Obligatory ‘Friends’ finale reaction

Note, this entry may contain one or more of the following allergens: nuts, dairy products, or predictable finale spoilers. So it’s over. Though Friends jumped the shark ages ago, I thought I’d tune in for the series finale just ’cause. I first got into the show my freshman year in college, when gathering in the dorm lounge and bonding over Must-See TV was the thing to do. (The Simpsons was another favorite; on weeknights we’d bring in our dinners on trays from the dining hall to watch the regular back-to-back reruns at 6 p.m.) In the years since then, once the Friends started to settle down, I gradually stopped watching–then stopped caring that I wasn’t watching–and only caught reruns in syndication now and then.

So it was strange to jump back into the show and have Monica and Chandler having a baby, and Rachel going to Paris. What is going on? (Rhetorical. Please don’t write me e-mails starting “So, you see, a couple of seasons ago…”) But it’s Friends, so the one thing you can count on is the Ross and Rachel just-get-together-again-already plot. We got the predictable chase to the airport (the wrong airport at first), the predictable declaration of love at the gate area–really, there must be a separate sub-class of romantic-comedy character roles encompassing disagreeable airline gate agents and flight attendants who get in the way of the leads declaring their love to each other or otherwise getting together, whose dialog is inevitably something droning along the lines of “Sir, you’re going to need a boarding pass” or “Miss, you can’t get off the plane” despite the impassioned pleas of the lovebirds–and the predictable Ross-and-Rachel-forever ending. Though, to back up a bit, when she got back on the plane, I honestly thought that would be it, end of story. I should’ve known better. This is sitcom-land, where all loose ends must be tied up in a shiny, happy bow.

Adiós, amigos.