Social media has been abuzz reminding me the television show Friends (NBC) started its run 30 years ago and aired its final episode May 2004 – 20 years ago. I would guess that with syndication, it has never been off the air in the last 20 years. I know I have rewatched it when it used to come on every night at 9:00. Mainly just because it was there. With it streaming on Max and other options, new generations are now watching it. But they just don’t understand.

September has long been associated with the a few things.  Football season.  Fall (or Autumn depending on your geographic location and/or faux sophistication), the traditional school year start, and most important, the beginning of the original television show season.  That last one was definitely a big one for me.  I won’t go into too many embarrassing details but I would usually purchase a TV Guide or some other entertainment magazine and look at the schedule.  When were all the long awaited premieres?  In all fairness, the previous season usually ended mid-May and any show worth watching usually had something I had been waiting for some type of resolution for four months.  And back in those days, four months felt much longer than they do now.  Waiting from May until September for the answer to some evilly designed cliff-hanger should have developed a keen sense of patience in me.  Should have.  But somehow didn’t.  Of course, any promise in a finale was usually unwound in a premiere. Just to keep the story going another season because only finales got happiness (if you’re lucky). Premieres usually got more problems to solve. One of those storylines I waited for-EV-er on was the Ross and Rachel romance of Friends.