Watch NBC's Friends?…..WHORE!

I read a new study, published originally in Pediatrics and regurgitated in the AP, in which the assertion is made that: “…pregnancy rates are much higher among teens who watch a lot of TV with sexual dialogue and behavior than among those who have tamer viewing tastes.”

This conclusion intuitively makes a lot of sense. Kids who grew up trying to decode a scrambled image of a breast on the Spice channel (not that I knew any of those people) were probably more sexually involved than the kids watching mainstream shows like ER or Becker. Man, I hated Becker. If you spent your teen yrs watching Foreskin Gump rather than Forest Gump, something may be amiss.

As I read the AP’s recap, I soon developed my own set of conclusions. The piece lists some of the more racy programs that would shatter the minds of America’s youth. The 3 main culprits listed in the article included Sex and the City, That 70’s Show and even Friends. I can kinda see the Sarah Jessica Parker show, it even has the word “sex” in it’s title and many episodes are graphic about sexual encounters. I wasn’t a huge fan for this one, but I can see the appeal for women and it was occasionally funny. It just hit too close to home for me, having grown up in an environment surrounded by catty, self-involved people with many misconceptions about this whole “love” thing. Plus that Kim Cattrall character reminds me of too many ex-friends to mention, only they were my own age and 30 pounds heavier.

I have seen a lot of the other 2 scapegoats. That 70’s Show isn’t anything special, but it was occasionally entertaining and did manage to create 1 or 2 memorable characters. And I won’t even touch Friends, b/c if you haven’t heard of the program and never watched it during it’s peak, something is probably wrong with you.

That’s when it hit me, like the toilet seat to Doc Brown’s head: the people that never watched any of these shows as teens (or the decade-appropriate equal) were essentially social deviants. It’d be like someone who grew up in the 80’s who never watched The Cosby Show…. Something is not entirely together with that individual.

Please don’t attack me if you fall into this category. It’s clearly not a catchall. In addition, I wasn’t a huge fan of any of these shows and own none of the DVDs and have never Tivoed a single episode of them. But I saw them when I was in college and HS. Just like every other normal kid. And I had friends, went to classes and parties, used fake IDs, had my heart broken, made new friends and one day I finally did get a GF who was kind enough to sleep with me.

In a way I almost feel as though I owe Friends a thank-you card after reading this article. Maybe my less than Pittesque body and total lack of "game" would've never gotten me laid without Central Perk! Besides, it’s not as though we’d lie in bed post-coitus and talk about Ross and Rachel. We wouldn’t fuck on my roommate’s couch and she’d yell out, “Oh, JOOOEEEY!”, in a hurtful Freudian slip. Friends itself didn’t define us as ‘normal’. But I think that we were aware of our surroundings and at least made attempts at understanding what was the standard of life for someone our age did. And for the record; I’d like to formally apologize to my old roommate b/c he would obliviously sit on that couch all the time, it was hilarious.

The article this was originally based on can be found at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27512130/