It's been talked about, it's brought in every single interview that any of the cast take part in, and really, given the climate of reunions and reboots, you'd think something would have happened with 'Friends' by now.
While the usual refrain of "Oh, I'd love to do it, sure" from the cast has always rung hollow, creator Marta Kauffman has been much more adamant. In a lengthy interview with Rolling Stone, she laid it out in simple terms.
" One, the show is about a time in your life when your friends are your family. It’s not that time anymore. All we’d be doing is putting those six actors back together, but the heart of the show would be gone," she explained. "Two, I don’t know what good it does us. The show is doing just fine, people love it."
It's true. 'Friends' remains one of the most-watched shows on Netflix, and the streaming giant paid a huge sum of money - some believe in the region of $100 million - to keep it on their library. More than that, however, Kauffman's reasoning is much more simple - it'll just be a disappointment.
That's a fair statement, and one that people probably don't pick up on. Given the endless influence 'Friends' has had on TV, on popular culture, on all of it - what good would an actual reunion episode do? Remind everyone that they're still alive?
Plus, didn't the series basically go downhill after the London episodes? Remember when Joey and Rachel got together? Or that time when they did the extended 'what-if' episode where Ross was still married to Susan and Courtney Cox was in that really problematic fat-suit? Yeah, exactly.
Nobody wants to go back to that. Leave it where it is - on endless repeat on Comedy Central or whenever you want on Netflix. It's comfort television, so leave it as such.
