In the first episode of Friends from College, a well-regarded but poor-selling novelist is encouraged to try writing for "Young Adults" instead by his publisher (Fred Savage). The novelist is outraged. "YA is destructive," says Keegan-Michael Key at Ethan, his voice rising in indignation. "It's all about adults who are refusing to grow up."
So is Friends From College, a comedy about one generation's arrested development, in which Francesca Delblanco and Nicholas Stoller share some of that anxiety about what kind of writing they can get away with. The premise, a friendly-fractious group reunion in New York, 20 years after their Harvard graduation, is essentially The Big Chill for Xennials – that newly invented micro-generation between Gen X cynicism and Millennial optimism.
In that, the gang’s behaviour is right on the money: bouncing into awkward group hugs, adding the word “yay!” to grimmer sentiments, pleading for intimacy with the words “I’m trying to download with you”, or broadcasting warm, mutual support while simultaneouslymotivated by bitter competition.
None is quite as corrosive as an affair that Ethan has been having for two decades with Sam (Annie Parisse), who alternates between noxious indifference and fifth-gear mania, behind the back of his vanilla wife Lisa (Cobie Smulders).
Like them, the show vacillates between wired comic energy – Key, a hyper-animated comedian, is the pacemaker – and more serious intimations of betrayal and missed opportunities, as though the cast of 30 Rock had been sent spinning through the plots of Thirtysomething.
Fine in small doses, grating at length, the show’s real encouragement may be to put away childish things once and for all.
