Could it BE the last season?

Regular readers of this space will know that I make no apologies for my never-ending love of the show Friends, which begins its final season tonight. For those not keeping track (i.e., those poor deluded souls who think that Survivor is interesting), this year will be an abbreviated season for Friends: there will be only eighteen new episodes, with the balance consisting of classic episodes chosen by the fans. I don't know about that particular aspect of this season, since the show's been in syndication for several years now, which means that pretty much any episode can be guarateed to show up within a certain time frame, and since the show's first four seasons are now on DVD. But yeah, I'll end up watching those reruns anyway, because not only do most of the shows still make me laugh, there are some that even make me tear up.

How do I hope Friends goes out? Well, I hope they don't lead up to some big "capstone" moment for the show, the way MASH kind of had to. For my money, the best finale episodes of long-running TV series were the ones for Cheers and Star Trek: The Next Generation, both of which managed to tell stories that delved deeply into the shows' early, foundational years but also didn't feel the need to draw some big conclusion to the proceedings. When both shows ended, you still got the feeling that the next day, Sam would show up to open the bar and that the Enterprise would go on exploring the galaxy.

I hope that Friends doesn't do a MASH-like finale, with the characters each going off to some fate totally separated from the others. (Yes, we know that Joey will, since we know he's moving on to a spin-off next season, but that's it.) The MASH finale had to be that way, because it dealt with the war ending. Probably the most maligned finale episode ever is Seinfeld's, and with good reason: while I loved the idea of putting these incredibly shallow and narcississtic characters on trial for basically being themselves, the actual execution of the idea ended up not being very funny. And the finale of The X-Files was a really good episode, but it was handicapped by coming at least a year after it should have (and probably two years, really).

Unlike the writer of this MSN article, whose reading of psychological baggage into Friends is a lot creepier than anything in the show itself, I don't really have much of an opinion on specific things that must happen in the final season. Generally, I think Ross and Rachel should end up together, but I don't need a big wedding for the two of them in the finale. I don't need to see the entire gang break up, with Chandler and Monica moving to Chicago or some such thing. Basically, the show's writers have done exceedingly well for nine years now; I'm willing to go along for a tenth.

(But there must be a final cameo for Janice. Maybe she and Gunther can end up together?)