Why are sitcom characters such jerks?
I watch a lot of television, the bulk of it reruns of classic American sitcoms on pay TV. I’m noticing a pattern here: pretty much every American sitcom character is a jerk.
And I’m not just talking about Seinfeld, where the lead foursome are acknowledged as jerks and you love them for it anyway. I’m referring specifically to Friends (though there’s plenty of other examples out there. See: pretty much every other sitcom ever to come out of the US), which on the surface is often held up as a shining example of the closeness that every modern clique should aspire to.
But even a cursory examination of the show (which I’m generally a fan of, by the way, lest you think I’m just dumping on it here) reveals that Monica, Ross, Chandler, Rachel, Joey and Phoebe are pretty much huge jerks. Like, no wonder they don’t have any friends outside their immediate social circle.
In the episode that inspired this post, Rachel steals Phoebe’s answers when they go to a book club together, Joey shoves Ross (who flies off the handle because of a vile-sounding sandwich) in Central Perk, and Chandler makes disparaging comments throughout.
So if the characters are such jerks, why was Friends so phenomenally successful?
TV Tropes (which, by the way, is one of the greatest sites on the internet1) offers one answer: the Friends get away with being jerks because they’re funny. They are. The scripts are snappy. The cast has fantastic chemistry. So you forgive the characters their jerkiness.
I propose another answer: the Friends are, as already shown, jerks. Yet they remain friends for 10 years. And isn’t that everyone’s fantasy? To have people in your life you can constantly snark at and speak down to, yet still remain close to?
- Warning: you will end up spending more time than you have to spare browsing TV Tropes [↩]
Tags: Central Perk, Friends, jerks, Seinfeld, sitcoms, TV Tropes
