Friends from College — Blue Fairy Film Blog

Watching the exploits of people whom we hate has been a common trope in television for the past twenty years. The Sopranos literally revolved around the personal and professional life of a mobster and ushered through a string of character studies that centered around criminals, crackpots, and straight up jerks including Breaking Bad, Weeds, The Wire, and Shameless. While television critics have lauded the bad behavior of people literally killing people in the most profane and evil ways, millennials with daddy issues or middle-aged upper-class sophisticates engaging in bad behavior has never been tolerated by audiences. This was a lesson that Friends from College co-creators and real-life husband and wife Nicholas Stoller and Francesca Delbanco learned when their show premiered to caustic reviews from critics and blatant hatred from Netflix viewers in 2017.

Personally, I love watching shows about terrible people, especially when they get to enjoy the fruits of their evil labor. Not only does it make me feel better about myself, but it generally lends to hilarious social situations wherein the person gets some kind of comeuppance, or better yet, their antics go unchallenged without consequence. While I later learned that Lena Dunham imbued much more of the character Hannah than I initially realized, when I started Girls it was revelatory to shine a light on a cast of characters with little to no societal worth. Dunham effortlessly lampooned the New York creative upper middle class’ twentysomething offspring as they blundered through relationships, social situations, and professions whilst being horribly tangled monsters. In Stoller and Delbanco’s vision these same young adults have barely evolved throughout the last fifteen years, and now they’ve all landed back in New York City to continue their selfish exploits.

While viewers of season one devoured all eight original episodes in one fluid gulp, large swaths of articles proclaiming that people were hate-watching the show arrived simultaneously. (This development even included a list ranking all the characters by how much we hated them.) The cast of characters includes Keegan-Michael Key (Ethan), Cobie Smulders (Lisa), Annie Parisse (Sam), Nat Faxon (Nick), Fred Savage (Max), and Jae Suh Park (Marianne) and Billy Eichner (Felix) who are all extremely talented people who carry the series on their backs like Sherpas with two-ton mountain packs as best as they can. At the crux of season one was a long running affair between Ethan and Sam that had lasted through each of their respective marriages with little consequence. Viewers absolutely hated being made voyeurs of an affair without there being any repercussions, feeling akin to perverts titillated by the actions of these reprehensible human beings.

Season two finds the group completely splintered by infidelity and new alliances, but Max and Felix are soon to be wed, and so they must all come back around to tolerate one another and possibly reconcile. Stoller and Delbanco based these characters on their own friends from college and therefore weren’t sure how to deal with the blowback from the end of season one. They therefore created a reckoning for all the characters, and whilst there is still quite of a bit of inter-group dating and infidelity, this time it’s much less secret and seductive and much more awkward and true to real life.

Probably the greatest change from seasons one to two is that the latter is actually funny. While the wine trip episode from the first season was strong the rest were marred by interpersonal drama and tension. Season two thrums with heartbreak and nervousness, making for big bold set pieces that lend to truly hilarious moments. The entire episode in Atlantic City was enjoyable because it followed a group of friends willing to be blatantly honest with one another no matter what. The absolute best part of season two was the inspired performance from newcomer Zack Robidas as Charlie, Lisa’s love interest. Robidas was gut-bustingly hilarious in both his physicality and delivery, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he blows up in the next couple of years. Other than that, there’s a true sincerity and humility to this season that critics of the first will appreciate. While Stoller and Delbanco will never truly create warm well-liked characters, they have definitely edged in the right direction with this season. The only true way for the series to continue is for some of these weirdos to gain more friends, hopefully not from their college.