The finale of Friends was written for 3 sets of people. 1.) The cast and crew of the television series, most of whom spent the entire 10 years on the show. 2.) The writers and creators of the show. 3.) The "faithful" fans. Why do I bring this back up? Well, it's partially due to Matt's comments on my little finale rant and it's due in part to some nostalgia from tonight's redux of the Dick Van Dyke show or the original DVD as I saw it referred to in an advertisement.
I respect Matt's opinion on just about everything (although he and I will never agree about the best Pennsylvania hockey team). In this case, however, I think (and I stress think because I'm not certain) he's only a casual fan of Friends due to dislike. A casual fan of the show has no real reason to care about the six Friends. They also had a fairly good reason to dislike the finale. It was laced with the faithful tie-ups. They didn't try to do anything unusual (although the twins gag was nice). They ended the show the way they started the show. They took a little snapshot of the six and slowly had you care about each character in turn through backstory, drama, laughter, tears, and maturing. The final show didn't try to advance any character, no one had a life changing experience (that they didn't alredy know about), no one was jailed, no one died, no one hit the lottery. It ended with a nice piece of symbolism followed by one last punch-line. It didn't end making you think that nothing else was going to happen. You kind of create the next few scenes in your head and that will probably continue to happen until Joey hits the air this fall.
Once Joey begins to air, the universe that the writers of Friends spent so long crafting (and made so few mistakes in continuity in) will gain a dramatic wormhole by dragging Joey across the country. Unless he keeps in pretty close phone contact with everyone else and gets frequent visitors, it will do the finale a great injustice.
Ok, enough rambling about a show that ended a week ago (although the finale hit store shelves today and I wonder how it sold).
On to hockey. The Flyers managed to tie their series and apparently San Jose has just fell apart. They gave up two goals in the time it took me to switch subjects and they're losing 4-1 now. That means, barring heroic play that I have yet to see from San Jose, Calgary is going to go up 2-0. I can handle either team coming out of the west, though I'd prefer San Jose. I just have to keep hoping that the Lightning come screaming back in game 3 and take control of the series once again.