Friends: The Complete 5th Season (DVD)

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At its best, the situation comedy "Friends" captures the Zeitgeist of the 1990s with startling accuracy. That it is funny without resorting to cruel ironies only solidifies the cheery, optimistic outlook of the show´s creators. Sure, some of its sarcastic jokes hit a little close to home, but the characters seem to care genuinely for one another and about being good people (unlike the tools in "Seinfeld").

Warner Bros.´s first "Friends" DVDs consisted of "Best of ´Friends´" collections. Those releases were a hodge-podge of episodes from various seasons. Thankfully, the studio has come to its senses and is now releasing "Friends" season by season. Following Fox ("The X-Files") and Paramount´s ("Star Trek: The Next Generation") leads, Warner Bros. is using a digipak-gatefold-design approach to the "Friends" box sets rather than packaging each disc in a separate keepcase/snapper case. "Friends": The Complete Fifth Season Box Set includes twenty-three episodes on four DVDs. Each episode contains footage not seen during its original broadcast. Mostly, these are mere seconds that were cut here and there in order to fit in a couple of extra commercials on the air.

Disc 1: "The One After Ross Says Rachel", "The One With All the Kissing", "The One Hundredth", "The One Where Phoebe Hates PBS", "...the Kips", "...the Yeti", "The One Where Ross Moves In".

Disc 2: "...All the Thanksgivings", "...Ross´s Sandwich", "...the Inappropriate Sister", "...All the Resolutions", "...Chandler´s Work Laugh", "...Joey´s Bag".

Disc 3: "The One Where Everybody Finds Out", "...the Girl Who Hits Joey", "...the Cop", "...Rachel´s Inadvertent Kiss", "The One Where Rachel Smokes", "The One Where Ross Can´t Flirt", "...the Ride-Along".

Disc 4: "...the Ball", "...Joey´s Big Break", "The One in Vegas".

During the show´s run, Jennifer Aniston (Rachel), Courteney Cox Arquette (Monica), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe), Matt LeBlanc (Joey), Matthew Perry (Chandler), and David Schwimmer (Ross) have become highly-paid stars. Their chemistry makes the show, for they simply look like people who wouldn´t mind hanging out with one another 24/7. I also like how the show reaches back into the characters´ pasts to provide a sense of where the six friends will be in the future. That respect for how the sextet came to be gives the characters a solid base for their growth as fully-realized personas.

Year Five plays the Monica-Chandler "secret relationship" for maximum hilarity. As the two desperately try to keep things hush-hush, they have to invent increasingly silly excuses to avoid their friends discovering the fact that they´re dating. When everyone does find out about Monica-and-Chandler, the characters seem to mature noticeably. In fact, a bittersweet atmosphere develops as the characters reach a certain stage of realization about growing older.

There are several other threads that develop, of course, but the most important for the show´s later years involve Ross and Rachel in unsuccessful attempts to date other people. The writers prepare things in such a way that it´s obvious that the two have to end up with each other. In a sense, the Ross-Rachel connection is the sweetest thing in the entire series.

I really enjoy the performances by the cast members, but I also detest Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe). I like wacky stuff that humanizes a fictional creation, but Kudrow´s character is wacky for the sake of being wacky. The other five characters often act with chagrin when they realize that they´ve done something silly, but Phoebe is so oblivious to reality that she elicits groans rather than laughs from me.