Find some new 'Friends'

Let's discuss television for a moment, shall we?\nIt's been one week since Ross, Rachel, Joey, Phoebe, Monica and Chandler walked off to the coffee shop and out of NBC's Must-See TV lineup, and the landscape of televised entertainment is certainly better off without them. Now before all you ladies (and a few of you guys) head to my house with pitchforks and torches, let me explain my rationale.\nThe end of "Friends" signaled the death knell for the traditional situation comedy. The recently ended "Frasier," a far superior program, and "Everybody Loves Raymond" will most likely go down as the last two sitcoms that mattered. Don't misunderstand me. There are still many comedy-based programs on television that are worth a damn, but the old-school, "filmed before a live studio audience" sitcom has very likely reached its demise.\nThe reason that sitcoms are on their death bed is because their parameters have finally become more of a hindrance than a positive. The typical studio set with the couch at its center has become tiresome to most of today's television audience. Despite frighteningly low national IQ test survey results, it seems that the people actually do crave something more stimulating.\nAlong with the sitcom, another of television's most despicable companions needs to be ushered out of existence. I am speaking of the dreaded laugh track, aka canned laughter, aka dead people chuckling from the speakers. This dreadful device has been telling we Americans when to laugh for too long now. Never would anyone on the "Friends" set tell you this, but even though that program is filmed under the watchful eye of a live audience, the laughs of that audience cannot be depended upon to let the home viewer know when something supposedly funny has just occured. That's where the laugh track comes into play, and said laugh track is essentially the Pavlovian bell of television. The best comedy series on today ("Arrested Development," "The Office," "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm") allow the audience to laugh on its own, without the guidance of others. These shows actually trust their viewers' intelligence.\nSo where will fans of the much-mourned sitcom genre go for comfort? Why not into the realm of reality? Like it or not, reality television is now officially the most lucrative and, dare I say it, creative form of boob tube entertainment today. It has become clear that reality TV is no longer a fad or temporary sensation. CBS has risen to the top of the Nielsen ratings game on the basis of the still-great "Survivor," and NBC was close on its heels last season with Donald Trump's "The Apprentice." MTV has become a network of reality shows interspersed with the occasional Avril Lavigne video. And let us not forget that the term "reality" as it applies to reality television is in certainty a truism. What is more representative of human nature than a person's willingness to perform stunts, create enemies, and harbor bitterness all for the sake of the almighty dollar?\nLet us not forget drama. If "Friends" taught us anything, it was that a sitcom can be cheesily morphed into a drama during it's final seasons simply for the purpose of illiciting mass amounts of awwww's from its audience. So where do we turn now for actual worthy television drama? Well, for those of us without HBO or Showtime (the only two networks to host seriously worthy dramatic television for years), there's "24," "The O.C." and, as much as I hate to say it, all 15 of those "CSI" shows. For those lucky enough to have pay networks, revel in the greatness that is "The Sopranos," "Deadwood," "Queer as Folk" and "Six Feet Under."\nBack to my "Friends" bashing for a moment. What is at the heart of my disdain for this uber-popular program? It's not as if it ever tried to harm anyone. I think it all boils down to my distaste for the unreal. These six companions who all seem to never wear the same outfit twice, intermingling and intermating, obsessively discussing relationships and marriages and babies (by the way, with all the babies born on that show, how come you never saw them more than once?), and dodging all sorts of fanciful crises with the utmost success. What scares me the most is, maybe "Friends" wasn't that far off from many peoples' realities.\nSo if you're one of those seemingly millions of people who will feel your life is slightly less meaningful without "Friends" on the air every week, fear not. Reruns are aired approximately 30 times per week on three separate channels in central Indiana. Me? I'll stick to watching "Arrested Development" for laughs, and waiting impatiently for "Seinfeld" (laugh track and all) to finally come out on DVD.