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Calling Friends "homophobic" is short-sighted, silly & simplistic. It was a show co-created by a gay man, scoring laughs off a mid-90s cultural phenomenon: straight men freaking out about seeming gay—as a result of the increased visibility of out, comfortable gay men.
EVERY 90s white-boy sitcom had a plot like this. It was a cliché. It was a period full of weird, nervous jokes about masculinity—aimed at, & centered around, straight men. Gay men themselves were portrayed on the show as ordinary people, amused by these weird freakouts.
Meanwhile, showing Ross' ex & her wife getting married was viewed, legitimately, as a pro-gay breakthrough. The show's comic aim could veer off course (the Chandler's dad stuff always felt screwy) & some of it now feels hokey or sour, but it wasn't hostile to gay people: it was
obsessed with the idea that if gay men were all over the Upper West Side happily brunching, what made Chandler & Joey any different? The way bigger '90s problem was how few central gay characters existed, to have their *own* stupid freakouts—until Ellen & finally Will & Grace.
That's still an issue—and a more important one, from my POV, than a sharply made sitcom that now doubles as an illuminating time machine & a stage for Genius JAniston. Next week, I will go back to discussing how Jewish all these 90s shows were, erased by network anti-semitism!
