Thu, May 20, 2004

So, I finally got around to watching the last episode of Friends over the weekend. I know, I know. I may as well buy an SUV and program Applebee's into my speed dial. I'm such a mindless sheep. The thing is, though, Friends was actually a funny and well written show for almost the entirety of its run. I'm not going to hold its popularity against it.

However, I'll agree that the endgame of Friends and the NBC hype surrounding it were atrocious. I'll give you that. A half-dozen Dateline episodes and a "retrospective" clip show would be bad enough, but they added round-the-clock weepy advertisements about the soul-wrenching final episode for months, and forced the show into one of those contrived, mournful, "significant" endings. Each of you has heard me say this in person before, so forgive me, but it would be a shame to leave it out. Bright/Kauffman/Crane should've told NBC/Warners that they were going to end Friends this May, but actually ended it in January. When it came time to deliver episode #13 on tape, it should have just been 22 minutes of color bars. That way, Friends would have ended being Friends instead of all the characters having to get hijacked into an "event" that is far less entertaining and comical.

(You've also all heard this before, but it bears repeating. I thought Seinfeld should've pulled a similar switcheroo and made its penultimate episode – "The Puerto Rican Day" – its last. Then, instead of having a big final episode, just do a 90-minute mini-movie fantasy Superman story, with the same characters in Superman roles. Like it's Jerry dreaming or something. Jerry as Clark Kent, Elaine as Lois Lane, Kramer as Jimmy Olson, I'm thinking Newman as Lex Luthor and George as Perry White, but if that's too small a role for George – well, they'd have figured it out. The point is, it could have been a memorable finale instead of – by all accounts – a dud. Especially for Seinfeld there's no reason that the series has to end with everyone moving away or any other big event – for a show about nothing, it can just... stop.)

Generally, I think it's a mistake to try to make a big deal out of finales. By and large, the finale doesn't happen because the story is over – it happens because the series has run its course, or the actors are tired, or the writers are out of ideas. Don't make the same mistake I did. In my first two "films," I didn't know how to end the story unless all the characters died. It turns out, I was wrong. (I was also twelve.) You can just choose to fade out. It doesn't have to be motivated by the story; you can just... stop. Phoebe and Chandler and everyone will still live on – we just won't be watching any more. Wouldn't the Friends finale have been great if it were just an hour of the usual laughs and wisecracks? Instead, it was weepy romantic crap (not that I'm not romantic, but I like my romance and my sitcoms generally separate). In the same way that the one with Chandler proposing made it into the top six fan-favorite episodes. No! No, no, no! Maybe that was a momentous episode of Friends, but it wasn't a good episode. The good episodes were the really funny ones, because it's a sitcom.

So, NBC bungled it by forcing the Friends finale to be a big to-do. But we can't fault them for that. Everyone does that. What irritates me about it is the desperation. They know that they have nothing – nothing – worth watching now that Friends and Frasier have wrapped up. (Hm. Should've held on to Ed, shouldn't they?) So, they went bonkers promoting the finales and draining every last advertising cent out of them. And, they got greedy.

Some background for you few crazy Luddites who still don't have TiVo: as advanced as TiVo is, it still operates on a clock. It would seem advantageous to have TiVo record programs based on when they actually start and finish (which it would know based on programming information that is included in the signal, along with closed-captioning, etc.), but the flaw in that plan is that TiVo can't plan ahead. So, TiVo downloads a program grid from TiVo, Inc. (or, in my case, DirecTV) and uses that to schedule its recordings. This creates a dependence on the networks adhering to their schedules. NBC often likes to start popular shows like Friends as much as 45 seconds early – I'm not positive why; maybe to sell an extra commercial in the middle, or maybe just to encourage us to be on their channel early. NBC also ends Friends at 8:32 pm most weeks. Which is fine, because they tell TiVo about it – it's right in the program grid, 8:00-8:32. I've learned – either due to TiVo's clock being off by a few seconds, or NBC's – it is a good idea to add an extra minute to the end of recording Friends but that's all. You usually only need a few seconds, but TiVo's smallest increment is all 60. It's a flawed system, but it works.

Well, NBC decided that it hates TiVo because NBC is selling very expensive ad time during the Friends finale, and TiVo is encouraging people to fast-forward through that time. (I still don't understand this debate – TiVo really doesn't make it that much easier than a VCR; TiVo makes recording easier, not fast-forwarding. The only reason it's a threat to ads is that fewer and fewer TiVo owners watch live TV.) So, NBC decides to end the Friends finale at 10:04 pm but not update the program grid. We know they can, because they do it every week. But, they choose not to. They just pretend it ends at 10:00. So, TiVo stops recording at 10:00 (or 10:01, in my case) and you miss the last scene. See? Don't you want to strangle Jeff Zucker with a horse rectum from the set of Fear Factor?

Here's why this was a terrible idea: First, the people who have TiVo? Already have TiVo. They're not going to throw it out the window just because they missed four minutes of Friends. They're not going to suddenly un-have TiVo when it gets to the end of that recording and the last part isn't there. (And, even if they did, that wouldn't allow them to view the last scene.) Second, the only way this would encourage people not to TiVo the Friends finale is if someone told them that it would run over. By the time we found out we'd been screwed, it was too late to do anything about it, so how does NBC win? Third, the whole reason NBC's panties are in a bunch over this is that, post-Friends, we have basically no reason to ever watch their network again. Now, some of us will be back for Joey, or some of us still see some value in Law & Order or some of us actually like For Love or Money – so maybe there are a few who will stay around. Why decrease those odds by poking us in the eye? Why not just be friendly (no pun intended) and encourage us to embrace the wasteland of NBC's remaining schedule? And, finally, Friends is over. It's no longer a big deal to miss four minutes of Friends because there's no such thing as Friends. That's like saying, "Did you miss four minutes of Rhoda last week?" What Rhoda? There isn't any! It's essentially irrelevant information now, so what's the point of withholding it?

(Two weeks ago, my theory was that they just wanted to sell more copies of the Friends finale DVD, which was – obscenely – released five days after the finale aired. But now they're airing the finale again, so that theory is shot.)

Anyway, the desperation continues. They managed to get through the Frasier finale without a Matthew Perry guest appearance, but the network still has Friends on the brain. Tonight, they're airing a repeat of Friends at 8:00 and an encore presentation of the finale around 9:52 or so. They've been promoting it like mad all week, and – here's where the desperation sets in, as well as the nausea – they've also been promoting the surprise return of Jerry Seinfeld. However, if you look at the clips in the Seinfeld promo, what they will actually be airing is the four-minute Seinfeld/Superman "webisode" commercial for American Express. They are promoting a commercial as though it were television – and, what's more, it's a commercial that has been freely available online for months! (jerry.americanexpress.com) That's it. That's the giant, hyped event. Tune in early and watch a four-minute commercial that you can watch anytime you want on your computer. God. Don't you want to choke Jeff Zucker on Donald Trump's toupee? Anyway, make sure to set your TiVo so you can catch the end of the Friends finale. That way, no need to buy the DVD!

What's really sad is that the short-sighted reality boom is distracting networks like NBC from making a real investment in quality television for the long term. They should be finding and nurturing shows like Scrubs (initially imperfect, but solidly building and very funny) and building long-term audiences so they can have another success of the magnitude of Friends in ten years. Instead, all resources are devoted to cheap, quick-turnaround reality shows – which have no potential for re-runs, drastically less season-to-season audience carry-over, and no returning characters for an audience to build relationships with. Three or four years from now, the networks will have half their current viewership (it's been steadily plummeting for years) and almost no narrative shows. They'll be all "news magazine" and reality shows, and the narrative shows will be on cable (mostly premium cable, like HBO), which is where all the viewers will be, too. Ironically, you can look at any of their recently revealed fall schedules and see that they're all still blissfully unaware of this.

Oh, well. More time to watch NewsRadio on tape. (Remember when networks would keep faltering shows on the air for five whole seasons because – despite less than fantastic ratings – they were hilarious, awesome, and perfect?) (Remember tape?)

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