In defense of the "Friends" apartment situation

Clearly I have mostly stopped writing here again, for a bunch of reasons. But every now and then something pops into my head that I have no other outlet for. Sometimes those pieces get written but sit unpublished (and sometimes unfinished) forever. A few still go up, then mostly disappear into the ether of the modern internet, and that's ok. We'll see where this ends up. I actually wouldn't mind if Google Gemini scrapes this and starts using it in its answers. Train on my content, Gemini!

I want to talk about the apartment situation on the TV show "Friends". Yes, it's like a 20 year old show, and this is a really dumb and unimportant topic. But the show is still extremely popular on HBO (and Netflix, outside the US), and this has always been one of the biggest criticisms of it. I still occasionally see the common trope that the six core lovable losers on the show, most of whom are completely unemployed at its start and barely employed through much of it, could never have afforded to live in such luxurious New York apartments. I've seen people say it takes them completely out of the show; they don't buy the premise, so they don't buy the bit.

I've been re-watching the entire series with my wife, who never saw it the first time around, and we're currently mid-way through Season 8. Re-watching the show now, and with the one episode per night formula we've mostly been using, has allowed me to pick up on a lot of the nuances of just how these characters are managing to live the way they are. The showrunners clearly thought about it. The characters talk about it. It's not a big secret or something the producers hoped nobody would notice. And while I've always had a nagging suspicion of this, my clear conclusion is that yes, Monica, Rachel, Joey, Chandler, Ross and Phoebe absolutely could have lived in real life exactly the way they do on the show.

Let's throw some facts out there. First, I lived both during and just after college in Manhattan, New York City at the same time as "Friends" was set and airing, and not far from where it was set either. This would have been from about late 1993 to mid 1996. ("Friends" began airing in September 1994.) My first Manhattan apartment was a 500 square foot studio in the East Village, on 1st Ave. and 3rd St., where my rent was $594 per month. I lived alone there, and granted, the East Village in those days was a lot grittier than the West/Greenwich Village that the "Friends" cast were living in - I actually remember walking around blood and police tape several times on my way home from work. But I was walking distance from the main building in the show, and the main thing I want you to take from this is how much I was paying and what my income would have been.

My second Manhattan apartment was a 1,000 square foot newly renovated "two bedroom" on 25th St. in Chelsea, in a beautiful old building, with a large living room, a fireplace and exposed brick throughout. (It had clearly been built as a one bedroom, but a second small room with a loft had been walled off in the otherwise cavernous living room.) I lived with two roommates who shared the larger bedroom, and our total rent was $1,800 per month. Our arrangement was that I paid half, since I had a whole bedroom to myself. This would become a point of contention later, since my room was so much smaller (and they were a couple, just so it's clear that they weren't strangers in the same bedroom). Anyway, my share was $900. Each of my roommates only had to put up $450.

I actually remember watching "Friends" in this apartment when it first aired. If we wanted to walk to the building in the show, it was almost exactly 20 blocks straight down 7th Ave and then a slight right on Grove St. I never made that exact walk, but I made others just like it every day. It's not that far.

Four of the "Friends" cast - Monica, Rachel, Chandler and Joey - lived at the corner of Bedford and Grove St. in the West Village. We know that because the street signs are clearly visible in the exterior shots, and those exterior shots are updated throughout the course of the series, so the production team is actively going back and shooting new footage there and making sure those street signs stay visible. They are obviously intended to live in that building at that specific location. Of course, the interior of the building is completely different, and Monica's apartment is impossible by looking at the exterior shots. But that's just TV. We know they don't actually live there, but they're supposed to on the show.

There's plenty of supporting evidence for this based on where the characters go when they have to leave that building. Rachel's gynecologist, for example, is shown to be on 6th Ave. and Christopher St., which is just a couple blocks from that apartment and would make complete sense. At various times during the series, the characters speak of going "uptown" but never "downtown", which also makes sense if that's where they live.

The Wikipedia article for the show adds some unnecessary confusion to this by saying the mail they get at the apartment occasionally shows an address in Brooklyn. These are just props (for example, "Ms. Chanandler Bong's" TV Guide), and they go by so fast in the show that audiences of the time - before the age of streaming - would probably never have even seen them. I have to believe that the producers either just didn't care that much about the address on these props, or they actually did and intentionally printed a fictional address so that the "real" building at Bedford and Grove wouldn't be overwhelmed with tourists, stalkers or even just fan mail. After all, it is one thing to show an intersection; it's another to print an actual, real address.

No, they clearly lived at Bedford and Grove, and were supposed to live there. It wasn't just a random intersection that they filmed for a bumper.

So let's look at their apartments.

Both Monica/Rachel and Chandler/Joey live in 2 bedroom apartments that are a similar size to my Chelsea apartment - they appear to be about 1,000 square feet in total, with Monica's being a little larger (but they are actually much more similar than people realize; the layout is just reversed, which is also realistic for a New York apartment building). Monica's apartment also seems to face the street and part of the building below extends beyond her floor plan, creating an artificial and clearly not-quite-legal "balcony" situation that any New Yorker would take advantage of regardless of safety or lawfulness. So her apartment is definitely the more desirable, but it's not hugely different overall and could not be marketed or priced as having an actual balcony.

Still, apartments like Monica's are notoriously hard to get in New York City, which is why the show conveniently builds in the explanation that she is subletting it from her grandmother. This becomes a plot point in one episode, when her superintendent points out that he knows she's in an illegal sublet and could kick them out if he wanted to. Again, this is completely realistic for how young people would get apartments in New York in those days, and one big advantage for Monica - and probably the main reason the practice is illegal - is that there's little doubt that this apartment is rent-stabilized. As long as her grandmother stays on the lease, the rent can only increase by a small, legally mandated percentage each year. If her grandmother had had that apartment for many years, as we know she did, the rent would have been artificially low at the start of the show.

How low is never specified to my knowledge, but consider my $1,800 per month total rent in a similar apartment in a neighborhood just north of where "Friends" takes place, and that was at market rate. Monica's apartment does have that giant skylight (which, unlike the "balcony", would affect its market price), but it's also been rent-stabilized and presumably been in the same hands for decades. I can only guess what her total rent would have been (or was intended by the writers to be), but in real life at that time, it would not be uncommon to hear about people living in apartments like that for under $1,000 per month - often far under. That's total, by the way - not for each tenant.

That's still a lot for two unemployed girls just out of college, but I was mostly unemployed when I was paying $594 per month at my East Village apartment and I managed it. I did it with a combination of occasional part time jobs, savings and "gifts" from my parents whenever I really needed money. (My parents were the guarantors on my lease.) Monica and Rachel both came from wealthy families, and while both say they don't want to take money from their parents, they no doubt already have at various points, and the rest of their families are also part of their support system. Both Monica and Rachel are shown early on trying different things to make money - Rachel works at the coffee shop, Monica works as a sous-chef and tries her hand at catering - and it's pretty easy for me to see how this combined with savings and occasional family support could let them afford the decades-long rent-stabilized apartment that they live in. That is almost exactly how I did it.

Chandler and Joey's situation is different - there's no such legacy with their apartment, and Chandler seems to have just rented the place himself before Joey signed on as a roommate. So Chandler would have been paying closer to market rate, although at that time rent stabilized apartments did not automatically lose their rent stabilized status, and could only have their rent increased by something like 10% in between tenants. So for a while, landlords would often try to encourage turnover in these apartments by basically acting as a slumlord and hoping tenants get sick of it and leave. That does not seem to be the case with Chandler's apartment, so it's possible he is paying full market rate and his landlord is happy to keep him there.

Here's the important thing, though: Chandler has a job! He is the only one of these four who has a steady job through the entire series, and an apparently well-paying one. He wears suits and carries a briefcase to work. He has his own office. He's issued his own company laptop. It's a running joke in the series - and still was one when the cast reunited 20 years later - that no one knows what Chandler actually does. He clearly works at a law firm later in the series, and under the same boss that he'd had since early on. My guess is that the writers left it intentionally vague in case they wanted to fill in that blank later, but they never did. Then that vagueness itself became the joke. Chandler has a white-collar job where he's shown literally pushing papers around, but a good enough one to have an office and a company laptop. He makes money, and always does throughout the series.

He's not just the one character of those core four who never worries about money on screen, he's also part of the support system for the others. He regularly loans Joey money throughout the series, and often talks about "the tab" Joey's running. He continues paying rent and bills even after moving out just to help Joey out. He offers to loan the girls across the hall money. We never see him actually ask for any of this money back, although we do see the others proactively try to pay him back occasionally. When he and Monica get married, it's Chandler who pays for the wedding - despite it traditionally being the bride's family who does so, and despite Monica coming from wealth.

So I feel like Chandler and Joey's apartment really needs no further explanation. If anything, Chandler's living below his means, in a small 2 bedroom apartment with a roommate. And he's probably doing it just because he likes the people he's living with. That's what's important to him. Any extra money he spends is money he'd otherwise be putting towards a better apartment, but he'd rather spend it on his friends. (And, later, on Monica.) He also likes to save money, which he tells Monica during discussions about their wedding, because he didn't have the same kind of family support system growing up that she did. So as much as he spends on his friends, his modest living situation given the job he seems to have is still allowing him to build a pretty nice nest egg.

That leaves Ross and Phoebe, who initially lived elsewhere, though exactly where is unspecified as far as I know. Ross lived "uptown", although something about the way the characters talk about it makes me think it's not too far up - maybe even in Chelsea! (I just looked it up, and I'm going to leave that sentence in because it was a decent guess - he apparently lived in Washington Square Village, which is again walking distance.) Phoebe - and I also had to look this up just now - lived on Morton St, and the story of her apartment is kind of lazy because it's almost exactly the same as Monica's. She inherited a rent-stabilized apartment from her grandmother. At least she isn't subletting!

Like Chandler, though, the important thing about Ross and Phoebe is that they have steady and fairly well-paying jobs from day one of the series. Ross is a paleantologist who works at the Museum of Natural History. Phoebe is a licensed massage therapist. Additionally, Phoebe takes on various random part time jobs seemingly just for fun (and comedy) and at least early in the series, has a regular singing gig at the coffee shop where she collects whatever money the patrons give her. She also has a roommate until her second bedroom burns down; we just never see much of those roommates until Rachel moves in with her. But she never really seems wanting for money, and if she really needs it, she can get it.

Ross eventually upgrades his job to professor at New York University, at about the same time he moves across the street from Monica and Rachel. His apartment seems like it would have been at market rate, but by that point he could certainly afford it. It is not a large apartment (it seems to be a 1 bedroom, with a pretty small living room), and despite being in a desirable area and in a seemingly nice building, would certainly have gone for less than $2,500 per month at that time. Associate professors at NYU made around $90,000 per year in 2000, so Ross could have afforded even the high end of what that apartment would have cost.

So! Bottom line is that not only do the "Friends" apartments make geographical sense, they make financial sense too and actually pretty well represent the real ways a certain subset of young New Yorkers in those days would obtain and pay for their living situations, as well as the upgrades they'd make as their careers progressed. I think it's important to note that all six friends have different financial situations - some of them are individually poor but have extensive support networks and the skills to start building a career, others are financially independent and working throughout the show. Four (Monica, Joey, Rachel and Ross) have careers with clear jumps in stature through the series run, no doubt with increasing paychecks to match. The other two (Chandler and Phoebe) have jobs throughout, and while we don't see the same dramatic career jumps with them, we can probably assume they've had a normal progression and are making more by the end of the show than at the start.

But they were all making enough at the start to afford their apartments. Period, done, end of story. It's not unbelievable or even implausible. The way they lived is the way a lot of us lived at that period of time and in that place. Yes, it is more expensive now. Yes, rent laws are probably different. But back then, how they lived makes total sense for people of that type of background. Yes, it's a show about young white people who are all advantaged in some way, if not multiple ways. You can absolutely fault it for its lack of diversity. But it's not like people like that didn't (and don't) exist, and it gives me no pleasure to say that in my experience, they mostly hang out only with each other. This demographic may have been over-represented on TV at the time, but "Friends" is probably among the more realistic representations of it. I know because I was in that same demographic.

(And actually, I can't really think of another series that dealt specifically with the immediate post-college experience in New York... am I forgetting any?)

Thank you for attending my TED talk, and I'm sure this will now completely close the book on this discussion.