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Originally Posted by TitovFTW
I'd disagree on that. They had some quality character arcs for a half hour sitcom, the show didn't take itself seriously and I'd say they had a pretty strong cast. I was never a big Friends fan, but can certainly see the value in it. I think you're selling it quite short, simply because it was not your taste. Seinfeld also had the liberty of never having to worry about continuity or any type of story or character development. I love Seinfeld, but I don't see any reason to compare the two.
There are a billion sitcoms on tv. Friends found a way to be arguably be the most popular of all time and has found life well after it's season just like Seinfeld.
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I'm not saying there weren't story arcs at all, but from a storytelling perspective they had very little in the ways of actual unique concepts. Seinfeld created colloquial terms that people don't even know were from Seinfeld, each episode had a unique idea and there were most definitely story arcs in Seinfeld. Just not as many as in Friends. It's not that it didn't meet my tastes, I'm all for artistic variety and what not, I'm not the biggest Seinfeld either but it's just that from a societal aspect Seinfeld was way more impactful and "classic" if you consider how much it actually shaped the language, idioms and colloquialisms of North American culture. The show single handedly ingrained things like "yada yada yada", "no soup for you", "hoochie mama" and the ever hillarious "shrinkage" into the minds of Americans.
Friends was more around the formula, it worked, but for the most part it was the same formula over and over again as where Seinfeld rarely if ever stuck to a formula which is why many regard it as one of the best shows ever, I'm not even a huge tv watcher, just jumping in on the conversation. Personally I like Community better than both of them because of how much of a risk they are willing to take with their new ideas, things like the paintball episodes and the AC repair man conspiracy were awsome