Welcome to a new Sitcom Tuesday! My coverage of Happy Endings will begin in a few weeks. In the meantime, I’m excited to set the figurative table by resurrecting a post from this blog’s thirteen-year run — a show and a season that has relevance for the next series coming up on the docket. You know how this works — I’ll provide a link to a piece that I first published several seasons ago, and then I’ll offer some updated commentary, relevant to today…

This week, let’s revisit… The Ten Best FRIENDS Episodes of Season Three: https://jacksonupperco.com/2018/07/24/the-ten-best-friends-episodes-of-season-three/

With my decision to cover Happy Endings here on Sitcom Tuesdays, I thought it would be appropriate to first rerun a few of the earlier hangout rom-coms with which that series shares some of its DNA. The most obvious, of course, is Friends, which really came to popularize this subgenre of sitcom in the 1990s, where there was a rash of shows about young adults living in the big city, looking for love. One of Friends’ best seasons is its third — when the series has already had plenty of time to discover and refine its main characterizations but is still also able to genuinely progress them in accordance with their established emotional arcs. After this — starting in Four, but especially by Six — the show is forced to slow down forward narrative movement for its leads, which then affects them negatively, for they not only stagnate but heighten as well, as scripts consume comedic episodic notions that increasingly lower the believability threshold, even at the characters’ expense. Three, then, is something of a sweet spot. It’s also an interesting year because it contains the breakup of the show’s central couple — Ross and Rachel, who’d heretofore served as Friends’ primary rom-com engine. That makes this season of particular note to Happy Endings, as the latter’s whole premise revolves around a friend group who — as set up in the premiere — is forced to navigate a new status quo after one of its couples splits. That’s exactly what Joey, Chandler, Monica, and Phoebe have to endure in the last third of this season — making for a unique time in Friends’ ten-year run where there’s genuine animosity between core members of the primary ensemble. This is strong interpersonal conflict, yielding a couple of memorable half hours. Most notably, there’s an episode called “The One Without The Ski Trip,” a self-contained, low-concept show where the core six and their present dynamics shine. It’s also an important entry in terms of narrative continuity, paving the way for a return to group harmony and thus the maintenance of the series’ premise. That’s smart writing, and a preview of Happy Endings’ more explicit conceptual focus.

Come back next week for more sitcom fun! And stay tuned tomorrow for a new Wildcard!