Do you really want to live in a world where Friends and The Office are TV's most valuable shows?

The Washington Post

There is a certain "cultural inertia" in younger generations embracing Friends and The Office and making them extremely valuable properties, says Hank Stuever. "I recognize the primal comforts offered by each (to say nothing of The Office’s emergence as the common meme-based language for young, wired ones to convey their full range of ooky emotions), but I cannot condone this cultural rut, this zombielike obsession for two old shows," he says. Stuever says a similar phenomenon happened with The Brady Bunch, and how it acted as Generation X's security blanket. "Irony was the key to it all and has been ever since — even HGTV’s Brady reunion this fall, in which the surviving cast members will help the Property Brothers renovate the San Fernando Valley house seen in the original show’s exterior shots, lends a certain tongue-in-cheek approach to the tongue-in-groove. Irony, in the end, used to play a vital role in our nostalgic regard for nearly all of television’s past: I Love Lucy, Leave It to Beaver, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," says Stuever. "The American Dream with a wink. But irony seems to have no place when it comes to the nonstop streaming of Friends and The Office. They’re slavishly re-watched with what appears to be an authentic and uncomplicated sincerity. Nobody watches them to make fun of the clothes or mock the message. They have been loved to death in the on-demand age, deprived of a proper burial.

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