The show managed to poke fun at itself a few times...
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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 Sixth 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 Vegas", "The One Where Ross Hugs Rachel", "...Ross´s Denial", "The One Where Joey Loses His Insurance", "...Joey´s Porsche", "The One on the Lst Night".
Disc 2: "The One Where Phoebe Runs", "...Ross´s Teeth", "The One Where Ross Got High", "...the Routine", "...the Apothecary Table", "...the Joke".
Disc 3: "...Rachel´s Sister", "The One Where Chandler Can´t Cry", "The One That Could Have Been", "...Unagi", "The One Where Ross Dates a Student".
Disc 4: "...Joey´s Fridge", "...Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E.", "The One Where Ross Meets Elizabeth´s Dad", "The One Where Paul´s the Man", "...the Ring", "...the Proposal".
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.
Season Six is a bit of a let-down compared to Season Five. The characters re-tread a lot of territory covered during previous years, and there´s basically no character growth for anyone other than Chandler (who progresses from commitment phobia to husband-material). In fact, with Ross, the writers basically used the same bit twice in one season, what with having him date Rachel´s younger sister (Reese Witherspoon) and a college student (Alexandra Holden).
Still, Season Six manages some pretty good things. Even though I knew that Chandler and Monica would wound up married in subsequent seasons, I still felt that the last couple of episodes managed to bring genuine tension into the "will-they-or-won´t-they get married?" story thread. I appreciate how the two-parter "The One That Could Have Been" shows that the writers wanted to have the characters in basically the same place in life had a few factors been adjusted (for instance, what if Monica had never lost weight?). The show managed to poke fun at itself a few times--Ross says, "What was I thinking?" when he remembers that he used to own a pet monkey. Finally, I was very thankful that the show did not resort to using Janice (Chandler´s on-and-off ex) as a crutch.
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