we used to be friends
January 6, 2015 4:22 PM   Subscribe

 
from poop to potable
posted by standardasparagus at 4:24 PM on January 6, 2015 [4 favorites]


This is weirdly terrifying. I don't mean that in the usual internerds sense, I actually mean it is creepy and scary somehow.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:31 PM on January 6, 2015 [14 favorites]


The One Where OH MY GOD! MADNESS! MAAAAAAADDNNESSSSSSSS!
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:34 PM on January 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm so into this.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 4:34 PM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


I wonder if it will escape the long arm of the automated takedown filters?
posted by COD at 4:35 PM on January 6, 2015


occasionally I get these spells of disconcerting cacophonic mental noise, and they sound just like this
posted by stinkfoot at 4:37 PM on January 6, 2015 [7 favorites]


Kind of Too Many Cooksy
posted by Flashman at 4:39 PM on January 6, 2015 [8 favorites]


fuel for nightmares
posted by bigendian at 4:40 PM on January 6, 2015


I missed a bit of the dialog, did anyone else catch it?
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:42 PM on January 6, 2015


This is why the internet exists.
posted by saul wright at 4:43 PM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]


So no one told you life was gonna be all days
It's simulinstantaneous, and it's insane
It's like you're always stuck in all the gears,
When it hasn't been your month today... A week? Or was it our years? But

I'll be there and there and there and there and there and there for you
(When the rain starts to pour)
I'll be there and there and there and there and there and there for you
(Like I've been there before)
I'll be there and there and there and there and there and there for you
('Cause you're there and there and there and there and there and there for me too)
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:43 PM on January 6, 2015 [30 favorites]


Appropriately shoe-gazey. Like some lost MBV track.
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:43 PM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]


Sure, they could have added seasons 2-10 as well...
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:49 PM on January 6, 2015


Guys? I think I just had a stroke.
posted by mingo_clambake at 4:53 PM on January 6, 2015 [4 favorites]


This is amazing! Although I can't help but feel like Deanna Troi is this close to figuring out what the alien voices are trying to communicate.
posted by TwoWordReview at 4:53 PM on January 6, 2015 [13 favorites]


Chandler, when the falls well.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:57 PM on January 6, 2015 [30 favorites]


what's interesting is that there are certain spots where it feels like the episode beats line up and the laugh track intensifies or there's a punctuation of silence, etc.
posted by drewbage1847 at 4:57 PM on January 6, 2015 [4 favorites]


At about 15:34, it all coalesces and turns into Episode 2 of True Detective.
posted by xingcat at 5:00 PM on January 6, 2015 [8 favorites]


Z̖̪̝̬͇͇̆A͚̩͉͕͕ͫ̎L̆͗̓G̳̼̗̖̟̜ͨ̇̅̕O̵͂ͫ
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:01 PM on January 6, 2015 [11 favorites]


This is one of the strangest nightclubs I've ever been to.
posted by mannequito at 5:02 PM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


Neat, but now that you can watch them all on Netflix this is kind of moo.
posted by Room 641-A at 5:05 PM on January 6, 2015 [10 favorites]


It's Raining Florence Henderson, I can't help but think that someone shout have blog posts where they create Darmok when the wall's fell etc for different tv shows, or for internet cultures. I think it would be interesting to speak Metafilter.
posted by gryftir at 5:05 PM on January 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


Attribution is incorrect; this is actually a 1976 experimental short titled "As Joey Lay Dying".
posted by cortex at 5:08 PM on January 6, 2015 [5 favorites]


Someone once told me, "Time is a flat circle. Everything we've ever done or will do, we're gonna do over and over and over again. And that smelly cat and that little girl, they're gonna be in that room again and again and again forever." So I told her, "Snap out of it, Phoebe! You're main-lining the secret truth of the universe, again! Where the hell is our coffee?!"
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:09 PM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]


MetaFilter, when it rained Florence Henderson.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:09 PM on January 6, 2015 [9 favorites]


why

Why?

WHY???
posted by nfalkner at 5:09 PM on January 6, 2015


Because Internet
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:12 PM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]


so basically a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
posted by philip-random at 5:14 PM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]


Slightly more watchable than the original series.
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:15 PM on January 6, 2015 [5 favorites]


KUDROWS!
posted by clavdivs at 5:17 PM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]


The episode where Phoebe can hear the laugh track
posted by Taft at 5:17 PM on January 6, 2015 [7 favorites]


VAULT OF THE KOU-DROW!
posted by clavdivs at 5:19 PM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]


Every episode of Season 3 played simultaneously was funnier.
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:21 PM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]


It had just... really hit its stride, you know?
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:21 PM on January 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's like a wet, animated Monet painting with a My Bloody Valentine soundtrack.
posted by davebush at 5:23 PM on January 6, 2015 [6 favorites]


I'm like halfway through the Southern Reach Trilogy and now this is all I'm going to imagine for the rest of it whenever there's a description of some unfathomable horror.
posted by jason_steakums at 5:23 PM on January 6, 2015 [4 favorites]


Not nearly enough cooks.
posted by Frayed Knot at 5:27 PM on January 6, 2015 [10 favorites]


Now this is binge watching!

how you doin'
posted by mullacc at 5:28 PM on January 6, 2015


Can somebody watch this all the way through, and let me know if it turns into one of those weird Adult Swim things.
posted by schmod at 5:39 PM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


Quality television entertainment.

Everything kind of comes together at the very end (which I guess I could have anticipated).
posted by idiopath at 5:54 PM on January 6, 2015


ZALGO
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 5:56 PM on January 6, 2015


This reminds me of a dream I had one night in college.
posted by 4ster at 6:08 PM on January 6, 2015


I just saved so much time.
posted by ODiV at 6:20 PM on January 6, 2015 [4 favorites]


Kind of like how using a coupon for something you don't need or want saves you money.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 6:22 PM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


I thought this would be a mosaic-style thing like this one for all Star Trek episodes. It was not.
posted by mhum at 6:38 PM on January 6, 2015 [4 favorites]


It's like you're always stuck in MPEG-4.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:38 PM on January 6, 2015 [7 favorites]


Fear and Loathing In A Twee Apartment
posted by j_curiouser at 6:42 PM on January 6, 2015


All the dogs in my neighbourhood just started barking. Supposably this has something to do with it.
posted by jimmythefish at 6:54 PM on January 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


On re-watching this*, I realised that this is what other civilisations see of our transmissions from analog television. An overlay of sounds and images that slowly strobe in and out as people laugh the same laugh over and over again.

And we wonder why other civilisations haven't contacted us yet.**

* I'm watching cricket.
** Not really.
posted by nfalkner at 6:55 PM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]


It's laugh track all the way down.
posted by hot_monster at 7:14 PM on January 6, 2015


This is clearly the video accompaniment to the sound of that drill whose recording was being passed off as the sounds of hell a while back.
posted by feloniousmonk at 7:16 PM on January 6, 2015


I tried rewatching parts of the series recently. I even sorted Gawker's list of every episode, ranked and made a sublist of the top 20 episodes. I can't get into it, not even as a tool for procrastinating the grading of these 80 papers I have to grade.

Oh, and my daughter, who was born during the final season, is named Rachel, and her older brother who is fourteen is named Joey.
posted by craniac at 7:18 PM on January 6, 2015


It sounds exactly like my high school cafeteria.
posted by bird internet at 7:19 PM on January 6, 2015 [4 favorites]


This was actually nausea inducing.
posted by wuwei at 7:25 PM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


how you doin'

It would delight me if someone took every episode in which Joey says "How you doin'?" and overlaid them with different time offsets so that at one specific moment the whirling chaos of overlapping audio tracks would come together as an immense "HOW YOU DOIN'?" and then immediately descend back into madness.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:47 PM on January 6, 2015 [62 favorites]


It occurs to me that this is a tiny and manageable sample of the noise that has been emanating from our planet for the past 100 years or so. Anyone nearby in the neighbourhood listening could be forgiven for coming over here and yelling "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

With, like, particle beams.
posted by salishsea at 8:10 PM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


tl;dr: with F.R.I.E.N.D.S like these, we might have enemies.
posted by salishsea at 8:11 PM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm actually way more likely to watch this video in its entirety than I am any of the constituent episodes.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 8:18 PM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


I am so full of rhubarb!
posted by srboisvert at 8:22 PM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


Oh nfalkner...sorry...didn't see you there in the midst of this madness
posted by salishsea at 8:24 PM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


Clap clap clap clap clap, multiplied by infinity, slathered over a blade, and stabbed right into your heart.
posted by Uppity Pigeon #2 at 8:41 PM on January 6, 2015


This is the other Dungeon Dimension they went to in Event Horizon.
posted by BungaDunga at 8:46 PM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


This is like being in a very crowded bar and everybody is talking but noone is talking to me. Sometimes it seems that someone is approaching me and maybe they are saying something to me, but they never really come into focus and I can't be arsed to answer and they go away again. No live band, no jukebox, and goddamimit will whoever is spinning that radio dial please stop, you are harshing my mellow. The bright pastel colors and geometric shapes are nice, though.
posted by jaruwaan at 8:48 PM on January 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


London, 1996.

It was a Friends/Next Generation fest at the hotel we were at for the wedding.
posted by Sphinx at 9:08 PM on January 6, 2015


Marcel, I know you're in there somewhere.
posted by chimpsonfilm at 9:12 PM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


Friends was one of the most annoying TV shows I've encountered. Seinfeld was the most annoying. New York city is the setting, everyone has nice apartments, no one seems to have jobs, and there are no people of color *anywhere*.

Hate them both.
posted by el io at 9:26 PM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]


I imagine this is very similar to what one's last moments of life are like.
posted by sourwookie at 10:01 PM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]


I think it's kind of beautiful.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:04 PM on January 6, 2015


Neat, but now that you can watch them all on Netflix this is kind of moo.

This video is definitely like a cow's opinion.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:12 PM on January 6, 2015 [4 favorites]


I preferred Friends 3x, the last episode played at 1/3 speed. Friends episode starts at about 4m10s from the beginning of the linked radio show. I recommend skipping to 7m20s for a quick dose of a dumb joke, a slice of the laugh track, and the theme song.

/I actually liked a lot of the show.
posted by benito.strauss at 10:14 PM on January 6, 2015


occasionally I get these spells of disconcerting cacophonic mental noise, and they sound just like this

Me too! I've gotten them since I was a very young kid and I've tried to communicate what they sound like for most of life, to no avail. They usually ride in on white noise of some sort, especially when I'm sleepy. When I was a kid, I used to think my parents had left a TV on in an adjoining room. No one ever knows what I'm talking about. And I don't have other auditory hallucinations.
posted by treepour at 11:19 PM on January 6, 2015


I'm surprised (or maybe not) at how early 90s looking the general color scheme that emerges is. Peach, warm yellows, pink, the occasional baby blue. Of course, averaging tends away from saturated primaries, but still.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:50 PM on January 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


it's just a writhing, chattering, laughing, flesh-coloured mass.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 12:55 AM on January 7, 2015


it's just a writhing, chattering, laughing, flesh-coloured mass.

But enough about Matt LeBlanc.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:04 AM on January 7, 2015 [20 favorites]


I think this is really beautiful, and interesting. It seems to me like maybe they used the wrong method to average the visual component, though - you can see some episodes clearer than others. I guess this is from doing something like overlaying one at a time at low percentage opacity, rather than a true average. A bit of a shame - it would be interesting to see how it would look with the actual strict average.
posted by iotic at 1:34 AM on January 7, 2015 [5 favorites]


Now this is binge watching!

You meant Bing watching, right?
posted by HuronBob at 3:39 AM on January 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


[This is ... i just don't know]
posted by dg at 4:23 AM on January 7, 2015


It's a metaphor for life. One timeline, encompassing many different groups of people(some intersecting, some not), where very occasionally you can make out some snippet of an event that make sense. In the end though everything ends the same for each person.
posted by Twain Device at 4:52 AM on January 7, 2015


I like the way all the characters in the centre of the frame seem to form one large blob-like mass. A single being, constantly dividing and blending, dividing and blending, dividing and blending. On a sofa.
posted by Catseye at 5:24 AM on January 7, 2015


New York city is the setting, everyone has nice apartments, no one seems to have jobs, and there are no people of color *anywhere*.

Man, you should here me going off about the Big Bang Theory sometime. (That's not even the real Cheesecake Factory! Euclid Avenue has speed bumps and dead ends at the Paseo!)
posted by malocchio at 7:23 AM on January 7, 2015 [3 favorites]


it's just a writhing, chattering, laughing, flesh-coloured mass.

But enough about Matt LeBlanc.


Have you seen Episodes? It is an amazing show and he is fantastic in it. I use the same ringtone for my phone now.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 7:36 AM on January 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


Reaction dialog, just now:

– what's that?
– every episode of season one of friends, simultaneously.
– stop, stop, stop, stop! jesus!
posted by zippy at 9:31 AM on January 7, 2015


Could this BE any more like DRUGS? DRUGS would be perfection.
(I don't DO gum. I AM gum.)
womp womp ELECTRIFYING womp INFINITE TIME-IME
womp womp JUICEBOX womp
posted by mean square error at 11:00 AM on January 7, 2015


Friends was one of the most annoying TV shows I've encountered. Seinfeld was the most annoying. New York city is the setting, everyone has nice apartments, no one seems to have jobs,

Hold on now.

Friends: Ross, the "adult" character, very definitely has a respectable job as a paleontologist. Rachael works a series of fashion-industry jobs. Monica's a chef -- albeit one who appears to have a whole bunch of free time for comedic hi-jinks. And yes, okay, Phoebe and Joey are both kinda boho: a singer/songwriter and a jobbing actor.

Seinfeld: Jerry's a moderately-successful stand-up comic. Elaine works a series of publishing-industry jobs. George is serially employed in various office-drone situations, most notably at the Yankees. Kramer's a complete mystery; I always imagined he was living off some eccentric relative's trust fund.

While both of them were notionally apartment shows, both did use the characters' jobs and workplaces to establish and drive plotlines. Seinfeld probably more so than Friends: George's jerk store and cashmere incidents, Elaine's "little kicks" and ongoing travails with J. Peterman.

and there are no people of color *anywhere*.

Yeah, there really aren't, and it's a problem. The only exception I remember is Seinfeld's Jackie Chiles: a pretty transparent Johnnie Cochran parody.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:47 AM on January 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


I want to be clear that I have nothing against Matt LeBlanc, I just thought it was a funny line.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:11 PM on January 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


Come on, Pope Guilty. There's nothing funny about Matt LeBlanc.
posted by ODiV at 1:12 PM on January 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


Agreed. The '94 Château Cheval Matt LeBlanc is a serious vintage.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:30 PM on January 7, 2015


> Friends was one of the most annoying TV shows I've encountered. Seinfeld was the most annoying. New York city is the setting, everyone has nice apartments, no one seems to have jobs, and there are no people of color *anywhere*. Hate them both.

I totally agree. And gods forbid I express my dislike out loud in any casual setting, even in the most demure way, because people LOVE to try to change my mind while aggressively reciting their favorite bits and pontificating about it. Blergh.
posted by desuetude at 8:43 PM on January 7, 2015


(That said, I kinda loved this.)
posted by desuetude at 8:47 PM on January 7, 2015


Metafilter: gods forbid I express my dislike out loud in any casual setting, even in the most demure way, because people LOVE to try to change my mind while aggressively reciting their favorite bits and pontificating about it.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:13 PM on January 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


If you've tried Friends and it wasn't for you, well, too bad. Not everyone can like everything. But if you never really watched it (especially the first four seasons or so) and kind of assume it must be schlock because of it's reputation, I do strongly suggest giving it a try. The writing (once the writers really start hitting their stride) is unbelievably sharp. In particular, the way they tease out three separate plot lines and then have them intertwine and bounce off each other in each episode is truly astonishing, given the 22 minute constraints. It has something of the amazing compression and wit of a sonnet or some other highly constrained poetic form.

As for the "but it's not realistic!" complaints: really? You can only enjoy something if it's strict realism? That seems a weirdly arbitrary way of depriving yourself of all kinds of artistic pleasures. Opera's out in its entirety, pretty much all genre fiction is dead in the water etc. etc. Again, if you can't enjoy something unless all the details of the characters' lives fall within some predefined range of statistical probability, I'm not going to be able to argue you out of that, but it does seem sadly confining.
posted by yoink at 9:44 PM on January 7, 2015


I think perhaps the complaint is something along the lines of "it's unrealistic in a way that makes the characters unrelatable for me"
posted by Wolfdog at 4:19 AM on January 8, 2015


I think perhaps the complaint is something along the lines of "it's unrealistic in a way that makes the characters unrelatable for me"

That seems worse. Now you have two restrictions: A) it has to be "realistic" and B: it has to be somehow reflective of your own life. Again, if that's the only kind of story you can enjoy, well, there's no way to argue you out of hat position, but it seems sadly narcissistic. "These people's lives aren't exactly like mine: why should I be inteested in them?"
posted by yoink at 9:11 AM on January 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I don't believe any heterosexual guy that claims he never watched Friends. You may have not liked the show, but you watched Jennifer Anniston every week. You can admit it, you are among Friends here.
posted by COD at 9:21 AM on January 8, 2015


I think it's possible to find some characters/settings unlikeable and unrelateable without that being proof of an inability to find all unrelateable character/setting unlikeable and all unlikeable characters/settings unrelateable. I also think it's possible to think the writing of Friends was pretty sharp for contemporary TV sitcoms and still think it was pretty fuckin' schlocky and blarg in a lot of ways. The world is not divided cleanly into people who liked Friends and people who are incorrect.
posted by cortex at 10:56 AM on January 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


I think it's possible to find some characters/settings unlikeable and unrelateable without that being proof of an inability to find all unrelateable character/setting unlikeable and all unlikeable characters/settings unrelateable.

Sure: but then the criticism is "these characters are unrelatable in this specific way." What I find bizarre about the Friends criticism is that it's considered a sufficient criticism to say "no one really lives like that!" That just strikes me as a bizarre comment to offer on a fictional narrative (unless it's clear from other aspects of the work that it is trying to establish itself as a strictly realist narrative).

The world is not divided cleanly into people who liked Friends and people who are incorrect.


I was very clear on that point: "not everyone can like everything." I'm not saying that liking Friends is "right" or "wrong"--I'm saying that disliking things because they aren't strictly realist is strangely, and severely, limiting.
posted by yoink at 11:10 AM on January 8, 2015


Yeah, but you're sort of springboarding from "doesn't like Friends for reasons I find insufficiently compelling" to "suffers from a holistic lack of imagination or capacity to enjoy creative works" all in a fell swoop. Maybe some people just dislike a show you like for reasons you find uncompelling but are nonetheless capable of enjoying a wide variety of other works; maybe liking or sufficiently cogently expressing dislike for Friends isn't actually a particularly notable litmus test for anything other than whether someone cares very much about the fact that they didn't like Friends, etc.
posted by cortex at 11:42 AM on January 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I mean, I get you; I will dig way, way deep on why I like something that other people don't like and will argue at great (even, e.g., podcast) length about why I feel how I do and why I think they're mistaken to give something too little credit. I just think it's important to avoid generalizing that disagreement on a specific work or niche or genre into some kind of dismissive condemnation of people's ability to enjoy broad classes of creative work in general, which is what it feels like you're sort of doing.
posted by cortex at 11:44 AM on January 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I didn't dislike it because it was unrealistic. It's that I found it grating and irritating and the unrealistic aspects were like salt in the wound.
posted by desuetude at 11:06 PM on January 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah, but you're sort of springboarding from "doesn't like Friends for reasons I find insufficiently compelling" to "suffers from a holistic lack of imagination or capacity to enjoy creative works" all in a fell swoop.

No, I'm criticizing a particular statement about why someone dislikes Friends as being inherently implausible. If someone told you "I don't like Van Gogh's "Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries"—it has red in it" you'd think that suggested either a very sad neurological problem (if they genuinely disliked every image in the world that contains red) or a patently inadequate statement about what it is in the painting they dislike.

Similarly, I actually very much doubt that anyone who has ever said "I don't like Friends because it is set in a version of New York City that isn't perfectly reconcilable with the real-world NYC" genuinely dislikes the series for that reason. I would be happy to bet that there are lots of shows, films, books, comics or whatever that they watch and enjoy which are, similarly, set in versions of NYC (or other contemporary cities) which are clearly not reconcilable with the real-world counterparts of those cities. Similarly, to say "I don't like it because their lives are not like my life" is a criticism which I do not believe is anyone's actual reason for disliking the show. When I point out that that if it were one's actual reason for disliking the show it would suggest a bizarrely narcissistic outlook ("I only watch stories that are about people just like me!") I'm offering a reductio ad absurdum. I'm not suggesting that people who don't like Friends are narcissicists, I'm suggesting that people who offer that argument as their reason for not liking the show are making an absurd claim.

You know what's a perfectly good reason for not liking Friends? "I gave it a try, watched a bunch of episodes, and it just didn't work for me." That's unassailable. There are, no doubt, all kinds of other perfectly unassailable reasons for not liking the show. But "it's not a realistic portrait of NYC in the 90s" and "their lives are not like my life" are not.
posted by yoink at 9:34 PM on January 9, 2015


« Older She Looks Like Sunday Comics: Watching The Brenda...   |   A Movie For Ants Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments