'Friends: The Reunion' reviewed.

So when it comes to the current state of sitcoms on television, it's pretty clear that things are not going great. At the moment, there aren't any live-action sitcoms on tv that are popular and that people would actually be talking about. 

Indeed, once 'Modern Family', a popular & award winning comedy went off the air a couple of years ago, after that there haven't been any new sitcoms to watch. All the new shows have been painfully unfunny and not even remotely entertaining, if we're being honest here. 

So naturally, once I noticed that there was a reunion episode of 'Friends', a show that everyone watched back in the day, I felt somewhat excited. Even though the series had been off the air for seventeen years already, I knew I had to watch the two hour special. 

Having now seen the reunion show last week, I have to say that overall I'm fairly glad that I managed to watch the episode. There's enough solid stuff in it for the fans, even though there's some pretty obvious problems too that need to be addressed. 

Premise-wise, it has to be said that a lot of people were a bit disappointed that we didn't get a new scripted episode that would have followed these six characters. It's something that didn't happen, because the creators and the actors simply didn't want to do that. 

Indeed, the reason for this was that since in the series finale every character got a happy ending and a positive send off, the audience already got what they wanted. If they'd have given us a '15 year later' episode, it would have been bound to be disappointing. 

At the same time, just because we didn't get a 'scripted' episode, that doesn't mean that we didn't get anything. What we did get was a special where the actors were as themselves talking about the show and the characters (+ doing some table reads too).

Not surprisingly, looks-wise, since it was already 17 years when the last episodes aired and 27 years since the first episode premiered, the actors now looked different. They were obviously older and had clearly aged during this years - some more gracefully than the others. 

Content-wise, what I liked most about the special was when we saw them visiting the old set of the show. This was a stage that they hadn't visited once the series finale was shot in 2004 (it was immediately disassembled after the finale). 

Indeed, as you kept watching and listening to them talking with each other about the series and doing a light hearted quiz, I felt good about the whole thing. Clearly there was a reason why the show worked as well as it did during its run (the producers chimed in too).

Substance-wise, I also liked when they had a table readings about some of their favorite episodes. It was pretty heart-warming how seriously they still took their characters and became Joey, Rachel, Phoebe, Ross, Monica and Chandler as actors.

At the same time, even though I did like a lot of the things in the reunion special, there were some things that didn't work. It was clear that the producers of the special were trying way too hard and didn't have enough respect for the original show.

Indeed, as the special went along, it among other things kept introducing us to celebrities that had nothing to do with the show, like David Beckham. The celebrity parade that also included Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and some female 'stars' was simply unneeded padding.

Furthermore, I honestly wasn't a big fan of James Corden interviewing the cast in front of an audience. Not only was this a bit awkward and overlapped with the content, but the rest of the stuff here - like runaway modeling - was also pretty embarrassing. 

Still, when you put it all together and think about the special as a whole, despite these obvious weaknesses that made it too long, these mistakes didn't ruin it. There were still enough good moments that managed to save it from being a letdown (the actors saved it). 

In that sense, if you were a fan of 'Friends' as a series or have recently been watching it on Netflix (or wherever it might be available), you should probably give this special go. You should give the reunion a chance and see if you'll manage to like it. 

After all, even though the special could have been better, considering that there aren't solid sitcoms on air, the reunion as a whole was still okay. It was okay and showed that even though things are bleak for sitcoms right now, there was a time when they were actually great.