Friends: Why only 10 seasons?

[alko]

Looking to their ratings, they could easily push for another 5 seasons.

Click to read more...

 

[themelkman]

I think this is the wrong thread

 

[alko]

Oh yeah, please move it to Entertainment.

 

[Brodeur]

Like a lot of long running shows, I think the actors/actresses wanted to branch out and do other things. In particular, Aniston was getting more movie offers and in general the availability of the cast was harder to schedule. Plus I can only imagine the actors had fear of being typecast as their Friends character.

I remember a story about Ed O'Neill landing a small role in a serious movie when he was still doing Married with Children. When a test audience saw the movie, everybody started laughing when O'Neill came on screen since they only saw him as Al Bundy. His role ended up being recast if I recall correctly.

And like a lot of shows that even make it to season 10, there's usually a finite amount of compelling plots you can do with the same cast.

Edit: Asked my friend who's a bit of a Friends nut. She said that the show was possibly originally slated to end after eight seasons but NBC gave the actors a ton of money to lure them back.

 

[Jumptheshark]

Looking to their ratings, they could easily push for another 5 seasons.

I realise you are fairly new here and rarely visit us but not sure is this belongs on the international tournament board?

and to answer you question, David Schwimmer tried to quit every year after year 7.

Like MASH and Seinfeild, the actors had enough

 

[alko]

I realise you are fairly new here and rarely visit us

Hm, im here from year 2004, with almost daily visit, so i cant say, im newbie. But yes, there are a lot of older guys here. From their view i could be a rookie.

 

[Jumptheshark]

Hm, im here from year 2004, with almost daily visit, so i cant say, im newbie. But yes, there are a lot of older guys here. From their view i could be a rookie.

Please adjust your sarcasm metre, it seems to be on the fritz

 

[mattihp]

The cast thought they all had chances at a career in movies. TV shows were also changing and Friends did not follow any kind of trends or changes necessary to stay relevant for another five seasons. The lack of diversity is on an amazing level and it stuns me it stayed popular for so long.

 

[alko]

Please adjust your sarcasm metre, it seems to be on the fritz

Adjusting.... Done.

 

[kabidjan18]

I love friends so much.

It would be more hilarious, honestly, if we keep this in the international tournaments thread than if we move it to its proper thread haha

 

[Ceremony]

Did you not see the Joey spin-off? If that's the sort of additional material they could come up with for one character, god knows how they could have managed another five years of the six of them.

 

[kabidjan18]

I think that shows like Friends, and another show I love HIMYM, focus on a very specific time of life, and that's what makes them so enjoyable and relatable. There is a beautiful time of life (fortunately, that I'm in right now) where you can hang out with your friends a lot and do a lot of things together, you can be free and spontaneous and have a lot of fun. And like in the shows, this bridges into marriage and even the early stages of parenting. But naturally, it's a finite period of time. And it gets replaced when people move out to the suburbs to raise their kids, or move to different cities to work, or start working longer hours at managerial positions, or have multiple kids, etc. And that's not a less beautiful stage of life, I hope, but it's different. It's less conducive to the TV sitcom mode of presentation. I think the ending of Friends was lovely, I don't think ending differently at another point would have helped it.

 

[JETZZZ]

It hasn't been their day, their week, their month, or even their year. When they found out it wasnt their decade anymore too, they called it quits.