Friends From College

Friends from College boasts a confidence that what looks like immorality is often just a vaguely more respectable form of immaturity.

The palpable weight of the past and nostalgia is a theme to which I, and probably many other viewers of a certain age, can undoubtedly relate. It resonated with me enough to make me keep watching Friends From College, and to even connect to some of it, while also wondering how much better this series might have been if the volume on its characters and situations had been turned down just a little lower.

Creators Francesco Delbanco and Nicholas Stoller rely too often on their performers' sketch-comedy and sitcom experience to craft amusing situations that seem natural even at their most ridiculous. But no amount of charisma can revitalize the season as it ambles toward its finale, bloated with so many gags that it unravels like old friendships strained to their breaking point.

As the tone of College shifts from slapstick to seriocomic in a series of cringe-inducing set pieces of social awkwardness, you may grow dizzy from the love-or-hate-them seesaw. [10-23 Jul 2017, p.13]

It always feels like Friends From College could be exerting a little more effort.

Germann plays Sam’s husband, who at first seems distant but then reveals touching devotion to his family. If only the main cast had such material to shine.

Friends From College is largely uncomfortable to watch, although when it’s funny, it can be brilliant. The show’s biggest crime is that it overestimates its audience’s tolerance for watching people screw up.

Friends From College is a mess. It’s a messy story with messy structuring and messy characters, and while the last point may sound like an attribute for a mature adult comedy about aging, relationships, and responsibilities, be warned: These characters won’t stimulate fresh thought or delight you with their quirks. ... Brief, random bits of their inherent charm pop up, but they’re almost instantly squashed by circumstance or a quick cut to the next scene.

Despite its top-flight cast, something less than the sum of its often ill-fitting parts. If the series bumps along at times as if it had one triangular wheel, it has plenty of funny moments and some genuinely lovely performances.

The show doesn't have much narrative momentum, which makes the eight episodes at times feel slightly disconnected.

The show and the characters try to wedge the sitcom schtick into the dark reality of maturity and vice versa and the show and the characters fail. There are effective beats of drama in Ethan and Lisa's fertility saga and they're constantly undermining or getting undermined by comedy. The fictional characters, actual human life and the overall world of Friends From College are often working on three different levels, which may be exactly the kind of show that Friends From College is aspiring to be.

There are a few funny lines here and there. But too few of them, and too far in between, makes Friends From College that rare Netflix misfire.

At the very least, Friends from College manages to have its fair share of funny moments, especially when getting into a consistent flow of levity. It’s just a shame that these scenes often sidestep into intentionally cringe-inducing drama that needs a better evaluation of the stakes.

You end up identifying more with the people from outside the group, looking on as these people force friendships with folks from their past they’ve clearly outgrown. As viewers, we know how they feel.

A promising generational sitcom that might have had something to offer its target audience of middle-aged folks raised on Friends but squanders all of our interest with mirthless, misguided strategies for holding it. The only spectacle it offers is the shocking magic trick of turning a bright, dazzling cast into a bunch of dim bulbs.

There’s more at stake than in your average sitcom, but the antics are juvenile, and the tone is all over the place.

All the stars are as likable and watchable as you might think they’d be, yet the show that they’re in is nearly bereft of humor or poignance. It’s as though everyone signed on without reading a script and, good sports all, just forged ahead anyway.

In the eight-episode Netflix series, there’s plenty of action but all of it isn’t that interesting.

While it’s the type of series that seems like it will click instantly, the result is shallow and grating. Episodes rely on cheap jokes that feel outdated (an obsession with poking at Twilight) or too cringeworthy and crude to be funny (a hedge-fund bro using his genitals to control a speakerphone).

[The actors are] saddled with unlikable characters, a distasteful infidelity plot and an erratic tone that never quite finds itself.

Stoller shapes each episode to indulge the performers’ idiosyncrasies as opposed to servicing the story or character development, and the result is a flimsy story somewhat flogged into shape by hammy eccentricity.

Friends From College is not very good, not very good at all. It wastes the great cast, and even makes them irritating with lame slapstick, lazily written gags, and awkward attempts at drama. After a few episodes, I began to find all of them unbearable.

The writing and direction fail the talented actors (including high-profile guest stars like Kate McKinnon and Seth Rogen), trapping them in annoyingly contrived storylines and unfunny set pieces.

The result is a comedy-drama whose comedy is grating and whose drama doesn’t really engage with its essential sadness.

There is perhaps no better example of how much a show is not the sum of its talented parts than this one as it looks like a home run on paper but strikes out in reality.

Along with the show’s inability to find a consistent comic tone or a memorable story line (it leans heavily on the usual choices: marital infidelity, light class envy, fertility issues), Friends From College makes embarrassingly poor use of a cast that deserves to be in a better show.

Friends From College is a shrill and unpleasant dramedy about the dangers of maintaining youthful friendships deep into adulthood.

The show’s main issue is that it demonstrates little ability to create or deepen characters who are worth watching, despite their personal deficiencies.

Inevitably, this series evokes “thirtysomething” and “The Big Chill,” except in this case, everyone is turning 40 and there’s no dead guy to bring them all together. Just a deadly concept and script.