Generation Friends: An Inside Look at the Show That Defined a Television Era

By Saul Austerlitz.

This is a comprehensive look at the Friends history/phenomenon, covering the seasons, the romances, the behind-the-scenes drama, and the aftermath.

Interesting bits:

• David Schwimmer was pretty sick of television by the tie this show came around and originally refused to read the script, until he was told it was written with him in mind. 
• Lisa Kudrow "worried about what it might mean to become an actor. They were, in her mind, doing things like appearing on late-night television to ask audiences to save the planet on their behalf and other acts of self-regarding hubris." 
• Matt LeBlanc got the part because he kept improving AND he made the lines seem charming. 
• Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry were already committed to other shows and they could only get onto Friends if the other show failed. Perry "was entirely off the table" at first and apparently was coaching his friends into the part. But to make sure that Aniston's show failed, the network released some Danielle Steel movies at the same time as the show....
• Monkeys "spent most of their time masturbating and enjoyed throwing their feces in order to express their dissatisfaction." 
• The lesbian wedding episode was HUGE...and apparently in one episode Carol was yanking a pube from her mouth. I don't remember that! I also like this quote: "Friends was more than another television show now. In its embrace of the aggressively normal in its storytelling, it was able to expand the spectrum of normalcy until it could also include a lesbian wedding. Television had the power to change minds." 
• The guy who created the "Rachel" haircut "made it appear as if a stylist had grown bored at the last second with his work and decided to conjoin two different hairdos. (McMillan would later acknowledge that he was high when he created the Rachel.)" 
• The show declined to have Owen Wilson on it after someone read an interview in which he said he gave writers a hard time. Who needs that drama?

Overall, I enjoyed this nostalgia walk of a book, finding out details of things and the like. It also has a reasonable critical eye of the lack of people of color on the show, the dragging on of Ross and Rachel (several chapters on that), how they made Chandler and Monica work, how they tested out Rachel and Joey, and how the show still gets young fans in college now. Good for what you wanted to read! Four stars.