San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Faculty Publications Communication Studies 1-1-2011 Saying goodbye to Friends: Situation comedy as lived experience Anne Marie Todd San Jose State University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/comm_pub Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Anne Marie Todd. "Saying goodbye to Friends: Situation comedy as lived experience" The Journal of Popular Culture (2011): 855-872. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2011.00866.x This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Communication Studies at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Saying Goodbye to Friends: Fan Culture as Lived Experience. By Dr. Anne Marie Todd San José State University One Washington Square San Jose, CA 95112 408.924.5391
[email protected] Abstract The series finale for NBC’s sitcom Friends was a media event, a two-hour broadcast promoted for months, and immediately followed by cast appearances on late night comedy shows and the next morning’s news shows. The show’s popularity demonstrated by fan response to the last episode positions the online and broadcast media discourse surrounding the finale as a rich cultural text for examining the influence of the modern sitcom on fans’ cultural identities and social communities. The Friends broadcast finale taken together with the online discussion of the show creates a site for the production and consumption of fan culture in three ways.