On Monday, December 3, 2018, America seemed to be shaken to its core by the news we all woke up to. No, it wasn't another mass shooting, or a disturbing and idiotic tweet from Trump, or a new devastating statistic on the amount of starving people in the world, or even the death of a beloved public figure.
What was it? It was the news that there seemed to be plans for the TV show "Friends" to be taken off of the streaming service Netflix come January. It has since been announced that the show will stay on in the U.S. "throughout 2019." Even if the show was being pulled from Netflix, however, I can't help but feel as though there has been an extreme overreaction among the general public.
Come May, it will officially be 15 years since the show went off the air. 15 years.
It's been on Netflix since January 1, 2015. Almost a full, four years. That is way more than enough time for anyone with a Netflix account (or, let's be honest, access to someone else's) to watch the show straight through beginning to end. If it's been this long and you still haven't seen it, then that's on you.
To me, getting angry about not being able to watch an almost 15-year-old show on one specific platform anymore is just as ridiculous as getting angry at someone for spoiling a plot point in the show after all this time.
Let me emphasize the fact that this is indeed just on one single platform. Even if the show was leaving Netflix, it could still be viewed on a variety of other platforms, including iTunes and YouTube. Hell, I can think of several TV stations that constantly play reruns of the show, the most forefront in my mind of which is TBS. You can still get your "Friends" fix in any of the places if you really want to, it isn't like Netflix is the end all be all of where TV shows live post series end.
Don't get me wrong here, I love the show myself. I've seen every episode at least five times. May I also just add that none of those times were ever on Netflix. My point here is that there are much more important things for people to rally against and be pissed about in this day and age.
The fact that the one things that everyone seems to have banded together and gone crazy over is a 15-year-old show being taken off of a single platform just boggles my mind. To me, to say that everyone is overreacted would be a giant understatement.
