Frrrieeendddddsss (Friends - Complete Series 1 (DVD))

Member Name: Stephoohla

Product:	Friends - Complete Series 1 (DVD)
Date:	27/08/09 (84 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Completely funny, loveable characters

Disadvantages: You'd spend a lot of time if you wanted to watch every episode from the 10 series!

Friends is a TV show created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman that started in 1994. It shows the day to day lives of six completely different individuals from series 1, and throughout the following nine seasons we follow their strong friendship, relationship problems, job issues, the typical things that we might go through. All of these things are put in comically funny ways that touches our hearts and makes us laugh at the same time.

Starring Courteney Cox as Monica, a chef-cum-compulsive cleaner who is unlucky in love and very high maintenance, Lisa Kudrow as kooky Phoebe who is dumb but pretty and lovable, Jennifer Aniston as fashioned-obsessed Rachel who is never without a boyfriend or some guy after her, Matt Le Blanc as Joey, another pretty-but-dumb character who is a struggling actor trying to have enough money to pay for his love of pizza, David Schwimmer (who also helps write the show) as Ross, completely unlucky in everything he does and always makes a fool of himself, and, my personal favorite, Matthew Perry as lovable Chandler, who makes rubbish jokes out of every situation. All completely believable but varied characters who have kept us entertained for over ten years now.

In Season 1 we are introduced to the characters and begin to get to know their quirky habits and life stories. Each of them have different backgrounds, and its fun hearing of their past mishaps or unfortunate burdens, such as the fact Ross's wife left him because she was a lesbian, or Chandler's dad being a cross-dresser.

It turns out each quite a lot of the friends knew each other years and years before:
Ross and Monica are brother and sister so have obviously known each other for ages.
Chandler and Ross went to high school and college together, therefore Monica also knows Ross.
Rachel went to high school with Monica so she knows this other three too. (Although Rachel disappears after college and plans on marrying a dentist so Monica and Rachel don't talk for years).

We find out later in the series that Joey only met everyone shortly before episode 1, as Chandler was advertising for a flatmate and the person he wanted didn't show up, so Joey was next in line. And Phoebe also became Monica's flat mate shortly before that, although she didn't know anyone else prior to this as she used to live in the street (long story!).

In the beginning episode, the Friends are sitting in Central Perk, the coffe house, which will become very familiar to you if you continue through the series'. It is one of the key settings, along with Monica's apartment and Joey's apartment. At the start there is only 5 of them, Ross, Chandler, Joey, Monica and Phoebe. Ross is upset about his recent divorce from his lesbian wife. Cue for Rachel to walk through the door, in a beautiful white wedding dress, completely soaked as it is raining and asked behind the bar where Monica is. The bar staff points out Monica, and here, two friends who haven't seen each other for ages, are reunited. We find out that Rachel ditched her to-be-husband at the alter and came after Monica as it was her only friend who wasn't obsessed with said to-be-husband. Rachel ends up staying with Monica to get on her feet (Rachel is clearly shown to be spoilt and has to cut up her dad's credit cards). Fairly on into the series, we see ever more how Rachel used to be spoilt as she didn't even know how to do her own washing.

Shortly into the series, Ross starts falling for Rachel and it is the start of the whole 'Ross-Rachel' fiasco that you'll know about if you watch the whole 10 series. There's lots of things concerning Ross in the second episode, as his ex-wife finds out she's pregnant with his baby. The group of immature friends then start thinking that everyone is growing up.

Also in the series, we see more of Monica's unlucky-in-love relationships, especially in the third episode where she is moaning to a work colleague about how none of her friends ever life who she's going out with. Well in this episode, her friends do like her lover, Alan, and end up spending loads of time with him, but unfortunately Monica then decides she doesn't like him.

I think series 1 is one of the best series there is of friends, as it's not so much an introduction to everyone, but here we find out about the Friends' pasts and habits. We see Ross's weakness for Rachel, and Joey's struggling acting career (he gets really excited that he's going to be playing Al Pacino's butt-double in a film, but then gets told he "acted too much with it" so they use someone else). Phoebe is completely quirky and kooky, and often plays an acoustic guitar and writes songs, but the songs are always about completely random and weird topics, nothing ever relevant. I'm sure you'll have heard about Smelly Cat, about a cat that stinks and no one wants it so it has to go to the pound. Well it's very funny when she's singing it!

I think the appeal of this show is the closeness of their friendships. Yeah, everyone has friends. But not friends who'll you'll see almost every second of the day, and have one place to go where you know they'll always be there, or be able to just walk into their home and know you're welcome. Things are always more complicated than that, so I think everyone wishes they had friends like, well, the Friends.

This show start out on Channel 4, showing every Friday night about 8:30 or 9:00. It's also often shown on this channel about half 6pm. But now it's also on E4 on Sky, and with the +1 channels, it's practically on 24/7. Great, for any budding Friends fan like myself.

The show is completely worth spending the hours to watch it. Each character is completely loveable and you can often relate to them in every way. The last time I looked this DVD was £15 in Tesco, but £10 in HMW and online, so I recommend shopping around for it a bit.

Summary: I love this show!