Friends
No sitcom has ever been as deliberately self-effacing as Friends. The title, the theme song, the episode names ("The One Where...") were self-explanatory at best, insipid at worst. They were friends; they were there for each other. Move along, nothing more to see. But it wasn't just the sharp writing or the comic rapport that made Friends great. Its Gen-X characters were the children of divorce, suicide and cross-dressing, trying to grow up without any clear models of how to do it. They built ersatz families and had kids by adoption, surrogacy, out of wedlock or with their gay ex-wives. The show never pretended to be about anything weightier than "We were on a break." But the well-hidden secret of this show was that it called itself Friends, and was really about family.
Back to Brideshead
The Myth of the Math Gender Gap
Pictures of the Week
Turning Up the Heat on Polygamists
Twilight and True Blood at Comic Con
How Sudan Was Brought to Court
Facebook: Movement or Business?
A New Cold War in the Caribbean?
A Pope Who Engages Secularists
Hasbro's Legal War On Scrabulous