The Pilot (Friends)
The pilot introduces six twenty-something friends who live and work in New York City: Monica Geller, a single sous chef in her mid 20s who is illegally subletting her grandmother's apartment; Ross Geller, Monica's older brother, a paleontologist whose marriage recently ended after he learned his wife, Carol, is a lesbian; Rachel Green, Monica's spoiled, self-centered, high-school best friend who has just left her fiancé at the altar and is financially cut off by her father; Chandler Bing, Ross's college roommate and best friend who lives across the hall from Monica; Joey Tribbiani, a struggling Italian-American actor and Chandler's roommate; and Phoebe Buffay, a laid-back, hippie-ish masseuse, singer and guitar player.
After making final edits to the episode, executive producer Kevin Bright submitted it on May 11, two days before NBC was due to announce the schedule.
Critics compared the show unfavorably to Seinfeld and Ellen, noting the similarities all three series had in depicting friends conversing about their lives.
At the Central Perk coffee shop, Monica Geller is teased by her friends, Phoebe Buffay, Chandler Bing and Joey Tribbiani, about going out with someone and claiming it is not a date.
Ross Geller, Monica's older brother, arrives at the coffee shop, upset that his lesbian ex-wife has moved out of their apartment to begin a new relationship with her partner.
A young woman suddenly arrives wearing a wet wedding dress, whom Monica recognizes as her high-school best friend, Rachel Green.
After her attempts to get a job are unsuccessful, Rachel ends up buying a new pair of boots with one of her credit cards, which she admits her father pays for.
A second series by the duo, Family Album, had premiered on CBS in the Fall of 1993 season but was cancelled after airing six episodes.
[2][8] The script was completed in early March 1994, though before then eight-line character breakdowns had been sent to acting agencies in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.
At the end of March, the potential actors had been reduced to three or four for each part; they read for Les Moonves, president of Warner Bros.
[11] Unknown to him, Crane and Kauffman had remembered him from when he auditioned for an earlier pilot of theirs; they had written the part of Ross with Schwimmer in mind to play him.
Within three days of first auditioning for Friends Aniston nonetheless got the role,[15][16] because NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield correctly expected that Muddling Through would immediately fail.
[22][23] Crane believed that the part of Chandler, described in the character breakdown as "a droll, dry guy", would be the easiest to cast, though it proved more difficult than he initially hoped.
He was turned down due to his involvement as a cast member in LAX 2194, a television pilot about airport baggage handlers in the future.
He was doing a play in London and read for a British casting director, though his audition tape did not arrive at Warner Bros. in time for him to be considered.
[27] Many actresses who read for Phoebe arrived at the audition in character, wearing "bell bottoms and clunky shoes and nose rings".
[31][5] Despite the audience agreeing with them, they had to take NBC's considerations into account in case they lost the commission; they rewrote Monica's lines to show that she cared about Paul.
They sought to protect other parts of the script, some major and some minor; NBC wanted two of the pilot's three storylines downplayed to subplots, but the writers were adamant that all three should carry equal weight.
Crane and Kauffman immediately received telephone calls from writers' agents who wanted to get their clients jobs on the series.
[32] It ranked as the fifteenth-most-watched television show of the week, scoring 14.7/23 Nielsen rating (each point represented 954,000 households) and nearly 22 million viewers.
[37] Robert Bianco in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote that the "constant comic bantering grows a little tired, just as it would if it ever actually happened in real life", and questioned why the six characters had so much free time to talk about dates.
[38] In the Los Angeles Daily News, Ray Richmond, who had also seen the following two episodes, called the cast a "likable, youth ensemble" with "good chemistry".
[40] Robert P. Laurence wrote in The San Diego Union-Tribune that "A lot happens, but you'll still get the feeling you've seen Friends before", calling it "Seinfeld Plus Two.
[43] Variety's Tony Scott had optimistic hopes for the series; he enjoyed the premise but was concerned that dialogue from the writers of Dream On should be "snappier".
Scott was also concerned that the Monica storyline set a bad example for younger viewers; "Friends touts promiscuity and offers liberal samples of an openness that borders on empty-headedness".
He also praised the female leads, but wrote that Perry's role as Chandler was "undefined" and that LeBlanc was "relying too much on the same brain-dead stud routine that was already tired the last two times he tried it".
