Those of you who know me know that I don’t watch a lot of TV. But I just have to tell you about this delightful little situation comedy I happened to catch last night at 7:30 called FRIENDS. This show is not only funny, it’s revolutionary. It’s about six developmentally disabled adults living in a big group “home” in New York City. Now, these are fairly high-functioning disabled people to be sure. And from what I saw, they don’t have a lot of support staff, or at least they don’t show the support staff on the show. But the whole thing just warmed my heart. I hope I’m not alone in thinking that America is ready to watch the emotional high jinks of a band of merry disabled people as they make their way in the Big City.
The real brilliance here is how the show’s writers have managed to show these characters, and reveal the funny side of living with developmental disabilities.
Let’s see, there’s Monica and Chandler, who are—apparently–married. This is fantastic. Not only do we get to see DD characters, but we get to see that they have lives just like anyone else.
The Husband used to work in a group home for people with DD, and one of his jobs was to take people shopping, run their errands, and drop them off for their hookups. No lie. One story he tells is about taking a sexually active client to a drug store to buy birth control. He helped her pick out what she needed, but then let her pay for it on her own (this builds independence). The plan was, after buying the birth control, The Husband would drive her over to her boyfriend’s house where she would…well, use the birth control. As the client was about to pay, she—who was obviously developmentally disabled—shouts out The Husband’s name, then, “I don’t think this is what WE need!” Of course everyone was then looking at the guy with the DD girlfriend who he forces to go through the line and buy the birth control on her own. Eyebrows were raised.
Anyway, from what I could see, Chandler is the only one of this FRIENDS gang who has a job. And during the episode I saw, he was hoping to go from internship to assistant. A big step. The whole episode builds around the tension of whether or not Chandler is going to get this job (his first paying? I wonder). And also around whether these folks might win the lottery. It almost breaks your heart really (Of course this subtly points to the gaps in the supports systems for DD folks—again, kudos to the writers and producers for “going there”, albeit too subtly) Wonderfully, at the end, Chandler doesn’t get the assistant’s job, but he does get a junior copywriter job. Fantastic! What great strides he is making. Apparently he has some sort of talent for words and has beaten out the twenty-two year olds (Chandler is pushing forty) he was up against. Impressive! And it warms my heart to see that Chandler has found his niche in life.
Next we have Ross and Rachel, who aren’t married, but have a baby together who lives with Rachel’s parents. I’m not sure about the law here, or what sorts of rights Ross and Rachel have given up in this situation (as I say, I just started watching this charming show yesterday). I haven’t watched enough of the show to understand just how profoundly Ross and Rachel are disabled; but I’d like to hope that the executives and writers over at NBC will, in the coming weeks, allow them to have at least partial custody of their baby. This would be a real step forward in network TV and an eye opener for Americans to see DD people raising their own kids. During the episode I saw, Ross and Rachel said goodnight to their baby over the phone and then went back immediately to watching TV and hoping to win the lottery, not giving their baby another thought. So perhaps they really aren’t ready to care for an infant. But surely as the baby grows older… I have my hopes for this lovely family.
Last but not least, there’s Phoebe and Joey, who seem to be the most impaired. At one point the Phoebe character pretends she is a pigeon and calls and leaves a message in a pigeon’s voice on the answering machine. This gets touched on again at the end, when she again speaks as a pigeon and the Joey character, confused by where the pigeon voice is coming from, looks around the coffee house for the hidden bird. Poor Joey. Here is the only place where perhaps the writers stepped over the line and stopped helping us laugh with the characters, and made us—instead—laugh AT them.
Of course there’s no way these six individuals could ever make it on their own in the world—and certainly not in NYC—without some major support network. I’m afraid that as high functioning as they are at moments, they are just too profoundly disabled.
The only thing I didn’t buy at all in this show was that it is supposedly set in New York City. None of these characters look like they’ve ever been to NYC, much less lived in the East Village. As someone who lived in NYC for many many years, and in the Village, and who recognizes the building they show as the apartment from the outside, I can tell you that these were NOT my neighbors. Also, the other place these folks seem able to travel to on their own is a coffee shop called Central Perk. Sure, that’s a cute name, but what on earth would this be doing in the Village? It’s like Adirondack chairs in the Poconos. It just doesn’t make sense.
But I understand that this is TV, and that most people watching TV do not live in NYC, never have, and never will. So this is a Hollywood idea of NYC, which dreams of apartments the size of airplane hangers, where six developmentally disabled people in their late 30’s can afford to live on their own as FRIENDS.
Tune in. I know I will be.
