Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I love Friends. I have watched the entire series as it aired, on DVD, and streaming on Netflix when it had the rights. There are so many iconic moments that still make me laugh. So I was excited to see a book about the show and I quickly bought and read it. Ehhh. There are some insights but nothing that great, given that the show ran for so long. And much of what is there is just retelling. So I would have given it three stars. Unfortunately, the author felt compelled to examine the show, albeit briefly, through a 2018 lense of political correctness and identity issues. She goes on how the show had many "homophobic" and "transphobic" moments, and was incredibly non-diverse, with 6 white people forming the main cast. Then at the end, the author devotes substantially more pages to a very tangential harassment suit filed by a writers' assistant on the show alleging lots of dirty locker room talk in the writers' room. These pages weren't about the show, the actors, the plots, etc. It was just a chance for the author to tie into #MeToo. A really unnecessary diversion. I find it a bit surprising that the theme of Friends being an escapist, feel-good, no-drama show is mentioned repeatedly, and that theoretically the readers were fans of the show. Yet the author didn't have the sense to realize that her diversions into political correctness and identity issues ran exactly counter to that whole vibe and that people might find it really alienating. Thus one star only.