You must log in or register to comment.
How about the notion that one can afford to live in NYC while working at a coffee shop with only one roommate
That’s not an absurdity, and if it looks like one then it’s the world that’s wrong.
The apartment was rent controlled, and legally leased by Monica’s dead grandmother. Monica was committing fraud.
But Joey and Chandler could afford to live across the hall from them which was never explained.
sigh
Chandler had a good job, working in data science, which was still mysterious and paid well in the 90s. And Joey likely got unemployment between acting jobs.
If they lived across the hall then why is breakfast together implausible? 😭 What is happening??
Admirable hustle
Hey - I don’t like the tone I used to read that comment young man. Fuck them landlords.
Fuck it. I’m getting radicalized. It should only be legal to own one property at a time!
We did this in college when we all lived in the same apartment complex. It’s was a whole thing where whoever had the latest class would cook eggs every Monday and Thursday morning, and it lasted an entire year before it fell apart due to various commitment issues.
The biggest lie tv told me was how much quicksand would feature in my life.
And the lie of someone getting knocked on the head and passing out for an hour. If you’re unconscious for that long after a head injury, then you’re not going to wake up again.
This is such a dangerous lie.
While it’s never happened in my presence, I can envision someone seeing some else get knocked out and going “Ah, they’ll wake up in an hour or so.” And not phoning an ambulance.
And the whole trope where one good guy knocks out another good guy to prevent themselves in harm’s way. Like, my brother in Christ, you probably just killed them.
That, and the Bermuda triangle.
I can’t believe we’re ignoring the danger posed by the Bermuda Triangle
I’d argue there’s not a single relatable thing in any of these sitcoms and the moment they stopped pretending to be and were about us watching the misery of four of five rich yuppies suffer, sitcoms had a resurgence.
Seinfeld went this way after Larry David departed, but Arrested Development was the first.
I had this realization recently. I don’t watch much tv anyways, but whenever someone recommend a show to me it’s just rich people doing rich people things.
I guess it’s a nice dream to have? I just can’t unsee it now.
Bob’s burgers is a decent alternative, struggling restaurant and kids playing with garbage most the time.
Idk about resurgence, there’s still a lot of traditional sitcoms on TV. They all get like 7-8 seasons, they’re all the same kinda trash. I think the difference is just that we now occasionally get good ones.
An apartment the size of a barn in the East Village at that.
People with apartments (& work hours) like that just might, idk what rich folk do.
It’s really hard to shoot six people eating in their cars during their commute to work.
Eating cereal on their way to work like god intended.
They lived across the hall from each other. It actually made sense in this case.
Good point. But, I don’t even have breakfast with people in my own house. Just don’t have time and different schedules.
Would have to be “perfectly” aligned with one another to pull this off in different apartments.
I eat breakfast at my desk at work because the milk is free then.
These were supposed to be young people with very laid back schedules. That’s what the vibe of the show was about. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a shortage of groups of young adults with moderately wealthy parents living in this sort of bohemian setting now and there certainly wasn’t one in the 90s.
But yeah, it isn’t universal and it can come across badly in sine cases
I wish. We had a weird schedule at work the other day and I left the house after sunrise… Golly, I know it’s February but I swear I could hear the birds and see godly sunshine the whole drive. “Is this what empowerment feels like?” I thought.
Ross lived elsewhere
Only across the street, they can see into the window
Did we ever see where Phoebe lived? Can’t remember it.
Also that a group of underemployed 20-somethings can afford huge, well-furnished apartments in Manhattan.
White people can do this.
Source: My friend worked around the clock in banking while living a room in a rowhouse in Manhattan. His roommates were random white people who were like aspiring artists.
I believe in Friends, it’s justified as Monika pretending that her grandmother is living there so she still gets her rent controlled tenancy agreement. I thought I remembered that there was an episode where she and the custodian were having a fight so he threatened to reveal the grandma isn’t alive anymore so that Monika would have renegotiate the agreement (and it was resolved so he didn’t do that.)
As for Joey and Chandler’s apartment, no clue how that one happened lol
You’re recalling correctly. Joey has to agree to be the building manager’s dance partner in order to keep him from snitching. My wife watches Friends on repeat so it’s burned into my memory from proximity.
As for Joey and Chandler, Chandler has a well paying job that nobody can quite explain as a running gag. He’s not a “transpondster”, at a minimum.
He works in data management.
IIRC Chandler was the only one with a substantial job. He worked in IT and then as a data scientist. There was a running joke that he couldn’t explain his job in a way that his dense friends could understand.
The show is set in the 90s and IT wasn’t something mainstream back then. The plot is not that they’re too dense to understand, it’s that it is too obscure to care
Well theirs is a rather small apartment, but I also think there as in implication that one of them has been there for quite a few years.
And you are right it’s both mentioned and an explicit plot point that Rachel and Monica are in a rent controlled apartment after Monicas Nana, not sure what OC is on about
I think Joey got some kind of windfall from an acting gig and then kept it rent controlled or something
I always notice all the useless junk people own in sitcoms. Like look at all that shit in the background of the screenshot.
Take a photo of any room in your house. Not to post on the Internet, just to look at with fresh eyes. You will almost certainly see a bunch of useless clutter.
I have one room. Can fit everything i own into three rubbermaid bins. Most of what I own is clothes or food. And I don’t even have enough pants to last a week.
In terms of stuff other than clothes and food. A laptop and an air fryer.
Most people prefer not to eat tendies off a paper napkin for every meal. Your case is not the norm.
You DON’T own useless junk? Only thing that’s stopping me somewhat is that I don’t really have anywhere to put it.
I mean, it looks mostly like kitchen implements, cutlery, cooking stuff. Not really useless junk. I have 8 cupboards of similar stuff in my kitchen.
And Monica was a chef.
The sizes of apartments on TV were also a blatant lie.
On the plus side, my apartment has four walls and they meet the ceiling.
What about the floor? Do the walls reach the floor? Do you even have a floor?
The size of Monica’s apartment was mentioned in the show. It was her grandma’s apartment and under rent control; the apartment building didn’t know that it wasn’t the Grandma anymore. With that, it wasn’t unreasonable for her to be able to afford it during the 90s
Wow even in a 90’s TV show they had to commit fraud to have affordable housing
man it sounds like rent control might be kinda nice? maybe we shou- BANG BANG BANG BANG oh how unfortunate, this commenter seems to have suddenly decided to kill themselves…
I’ve now gotten into two ‘comment fights’ about this, related to Seattle.
Seattle recently passed a new tax that will translate into… 200 units of housing a year, not newly built ( yay insane zoning laws preventing dense construction! yay NIMBYism! )…
…but existing properties purchased ( at market value of course, they could be emminent domained but thats icky and unfair to slumlord landlords)…
… and then managed bu the city to be priced for those making between 80% and 120% of Area Median Income.
Than translates to a rent of about $2500 to about $3100, for a one bedroom apartment, with two people in it.
Meanwhile, 20% of the population can’t afford a rent over $1900, and the 20% below them can’t afford rent over $600.
Those 2 20% chunks equate to about 160,000 people each, or 320,000 people altogether.
200 units a year.
320,000 people that can barely afford rent.
-.-
I point out that 200 units a year at that price point won’t do anything meaningful to the overall situation, and people downvote me saying I am impeding progress, while celebrating that this will solve the housing crisis.
I point out that there would be much more actual good than harm from something much closer to rent control… because almost all of the downsides from enacting rent control are already currently in existence because the housing ‘free’ market has failed, and everyone acts like I am economically illiterate, citing 15 year old articles at me.
I have a degree in Economics, but what do I know?
I swear to god, perma online Seattle people are the smuggest assholes in existence.
Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment seemed close to right although we never saw the bedroom.
Tho the houses seem to be relatively realistic for white families living in gated communities on the east coast
I never have breakfast. The Kelloggs company lied when they said it’s the most important meal of the day.
They are not wrong though. Just not with their shit.
They are wrong though. No meal is more important than any other. It’s different for everyone and pretending breakfast is the most important for all and sundry is just a marketing ploy with no basis is truth.
in fact, any kind of meal structure is ‘unnatural’, most indigenous cultures had a ‘eat whenever youre hungry’ type deal.
You guys have breakfast?
I’ll rather get my full 4 hours of sleep instead.
4 full hours of sleep and you only skip one meal?! Look at this guy living the life over there.
You guys are sleeping every day?
It wasn’t that much of a lie for Gen-X in tech. In the company I was with in Austin, we use to have a breakfast (from taco trucks or delivered). Employee significant others were welcome to join. You might think that it doesn’t count because they were co-workers, but we were also close friends. All around the same age, working together, gaming together, partying together, etc. Even after we switched jobs, a lot of us continued to meet up for breakfast, and I am still close friends with most.
Breakfast at work is one thing, breakfast before work is a whole nother level of time commitment. I’m pretty sure I started skipping breakfast around the time I started working a 9-5
Driving over to your friend’s place to have breakfast before work is just insane!
Ross lived across the street, and Chandler lived across the hall. For Chandler, the difference between his own kitchen and Monica’s kitchen was 2 doors and about 10 steps. For Ross, it was only three flights of stairs. The only one who consistently lived farther away was Phoebe.
Plus it’s NYC. They’re not driving anywhere; They walk or take the subway. Even if Ross lived farther away, if Monica’s apartment was on his way to work, it would just be a matter of getting off at an earlier stop to pop by.
Oh that’s right, that does make it more believable.
Posting when you’re supposed to be working?
You can make it happen, with planning and willing friends!
An impossible list of requirements
Nah
*Chugs down nutrient liquid
Ain’t no one got time for that.
