☕ Started rewatching Friends after years, some jokes land very differently now

I started Friends again from episode 1 last month. Work was awful and I wanted something easy. I first saw it as a teenager, at my cousin's place, on a very small TV. Back then I thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Now I'm older and a lot of it feels different. Some jokes made me wince. There's a running gag about one character's job that I used to laugh at a lot. This time I just looked at the floor. A few lines about relationships felt unkind as well. I don't think the writers were bad people. It's just that so many years have gone by since. I can see the show growing old right in front of me, and I'm growing old with it. My partner has never seen it before and watches with me most nights. She notices things I never did. Last week she paused an episode to ask why everyone was fine with that. I had no answer. I'd watched it 4 times and never once thought about it. We've had some good chats at 11 at night because of a silly sitcom. The six of them still work, though. You believe they'd text each other at 2 in the morning. The timing is still sharp, and the apartment feels like a real place that you would want to visit. I'm halfway through season 5 now and I'm still happy to put it on every single night. Not every joke survives, but the friendship does. Rewatched anything lately that felt different?

The six of them being believable as friends is what keeps it going for me. Take away the jokes that didn't age well and you still have a table of people you'd meet. Lots of shows copied it after that and none of the copies felt as warm. The coffee place is the one thing I'd steal from it if I could.

I rewatched it last year and winced at a few jokes I used to love. A couple of storylines I used to enjoy are now ones I can't sit through.