Who needs the Fed to stimulate the economy when we could have ‘Friends’ for an additional year?
The vitality of our economy depends upon the willingness of Americans to spend, and for Americans to start new businesses, to purchase new equipment and to invest in the future of this country.
President Bush, speaking to business and agricultural leaders last Friday
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They are an economic stimulus package unto themselves, key cogs in an engine that generates hundreds of millions of dollars annually for a diverse group of industries. For advertisers, they sell computers, hamburgers, hair products, fashion magazines. They help sell couches and tight-fitting sweaters, not to mention memberships to gyms so your body will protrude in the right places from those sweaters.
For that matter, they probably help sell the treadmills that fill those gyms and give gainful employment to Spinning instructors and yoga gurus, stimulating a bump in the number of those yoga mats being sold, those special Spinning shoes. I’m not aware of any studies on the matter, but I bet they even encourage aspiring Jamba Juice and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf franchisees to take the plunge into the high-stakes world of small entrepreneurship, which of course means an attendant spike in the manufacturing of blenders, cappuccino makers and pretentious conversation.
We are talking about the cast members of “Friends,” who are currently in the final year of a contract that pays them a base salary of $750,000 a week to make 24 episodes of the most popular show on television. The sitcom is in its eighth and perhaps final season; persuading David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry, Courteney Cox Arquette and Matt LeBlanc to agree to another season will presumably mean paying them at least as much or more than they’re already making--from silly money to money that’s laugh-out-loud funny.
These are charged times, and I don’t mean to question anyone’s love of country. But it needs to be said, given the calls for America to stay economically robust: Not doing another season of “Friends” is simply unpatriotic.
Never mind fears that the show is becoming stale. Those sorts of creative concerns are frankly a luxury the country cannot afford right now. Nor is this a time for the actors to decline another season out of some artistic malaise or sense of pride about the show ending while it’s still popular.
This is a chance for Schwimmer, Kudrow, Aniston, Perry, Cox Arquette and LeBlanc to serve an even higher purpose than their art--to help the country heal , as celebrities insist they want to do. In this new America, this America of sacrifice, what better way for Schwimmer, Kudrow, Aniston, Perry, Cox Arquette and LeBlanc to chip in than to do another season of a show that helps get people obsessed with looking better, which inevitably leads them to the consumption of goods and services.
Consider: “Friends” is a key platform for advertisers, who use its captive audience of 25 million to 30 million viewers to sell their wares to a nation that is right now being urged to spend.
Consider: “Friends” is important business for NBC, the network that airs the show; Warner Bros., the studio that produces the show; as well as cable’s TBS and more than 200 TV stations that have bought the syndication rights. And of course, what is good for the nation’s media giants is good for America.
Consider: If “Friends” goes, NBC’s Thursday night lineup goes. And if NBC’s Thursday night lineup goes, “Must See TV” ceases to exist. And if “Must See TV” ceases to exist ... you tell me.
Consider: “Friends” is nothing if not a glowing advertisement for New York City, whose public relations and tourism business could use a boost. To that end, “Friends” is an ideal postcard, with its attractive people, sense of community and affordable, two-bedroom, 1,200-square-foot apartments.
“Now there’s another front on the war as well, and that’s our economy,” Bush said. “[The terrorists] understand how important our businesses are to our way of life. After all, the entrepreneurial spirit is strong in America. It’s part of our culture; it’s part of our hopeful society. And the more that can be disrupted, that spirit of commerce and enterprise, the more successful they think they will be.”
This is not to suggest that ending “Friends” would hand the terrorists a victory (as we’ve been told, canceling the Emmys would have handed the terrorists a victory). But keeping “Friends” in production will help keep America strong. Yes, the actors will have to make a few concessions. Yes, they will have to put their burgeoning film careers on hold in the interest of remaining on a show that makes the country hum. I’m already picturing the ad campaign. The “Friends” collected on their perfect couch in their perfect shabby chic New York apartment, posed beneath an arty American flag. I’m seeing a framed Jasper Johns print. I’m seeing the ad slogan: “In Friends We Trust.”
