Photo Credit: Netflix via IMDB
Last July, Netflix released its new original series “Friends From College”, which was very expected to be similar to famous sitcoms like “How I Met Your Mother” and “Friends”. However, the new show didn’t do the main thing it was supposed to do: make people laugh.
The story is about a group of friends who live in New York City and start to meet again after 20 years apart. The cast is composed by six people which includes Cobie Smulders, aka Robin Scherbatsky from “How I Met Your Mother”.
In the group there are all kind of people and lifestyles. Ethan (Keegan-Michael Key) and Lisa Turner (Cobie Smulders) are married and they have just arrived in NY City. Meanwhile, they are spending some time in Marriane’s (Jae W. Sue) house, a woman who studied with them in at Harvard and now is an actress. Her best friend is Sam Delmonico (Annie Parisse), a successful interior designer that used to date Ethan back in the days of college. After their break up, they started a longstanding affair that only Marianne knows about. The other two main characters are Nick (Nat Faxon), who is Lisa’s old boyfriend and the rich guy of the group, and Max (Fred Savage), a literary agent.
The trouble is in all the eight episodes. Ethan and Lisa are trying to have a baby. They tried many clinical ways to do that, but they can’t. While Lisa has to work hard in a sexist office to pay for all the pregnancy treatment, Ethan tries to be creative (with Max’s help) to write a book that he doesn’t want to. Ethan cheats on Lisa with Sam all the time – they try to stop it, but they can’t. The entire story goes around these characters, leaving behind the other three.
Photo Credit: Netflix via IMDB
The story behind these secondary members makes us wonder about some things that the plot doesn’t tell us. They just threw some things in the episodes and expect the watcher to deal with it without any explanations. Netflix tried to make a fun and happy group happen, but “Friends From College” simply doesn’t work at all. The six of them don’t even seem to like each other. All the time they lie, cheat and treat bad each other in a way that we don’t see why they are friends.
Different from “Friends” and “How I Met Your Mother”, the sitcom fails at make us laugh. Ethan, the character built for it, just annoys the viewers with his mouth’s noises and bad jokes. All in all, Cobie Smulders’ character is the only one who makes us engage with the story. We can feel her struggle to have a baby and we feel bad for her for all her husband does behind her back. By the end, Lisa strikes back and make her part of the story turn around.
The first two episodes bring some events that don’t even matter too much for the plot itself, however, the final ones start to become more interesting and lead us to an incomplete season’s end. The comedy seems more like a dramatic sitcom that involves cheating and hiding all the time, with generic scenes (like a fight in a wedding) and immature and shallow characters. Nonetheless, I have to admit I can’t wait to see how Netflix will end this love triangle story and if a possible season two will be better.