The Office UK (imo) was one of the worse tv shows of all time, even though season 1 is a carbon copy word for word with the US version! Steve Carrell, Judasinski, Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fischer.. it just works better, they gel better.
I didn't know about Friends though, what is that a rip off, off?
The US version of Office is better, sure. But they're not even hiding the fact that it's the same thing anyways.
As for Friends, it's pretty much a rip off of Seinfeld with a younger cast and more romance shit to appeal to teens and twentysomethings of the time whereas Seinfeld was more universal and was for a more mature crowd. The rip offs were either blatant or more. Mostly subtle ones but the blatant was are painfully obvious. It is also a rip off of a now obscure tv show called Living Single. Same premise. Six single friends who hang out at a coffee shop or something. And also a lot of things from Cheers.
Seinfeld was pretty much a show where the people hanged out in one apartment and one coffee place, which the Friends took as well.
Half the episodes from the first couple of seasons of Friends were taken from the Seinfeld garbage disposal, as both were NBC productions. It was too easy to get access to that material and it was a goldmine for Friends. I have a 24 hour Friends channel and even now I have it on just because it's too casual tv and I don't need to pay attention, but since I've watched both series more than 10 times each I can safely tell you that it's painfully obvious that it's a rip off.
From the lesbian ex and hanging around with your ex to references on Minsk or annoying neighbours. Or the most idiotic "no more falafel for you" by Ross... an extremely poor attempt to rip off 'No soup for you!'. Or how no one allegedly knew what Chandler does for a living which has been the question on Seinfeld when it came to Kramer.
The Friends characters are very inconsistent. If you look at the first seasons, there's a lot of fluctuation between who's what. It happens with most shows, writers are not having an easy time setting out characters right. But with Friends we have a lot of differences.
As for the characters themselves, you can see elements from the Seinfeld cast on each.
Chandler is having a lot of Jerry moments. He was the outlet of the best lines and probably the best character on the show, until they married him to Monica...
Elaine is depicted by both Monica (too many BFs) and Phoebe (crazy part).
Monica is having a 'neatness' problem like Jerry.
Joey is a failed attempt to have a "funny" person like Kramer was.
Rachel and Ross are annoying together but Rachel was fun when she wasn't forced to do rom-com shit. Ross was only funny when he had George Costanza type of explosive behavior ("my sandwich", "we were on a break" etc).
Ross and Chandler, buddies from school. Based on Jerry and George, friends from school.
Phoebe (and Joey) using aliases. Something that George Costanza did a lot, as did Kramer. And Jerry 1-2 times.
One is funny, the other is forcing laughs. And I'm not talking about the silly laugh sounds they place after every single line.
It takes art to make an entire episode about going to the movies, searching your car in a mall parking lot, waiting for a restaurant table and be funny every single time you watch it. With Friends there's more randomness while they're carrying a story. But the entire premise of the episode is like a Seinfeld rip off which different dialogue.
One made you laugh with people that you'd never consider hanging about with, the other pretended they're some cool friend gang that all had sexual relations with each other... But at the same time, while Seinfeld is based on treating people like dirt and laughing about it, the Friends group keeps doing that to each other and it becomes melodramatic and silly at times.
The two major differences are:
- Seinfeld is pessimistic, Friends is life is too good to be true.
- Seinfeld is cynical, Friends is a rom-com.
Friends lacked a lot in their support cast. The Geller parents were very good but they didn't leave their mark for example and we barely see any other family from the main cast even if they were mentioned or appeared many times.
And the guest stars are lacking. Sure, George Clooney ER reference, Brad Pitt (Aniston''s husband at the time) and Bruce Willis are great, but that's nothing compared to the Seinfeld show.
Honestly, if you watch them both at the same time, the entire series and have an idea of what was aired when, you cannot fail to notice this. I think there's only one thing that Seinfeld "copied" from Friends which is something on gonorrhea, but it can be considered more like Seinfeld coming back on an older idea they had with fake diseases than copying Friends. Also, it wasn't really a rip off in terms of what the situation was about.
Now that Netfilx will lose the rights to Friends and gained the rights to Seinfeld, assuming they manage to play the video quality up (1989 till late 90s is not good quality television) I think the hype will resurge and more people will understand that one is an all time classic and the other doesn't date very well. People watched Friends because of the hype from the age of internet and Jennifer Aniston's star. No one else is widely known. Courtney Cox was the only actress that had a career before Friends (and after) and guess what? She was a Seinfeld guest star prior to that which helped her become this thing. She was supposed to be the Rachel character actually. Seinfeld has quotes that are still used in the English language (at least in the USA) whereas Friends is mostly about liking the characters and pretending you're one of them. Which is crazy, because they're not really that consistent.
The thing Friends has over Seinfeld is internationalism, due to the age it took off. Internet. Prior to that Seinfeld had jokes in the series about writing checks and most call jokes are on landline phones. So more people grew up watching Friends than Seinfeld. Popular doesn't mean better.
I think younger generations would prefer comedies like Bing Bang Theory over Friends. Cannot say they'd like it more over Seinfeld once they watch it though.
On the other hand, Curb your Enthusiasm is a different animal. That's for very peculiar tastes and I must say that it's one of my favorite ones, but I understand why people aren't buying into it. Similar to Always Sunny in Philadelphia which has some darkness in it. I don't like "in your face" type of shoving humor, feels too forced. And the catalyst to what makes Seinfeld >>> Friends is that with Seinfeld you die laughing every time you watch. With Friends you may find something funny initially but overall it doesn't come back at you the same way. The key is to ignore the laughing cues in both shows and feel for it yourself. You will notice which ones are too forced and which are pure funny.
If you want me to start listing the rip offs, it's going to take me 5 hours and twenty blocks of text. So beware
10 years of FIF
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