Most critics like Friends, and the praise settles on the ensemble. The leads are credited with an easy chemistry that carries the writing through its thinner patches, and the sharper reviews argue the series is at its best when it stays close to its subject: twentysomethings in dead-end jobs, dating badly and growing up slowly. Several critics writing years after the fact find it has worn well, and one or two argue it was more forward-looking on women and gay parents than its reputation now allows.
The reservations divide by era. The two reviews of the 1994 pilot are the coolest, Variety in particular finding the cast livelier than the scripts and asking for funnier writing. The later dissent comes from /Film, which finds the show comforting but insular and dated, sealed off from anything happening outside its apartments. Even admirers concede a soap-opera drift in the later seasons. The spread is moderate, and nobody dislikes it.