn't watch when Ross and Rachel got together or broke up. I was in college and I didn't have a TV, then I was working a LOT in the early 2000s. So I missed a lot of it.
But, I liked the first episodes I saw. :)
I don't really watch much TV, so I'm having difficulty with the reunion shows. I don't watch the Bachelor or Bachelorette, but isn't that just one reunion show after another?
On an unrelated note, my big guy went off to full day 1st grade this morning. I'm feeling a little sappy. :(
Mo, that is the kind of reunion I could get behind. And I have no doubt we'll embarrass ourselves on FB or whatever version of social media will be available when we do that. *LOL*
Marn, so you missed the years where everyone went, "Why are we watching this again?"--you did good. Though I still wish you had seen the episode that I think is the perfect example of "braiding" in writing. Where Joey and Phoebe talk about their fake names; and Joey has a story he tells that gets him laid every time without fail. We find out Ross and Rachel had sex together--and Ross says Rachel made the first move but no one believes it--but he has it on tape (which was a big brohaha) and they finally watch it...and Rachel DID make the first move. Because Ross told the Joey Get Laid Story. Absolutely hysterical.
But you probably had to be there.
I watched every episode of Friends and still love catching it in syndication. When I was 19-22 I had a group of friends like that. We weren't as good locking, and didn't have awesome apartments in NYC, but it was still very similar. I remember that gasp when Ross first kissed Rachel, and cried like a baby when Monica and Chandler got engaged. Also cried when it ended. That show was awesome.
I think Mo has the right idea. A pirate cruise! But we also need a pirate booksigning someday. All the pirates in a row. That would be awesome.
Not sure on the shows. I think the good ones are smart to leave it where it ended. Reunions almost never live up to the expectations, so why sully the memories, ya know?
That's good LOOKING, not locking. We weren't popping and locking. LOL!
And apparently, the word of the day is AWESOME. Say it with me now...
Terri, thank God someone else watched this show with me. I thought this was going to turn into another book series that I was the only one who read it. Yeesh.
And yes, when Ross kissed Rachel...I can still hear the gasp. :) And I too cried at those and when R&R got together in the end. Finally. Yeesh.
I watched a few episodes of Friends because at the height of its popularity it was a favorite choice of my advanced comp students for their semiotic analysis essays, but I was never a regular viewer. From college on, I've just never watched a lot of TV. The only reunion shows I can remember watching are The Carol Burnett Show Reunion, which I loved, and Erica Cane (Susan Lucci) with her eight husbands on Oprah, which I thought was a hoot.
Since I fully expect to stay in touch with you pirates after September 30, I don't think a reunion will be necessary. :)
I LOVE Friends! And because I have a teenage daughter who discovered the show several years ago I feel like I've never stopped watching it! LOL She owns the whole series on DVD and her and her friends watch it constantly. They have TV shirts with key sayings, mugs, posters, etc. It's quite funny, actually.
It was one of the shows the DH and I watched together religiously in the early years of our marriage. The later years in the series are a blur - kids, job, no sleep and definitely no TV! Every time I see a show and say I don't think I saw this one my daughter is all over me - OMG I think you missed the last 5 seasons, mom! I try to explain to her that my life was a little crazy at the time. She can't comprehend that it would be too crazy to watch Friends! LOL
I'm with Janga, I'm going to keep up with you all so a reunion won't be necessary! :)
Awww, Marn! Sending hugs your way. That's a rough one.
We had a block party over the weekend. One of the moms is having a hard time dropping her son off at preschool - crying, clinging. We all sympathized and then the rest of us were talking about dreading sending our babies off to college next year! I was a basket case putting them on the bus for 1st grade. I'm not thinking I'm going to do much better dropping them off at college!
I refuse to think about kiddo going off to college. I still have four years. You can't make me. LOL!
This morning I was sitting behind a school bus that was picking up a bunch of little ones. This mom stood at the corner until the bus pulled off, waving, blowing kisses, and making that heart symbol with her fingers. I found it cute and extreme at the same time.
I haven't even been getting out of bed to tell kiddo goodbye in the morning. Now I want to.
I haven't even been getting out of bed to tell kiddo goodbye in the morning. Now I want to.
Yeah, me either, Ter. My daughter drives and takes my son. They're both in high school - make their own breakfast, lunches and so on. At this point I'm just trying to stay out of the way.
One of my daughter's friends went off to college last week. My daughter showed me her Facebook post last night - doing laundry for the first and last time. Something went wrong! Are my clothes supposed to be dripping wet?
This next year is devoted to making sure they both know how to exist outside this house! :) They've got the laundry and ramen noodles down. I'm a little nervous about the cleaning.
Kiddo does her own laundry now, but hates folding. I don't want to think about what her dorm room would look like. I'm just hoping my OCD-like drive to keep the house presentable (at least when company is coming) rubs off on her in the next few years.
You won't be rid of us at all easily, Janga. No worries. I watch TV, but I don't watch anything with the deliberateness of FRIENDS. I mean, I'd schedule classes and meetings around this show. My friend came by to talk with me, and I put her off until the show was off and come to find out, her uncle had died. (NOT my finest moment.) It's actually good I don't watch anything like I watched that show...but I did feel it was my generation's show. Like we all wanted to be cool yuppie coffee drinkers who were broke, but lived in very upscale apartments and always looked adorable.
Irish, I hope you understand I mean this in the best way, but reading your response makes me very glad I don't have kids. I don't like being THAT busy. I'd be very much, "You get to choose ONE activity and it better not be one with fundraising and attendance of more than three times a week." Which will mean my kids would be uncool like their mom.
The family reunion also put a kabosh on the reproductive desire too. Who are these sticky, loud, obnoxious precious children--and how do I get them to leave me alone?
Yeah, you don't want to know what my college room was like. I think my roommate still has pictures that would demonstrate it and make everyone aghast. I mean, not in the way, "I didn't know you were a slob"--because everyone knows that--"but in the OMG, how much laundry IS that? And did you mean to have a pile of empty soda cans piled up to block all sunlight out of your window?"
I got better. Years later. There's hope, guys. I promise.
Ter - Making the heart symbol with her fingers? Um, yeah. I did wave and call out I love you. But I didn't want to be completely obnoxious.
I save my obnoxious for at home. :)
Irish - I cried last year when he went to Kindergarten on the bus like a big boy. This year I was okay. I'm hoping he has a good day.
My little guy starts preschool two days a week on Thurs. I have no idea what I'll do when I pull away from there on Thurs morning and it's quiet in the back of the car. I'll probably sob into the steering wheel. Or sing. I hope sing.
I don't even want to think about college.
Completely understandable, Hellie! Believe it or not I was more like you before I had the kiddies (and even after at times!). I'm one of the youngest in my family so I had a lot of little nieces/nephews running around when I was in my late teens early 20's. I always said - never me! Then I fell in love with a guy who wanted 6! Since I was pumping them out and staying home with them we settled on 2! Otherwise he would have had to come visit me in a padded cell.
We were all in the kitchen last night and I was explaining how the little neighbor boy was having a rough time with pre-school. My kind hearted daughter proclaimed that he needed to man-up before he got to middle school!!! I told her she was definitely not to procreate any time soon!
Yeah, I have the nieces thing and I'm very much, "Not me, jack." I mean, I have a few days of every month where I'm weeping at baby commercials but that passes. And I'm clearly past that 3 day window this month because I am el done-o. My great-niece, who is 7, and is the most awesome kid ever and polite as can be--even her I'm like, "Dude, knock it off." And she's not doing anything. She just wants me to look at some glitter or a bug or a UFO. Or discuss cartoons. It's not anything--I shouldn't get so irked, but I don't know how mothers do it. Or anyone. Anyone at all. It's nearly the same thing when the cat comes and sits in the middle of the book as you're reading it...or the dog who keeps dropping a ball at your feet as you're reading. Books don't do this. This is why I am so much more content raising books. *LOL*
Though I do have empathy for the great niece in school--though of course she rocks it. She's a Hermione, I'm not kidding. She even looks like Hermione. And she's so bossy and "doing things the RIGHT way"--I nearly snort soda out of my nose every time she does shit like that. Because she's 7. She got a report card that says she's the politest child in the class, but that she spends a lot of time correcting her classmates so they don't get in trouble--and she needs to work on stop doing that. (See: busybody!) It cracks me up.
I got that comment on my report card in 2nd grade! It drove me nuts when the other kids wouldn't follow directions, so I'd remind them what the directions were. In my mind, I was doing them a service. Others didn't see it that way. Silly others.
Marn, I think that would be harder if you have to go home without him, and you're used to having him there. I was always dropping off kiddo and going to an office. Never had her home with me all the time. I can completely understand how that would be much harder.
I adore that commercial with the man dropping his daughter at the bus stop, and she is a curly headed moppet who absolutely mimics the dad's worry face...and he follows the bus in his car, looking up to see if she's okay...and he sees her laughing and jumping around... It's for a car company...
Our reunions show will be like the one they did for Absolutely Fabulous, which was absolutely fabulous. With Edwina and Patsy old, decrepit and as self-centered as always...
We'll be pinching the butts of cabana boys and swilling rum.
I'm with Janga, those shows where they bring everyone back together to talk about what it was like to make the show...those are fab.
Now, I want to write a book where a book keeps following the reader around, begging to be read....
LOL! I was like that too, Ter, but I was too introverted to say anything. I'd just come home and complain to my mom that nobody in school listened and obeyed! By the time I was a teen everyone in the neighborhood nicknamed me "Mom"! Not good!
My daughter had a tendency towards the bossiness when she was little and I squashed that right away. I saw where it was headed and knew she'd have no friends by high school if she didn't learn how to live and let live. This was one area where I was determined she was going to learn from my mistakes. I explained early on that kids don't like to be corrected and if she did that she'd have no friends. So far, so good.
It's also pretty hilarious when she comes home with a story of a kid that everyone is mad at cause they feel the need to tell everyone else how to do things the "right way". She always gives me props for setting her straight when she was younger.
Yer a good mum, Irish!
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