![]() ![]() No one stole the spotlight, and everyone held their own - and then some. “Happy Endings” worked best because it was a true ensemble comedy (like “Friends”). Alex (Elisha Cuthbert) and Dave (Zachary Knighton) realized they needed to hold the group together, and the rest of the gang helped them move on through a series of joyous shenanigans. It quickly shed that premise, though, moving into more comfortable territory. ![]() Why It’s Like “Friends”: “Happy Endings” began as a show about how a group of friends can stay together after two of the members break up under the worst circumstances imaginable (well, the worst within reason - they still had to be in the same room). READ MORE: Why this Fan’s Ending to ‘How I Met Your Mother’ Is the Right Way to End the Series “Happy Endings” (2011-2013) IndieWire’s Consider This Event Welcomes Christina Ricci, Danny Elfman, Nicco Annan, Alethea Jones, & More “How I Met Your Mother” couldn’t compete in its prime, and certainly couldn’t close. “Friends” saved its best for last, and made getting there incredibly fun (even if the last two years had some bumps). Then there was a long romance that ultimately failed on its own terms (not because they were “on a break”) - only to be rekindled, seemingly at random, again and again until the final result: an ending that left most people feeling betrayed. Their overly complicated romance - adjectives applicable to the show in general - faltered more times than it flourished. Why It’s Not “Friends”: Yes, both “Friends” and “How I Met Your Mother” used a central romantic through-line to help sustain 10 and nine years of programming (respectively). It was about how he got there with his friends. “How I Met Your Mother,” at its best, wasn’t a show about Ted meeting anyone. There were claims that even the craft services were better on Friends, which filmed on the same Warner Bros lot.Why it’s Like “ Friends”: Premiering just a year after “Friends” ended in 2004, “How I Met Your Mother” tried to take the best aspects of the NBC classic and wrap them around a mysterious reveal: Who’s the mom? The CBS crew traded in a coffee shop (Central Perk) for a bar (MacLaren’s) and Ross & Rachel for Ted & Robin, but otherwise held to the same principles as its predecessor (they even kept the multi-cam format, complete with laugh track, despite being sold as the “modern” “Friends”). ![]() Although the two sitcoms shared the same premises and aesthetics, Friends received a better budget and the castmembers were paid exponentially more than the actors on Living Single. ![]() Living Single actors, such as Queen Latifah and TC Carson, have pointed out in the past that Friends was “inspired” by creator Yvette Lee Bowser’s Living Single. The ongoing debate about Friends co-opting the premise of the 1993 television show Living Single, a predominately Black sitcom about a co-ed group of roommates and friends living single lives in New York, along with the appearances of people of color, such as Aisha Tyler, Gabrielle Union, and Craig Robinson, being limited to brief encounters with the lead actors, were the catalysts that drove the conversation about the lack of diversity on the syndicated series. “That was really the moment that I began to examine the ways I had participated. “It was after what happened to George Floyd that I began to wrestle with my having bought into systemic racism in ways I was never aware of,” Kauffman said. It took the death of George Floyd in 2020 for Marta Kauffman, the co-creator of the iconic 1994 NBC sitcom Friends, to realize that the series was not inclusive and unfairly placed on a pedestal. ![]()
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