Monica and Rachel are fighting over who gets the last condom. They stood in the bathroom playing rock, paper, scissors while Richard and Rose waited outside their respective girlfriends’ bedrooms. The studio audience burst into laughter, and I laughed too, because of that familiar feeling. friends Plot in dialogue. Then I glanced at my ten-year-old daughter, who was curled up on the other end of the couch with a confused expression on her face. She looked at me. “What is a condom?” Hannah asked.
A few months ago, Hannah asked me if she could watch friends. To my surprise, my daughter knew nothing about a TV show that went off the air eight years before she was born, but she explained that a friend of hers watched the entire series and told her all about it. Now she wanted to see the show for herself.
friends It premiered when I was a senior in high school, but growing up my parents had strict rules about TV time, which meant I missed most of the first season. It didn’t matter; the show was so popular that it permeated the culture, and after I went to college, I quickly caught up. Even as I cringed at the gay panic jokes, I felt a kinship with the characters and found echoes of the show’s original idea – how your friends can become a second family – in my own life as I read College, graduate school, and early adulthood.
I told Hannah she could watch the show, but on one condition: I watched every episode with her. My warning was less because I was concerned about objectionable content—the show airs on NBC at 8 p.m., after all—and more because I wanted to be with my daughter this time. We’re long past the days where she wanted to watch a movie or show with me or her dad, preferring to use the allotted screen time on the weekends to watch YouTube with her friends or play Roblox on the computer.
friends Make Carol and Susan as loving, annoying, and funny as the rest of them.
watch friends Being with Hannah is like watching it all over again. She was drawn to characters who were different from me, and quickly declared Susan her favorite, as did the episodes featuring her and Carol. After their commitment ceremony (hosted by Newt Gingrich’s sister!), I couldn’t help but point out how groundbreaking this episode was in 1996. “Wow,” Hannah said, her tone the perfect balance between awe and boredom. To my child, who has no idea that same-sex marriage was illegal everywhere in the United States, the time I describe is as unknowable to her as Watergate was to me.
In fact, when I watched the show this time, I was deeply impressed by the portrayal of Carol and Susan. Most mainstream depictions of lesbians at the time tended to portray them as disposable victims, predators, or catalysts for shows leading people to discover themselves. In contrast, friends Make Carol and Susan as loving, annoying, and funny as the rest of them. Jokes about how straight men discover the idea of two women being together are getting old, but Carol and Susan have the most stable relationship on the show, and they live in a peaceful home where they and Ross have a son, six The main character’s primary custody stumbles into adulthood.
The awkwardness radiating from her was almost palpable, and I felt a twinge of tenderness for my daughter, for all she knew and still had to learn, for her impending adolescence.
Of course, part of the struggle and stumbling involves romantic relationships. That’s why, when we came to the condom scene, I grabbed the remote and paused the show. Hannah sat up straight, waiting for me to tell her what a condom was and why two women would fight over it. Her hands were folded in her lap, her dark eyes widened, and her brows furrowed slightly. She had the look on her face that she would have when she had a particularly difficult assignment.
I thought Hannah already knew about condoms. Her school recently introduced a sex education class for everyone in her grade, and I just assumed it included birth control, just like my fifth grade health class. But now I realize that since I was in elementary school and AIDS was in the mainstream news, my health teacher might have been instructed to include safe sex content. The gulf between my childhood and my daughter’s has never been greater.
When we got to the condom scene, I grabbed the remote and paused the show.
Should I start by saying condoms are for birth control? But wait, so do they. Gay couples use it for safe sex, and heterosexual couples use it for this reason as well. Well, safe sex and pregnancy, here’s your answer. Does Hannah know what “safe sex” means? Should I ask my husband to come here so we can have a full discussion? Is it a little outrageous to say that the show makes condom use non-negotiable and doesn’t allow girls to have as much, if not more, sex as boys, which is a little too cool? Yes, yes. Damn it, just answer the question she asked. Just say something!
All these thoughts ran through my mind in about five seconds and I knew I had to start talking. So, I did, choosing my words carefully and remembering the advice Hannah gave me as a child: Just answer the questions the child asked, no more, no less.
I cleared my throat and put down the remote control. “Condoms are what straight couples use when they don’t want children,” I told Hannah. “It is a sheath, usually made of latex, that covers the penis and prevents semen from entering the vagina. Condoms are also used by gay couples for safe sex.
Hannah nodded slowly, processing my words clearly in her mind. The awkwardness radiating from her was almost palpable, and I felt a twinge of tenderness for my daughter, for all she knew and still had to learn, for her impending adolescence. Then she nodded and lay back into her favorite oversized fluffy blanket.
“Okay,” she said, her voice confident. “Thanks. That makes sense.
“Do you want to talk more? Do you have any other questions?
“No, but can we finish this episode?” she asked, reaching for the remote.
“Of course,” I said, breathing a little sigh of relief.
Over the course of 236 half-hour episodes, she and I were transported back to the media consumption of my youth, with parents and children sitting on the couch watching the same entertainment at the same time.
Over the course of these episodes and months, we’ve had even more unexpected conversations. because friendsHannah now knows what masturbation, sex workers, and porn movies are. I get better at explaining each one, although masturbation is the hardest to discuss, thanks to the set-up: Monica thinks Chandler watched the shark video, and a misunderstanding ensues. Hannah quickly grasped the concept of masturbation, but her follow-up question, “But where do sharks come from?” stumped me. I’d say they came in because this was a Season 9 episode and the writers were running out of jokes, but I still go back to the classic: “Different people like different things, and as long as they don’t hurt anyone, it doesn’t matter!”
Whenever I mention to friends that Hannah and I are watching the entire series, they all have the same reaction: “How do you explain gay jokes?” But it turns out I don’t actually need to. Whenever someone made a gay “joke,” Hannah would frown, occasionally roll her eyes, and sometimes tell them they were stupid. She intuited something that took me and many of my peers far too many episodes to realize: there’s nothing funny here, it’s just that the lines are too mean and stupid to even talk about.
As we near the end of the series, I’m starting to feel nostalgic. Soon we’d be back to her, begging her for another 15 minutes of Roblox, or asking politely but firmly as she and her friends scrolled through some content on YouTube and streaming services I leave the room. But over the course of 236 half-hour episodes, she and I returned to the media consumption of our youth, with parents and children sitting on the couch watching the same entertainment at the same time. We have developed a shared language of inside jokes and references that confuses and amuses my husband. We talked about which fashions are the most timeless and which characters are our favorites. (Hannah is definitely a combination of Susan and Phoebe; I’m Monica, with a heavy dose of Rachel.)
After the last episode aired, I turned off the TV. Hannah and I were wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, my arm draped over her shoulders. “We did it,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, smiling.
We sat in friendly silence for a while. Then she turned to me, her face bright and expectant.
“Hey, can we watch? Felicity Will we be together next?
