The TV of 1998 feels more like the end of something than the beginning. Dawson’s Creek and Will & Grace were pointing to a new direction for their respective networks, but pioneering comedies like Seinfeld, The Larry Sanders Show, Living Single, and Mr. Show were closing down. Jimmy Smits was making his NYPD Blue…
In April, one intrepid internetter showed us what NBC’s Friends looked like without a laugh track. The answer, it turned out, was deeply, thuddingly awkward, as the actors were directed to leave in beats for the canned cackles and, as such, tended to float in a thick air of silence in after each joke. A similar…
What good is technology if we don’t use it to better ourselves as a species? That was likely the question running through the mind of Reddit user duncsmaps while they spent an untold amount of time recreating the entire apartment set from Friends using the Far Cry 5 engine. Upon completion of their masterwork,…
Do you mourn the laugh track? Sure, it still exists on duds like The Big Bang Theory and Kevin Can Wait, but the majority of TV comedies have rendered the laugh track as dead as the people who, once upon a time, produced that very laughter. Well, YouTuber Drew Gooden most surely does not mourn the laugh track, which,…
The success of the Will & Grace and Roseanne revivals has stirred up talk of revisiting virtually every successful sitcom, including The Office (but in that case, only for a holiday special), as well as many dramas. But NBC is actually showing some restraint in that regard—at a recent Hollywood Reporter event, network…
Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what roles we’ll ask them to talk about.
Every ‘90s adult has spent the last few decades dreaming of being one of the friends from Friends. After all, who wouldn’t want to live with a monkey, rarely visit your son, and constantly hang out with your couch-hogging friends at the local coffee shop? Warner Bros. has gestured toward making that dream a reality in…
It’s December, so it’s time to dust off those Christmas movies, those Christmas movies that aren’t really Christmas movies, or whatever side of that wall you think Die Hard falls on. But what if you’re in a holiday mood but not up for the whole two-hour jaunt to Bedford Falls? Or want something classic and familiar,…
We recently ranked the 35 best sci-fi films since Blade Runner, but if TV episodes were allowed, it’d be hard to argue against the inclusion of “San Junipero,” the shining masterpiece of Black Mirror’s three-season run. At once melancholy and romantic, high-minded and narrative, it inverts the show’s normal rhythms in…
In news that will come as a real blow to aunts and uncles across the nation, a Florida court has ruled that Facebook friends are not actually your friends, no matter how many Benghazi memes they post on your wall. The Miami Herald reports that a Miami appeals court ruled Wednesday in a unanimous opinion that despite…
From Friends to Game Of Thrones, there’s no shortage of TV shows with animal actors who raised hell on their castmates. Here are 6 of the worst.
A single television episode can exemplify the spirit of its time. A Very Special Episode presents The A.V. Club’s survey of TV at its most distinctive.
It’s been more than a month since JAY-Z’s latest album, 4:44, broke onto the music scene, and while we’ve grown accustomed to the weekly release of Tidal-exclusive visuals supporting the album, this week’s release carries an extra satirical/nostalgic punch. Starring Issa Rae, Jerrod Carmichael, Tessa Howard, Tiffany…
Star Trek: The Next Generation credits sequences are legendary, from their mythic expository speech to the reassuring introduction of a large cast of likable characters. Their every word and shot is canon to the shows’ legion of superfans. While TV credits have gotten increasingly complex in recent years, to the point…
We all have our obsessions. Some painstakingly tabulate every death in John Wick 2, while others recreate Game of Thrones’ Red Keep with Legos. Now, Friends superfan Kit Lovelace has shared some investigative deep-diving of her own with an intensely detailed breakdown of how much coffee each cast member consumed…
Although Friends was his claim to fame—and the source of countless sweater vests—Matthew Perry isn’t exactly dying to revisit Central Perk (though these days, even someone with Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip money might long for that rent-controlled Manhattan). It’s not just that Perry’s moved on to other projects,…
Maybe it’s because they’re clueless or maybe it’s because it’s just easier to shoot in a big, open apartment, but the TV industry has a habit of situating its financially struggling city dwellers in domiciles far beyond their means. The problem extends far beyond the Friends of this world, as even a critically…
Girls is saying goodbye this weekend, which is why it’s good to know that the pack of self-centered New Yorkers that pledged to always be there for you is going to live up to its promise. Following up on the Friends pop-up café that let you experience ordering overpriced coffee just like Rachel Green, the …
Hillary Clinton, Tom Hanks, Selena Gomez, Daft Punk. These are just some of the luminaries that Average Rob, an Instagram user from Belgium, has probably never met and will never meet. No matter, with some deft Photoshop work, this self-described “mediocre dude” can instantly become a pal and a confidant to anyone in…
On The Comics Page, The A.V. Club invites comics artists to illustrate their pop cultural flights of fancy. This week: Carly Monardo introduces a new and somewhat concerning co-worker.
