If you're older than 40, you'd probably really enjoy rewatching Friends in 2022. It's a reminder of ~the good ole days~, back when smartphones didn't exist and people had to memorize each other's phone numbers (cue nostalgia).
But if you're in your teens, watching the show for the first time would probably be so confusing. Clearly, things are super different now, so there are bound to be certain references on the show that would make no sense to someone born after it aired.
Well, this was all confirmed when Rebecca Makkai, a Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist, tweeted that there were dozens of things she had to explain to her Gen Z daughter when they watched Friends together:
I'm rewatching all of Friends with my 14-year-old daughter. We are on season 2. Here is a running, but incomplete, list of all the things I have needed to explain to her:
"Friends is, for some reason, wildly popular with middle schoolers right now, and one of my daughter’s best friends kept telling her she should watch it. It’s a show that I enjoyed in its first seasons — it debuted my senior year of high school — but I knew it hadn’t aged well, so I told her if she wanted to watch it, I’d love to watch together," Rebecca told BuzzFeed.
"Before we started, I told her there were going to be representations of queer and trans characters that were offensive, and we talked about how the show whitewashed New York City. She’s personally very big on LGBTQ rights and history, and her generation on the whole is much better prepared than mine was to look for systemic racism and sexism and to notice something like the fat-shaming that occurs on the show, so when I point those things out as we watch, I get a lot of eye-rolling. She’s an eighth-grader; I’m used to it."
Here are all the things Rebecca had to explain to her 14-year-old daughter while they watched the show — it's a great reminder of how much has changed since the show first aired:
1. "Milk cartons used to have pictures of missing kids."
2. "Who Dudley Moore was."
3. "Who Joan Collins is."
4. "What pagers were, and how they worked."
5. "That you could see people off at the airport gate."
6. "That you could meet people at the airport gate."
7. "The fact that if this apartment were real, it would be worth millions of dollars."
8. "What Bloomingdale's is."
9. "Who Demi Moore is."
10. "That 'Eddie Moskowitz' is a Jewish name."
11. "How perfume samples work in department stores."
12. "Why secretaries answer office phones."
13. "What 'VD' is, and how stock photography works."
14. "Who Hank Azaria is, and the fact that Minsk used to be in the USSR."
15. "What a green card is."
"She knew what a green card was, but not the common '80s/'90s TV trope of marrying someone you didn't love for a green card. Weird how common a plot device that used to be."
16. "What the Ice Capades are."
17. "Who Mr. Roper was."
18. "Why people used to hold up lighters at concerts."
19. "How to responsibly split a restaurant check."
20. "What a hickey is."
21. "What a kickback is."
22. "People didn’t used to carry EpiPens."
23. "Could anyone please explain the difference between a pager and a beeper?"
24. "What 'great rack' means."
25. "What 'closure' is."
26. "People used to memorize each other’s phone numbers."
27. "People don’t always remember what they did while drunk."
28. And finally, "you could call your own answering machine to get your messages."
