It's getting late, and I have to be up early (5 hrs from now? 4 and a half?) so this will be quick:

I will miss Friends.

Hold on a second. Before you release your hitmen or let slip the dogs of war, let me explain. First, I will readily admit that Friends was not the greatest comedy ever or my favorite time of the week or anything along those lines. It was just a TV show. And, for those fanatics out there, I'll admit that I was not the most die-hard watcher of the show. But over 10 years, I certainly watched a lot of episodes and enjoyed most of them.

I'll miss the idea of Friends. A simple show about six people, living their lives, facing the silly-yet-not-entirely-unrealistic challenges of young adulthood, finding jobs, finding love, losing love, finding it again, and experiencing the various oddities that make life...well, life. Were some things unrealistic? Sure. Did some plots seem a bit contrived? Of course! But did it address many of the entering-the-real-world concerns and odd experiences that we've experienced in our short adult lives? For me it did.

And Friends was decent. (And, no, I don't mean 'decent' as defined by the FCC.) I mean that it was simply about normal people living relatively normal lives. More importantly, I believe it was fundamentally good. It didn't rely on violence. It had romance without relying on the near-pornography of certain other shows. And it certainly related more to my life than does America's new opiate-like addiction to the barren meaninglessness of reality television.

A Washington Post article online tonight said,

Now, "scripted" TV shows seem to be falling out of favor as so-called "reality" shows that feature real people in allegedly unrehearsed situations proliferate. NBC promoted its own tasteless reality entry, "Fear Factor," during the "Friends" finale; shots from next Monday's show featured girls in bikinis being covered with bugs and worms and then locked in coffins. Real quality stuff from NBC's ruthless, try-anything boss Jeff Zucker.

Friends was just about love and facing challenges together and making sure we didn't take life too seriously.

Maybe Friends was the first long-running sitcom for my generation. 90210 was huge, sure, but I didn't watch it very often and my impression in hindsight was that we -- and, yes, I'm defining "we" pretty narrowly here -- were too young to understand the inflated drama of the "real world" it referred to.

And maybe Friends will be the last sitcom of my generation, at least while we're still young. The Post article concludes, "Will another "Friends" come along to replace this one? There hasn't been another "Seinfeld" or, for that matter, another "Cosby Show" either. At the once-mighty networks, and for the viewing nation, too, this is truly no laughing matter."

Was I a rabid fan of Friends? No.

But was it an entertaining show with a positive message? Certainly.

Will I miss it? You bet.