Twenty-one years ago last month, “Friends” made its debut¹ on NBC, to almost instant acclaim² and popularity, beginning a 10-year run that ushered³ into the culture various styles and mannerisms — Jennifer Aniston’s haircut, most notably⁴ — in a way that now rarely occurs, because the television landscape has become drastically more diffuse⁵.

21年前的上个月，《老友记》(Friends)在全国广播公司(NBC)开播，几乎立刻就赢得赞誉，成为热门剧目，一连播出十季，为文化注入了各种时尚和习性，最有名的就是詹妮弗·安妮斯顿(Jennifer Aniston)的发型。如今，这样的情况比较罕见了，因为几乎没有哪部电视剧能独领风骚。

On “Friends,” characters emphasized their adjectives (with “very” and “really” and “so”) to such an extent that the habit prompted a study by linguists⁶ at the University of Toronto. In 2005, they published a paper asserting that the word “so” was the intensifier used 45 percent of the time on the show. In British English, researchers had found, it was used only a quarter as often. “So” was on the rise in the American vernacular⁷, and the series was, theoretically, the cause.

《老友记》中的人物喜欢（用very、really和so）加强语气，多伦多大学(University of Toronto)的语言学家们甚至对这个习惯进行了研究。2005年，他们发表了一篇论文，称该剧中用so加强语气的比例高达45%。研究者们还发现，在英式英语中，so的使用频率只有该剧的四分之一。从理论上讲，so在美式英语中使用频率的上升是这部美剧引起的。

If you are 32 or 50, there is a good chance that you are not currently occupying the world of “Friends,” which outlines a ’90s Manhattan circumscribed⁸ by a coffeehouse and a West Village apartment that, true to the period, conjures⁹ a Pottery¹⁰ Barn designer’s vacation in the lower-tier flea¹¹ markets of Tuscany. If you are somewhere between 13 and 20, however, and particularly if you live in New York, you may find yourself very much in the “Friends” zone. This is not because you landed on an episode, after coming home semi-wasted, on late-night television, where it is almost always on in syndication, but because you watch it methodically, on Netflix, in sequence, through its more than 230 shows.

如果你现在32岁或50岁，你很可能不处在《老友记》的世界里。它描绘的是90年代的曼哈顿，主要讲述发生在一个咖啡馆和西村一个公寓里的故事；那个公寓给人的感觉是波特里巴恩家具连锁店(Pottery Barn)的设计师度假去了托斯卡纳那些廉价的跳蚤市场，不过倒是符合那个时代。不过，如果你在13岁至20岁之间，尤其是如果你住在纽约，你可能会发现自己就生活在《老友记》的世界里。这不是因为你累得半死回到家，碰巧看到晚间剧场在播其中一集（不管什么时候总有一个台在播），而是在Netflix上按顺序看完了那230多集。

On Facebook, more than 19 million people like “Friends,” nearly four times as many as like “Seinfeld.” (So forgotten is “Mad About You,” another Manhattan-based totem of ’90s situation comedy, that when you enter the name into Facebook’s search function, you get “Mad Men.”) The currency that “Friends” has generated among young people was even the subject of a joke during the second and otherwise entirely¹² humorless season of “True Detective.” Last spring, the “Friends” theme song was performed at a choral concert at the Bronx High School of Science; students at Brearley and Saint Ann’s are enthralled¹³. All of this despite the fact that “Friends” is a laugh-tracked network enterprise predating the era of social media.

Facebook上有1900多万人喜欢《老友记》，几乎是喜欢《宋飞传》(Seinfeld)的人的四倍（同样被遗忘的还有《我为卿狂》[Mad About You]，它也是一部以90年代曼哈顿为背景的情景喜剧，你要是在Facebook上搜《我为卿狂》，你搜到的只会是《广告狂人》[Mad Men]）。《老友记》在年轻人中的流行甚至成为《真探》(True Detective)第二季中的一个笑话，要是没有这个笑话，那一季就完全没有幽默可言。今年春天，布朗克斯科学高级中学(Bronx High School of Science)的合唱音乐会甚至演唱了《老友记》的主题曲；布里尔利高中(Brearley)和圣安妮高中(Saint Ann)的学生们也都被该剧迷住了——尽管《老友记》只是社交媒体时代之前一部配有背景笑声的喜剧。

As a portrayal¹⁴ of post-collegiate life in New York, “Friends” offers neither the Cristal and Bergdorf’s rendering¹⁵ of “Sex and the City” nor the jolie-laide bohemianism of “Girls,” let alone the stoner chaos¹⁶ of “Broad City,” which makes its resurgent appeal additionally curious. Shot on a set in Los Angeles, “Friends” gives us a vision of New York that is ostentatiously fake but rarely makes use of fantasy.

同样是描绘大学毕业后在纽约的生活，《老友记》既不像《欲望都市》(Sex and the City)那样光鲜奢华，也不像《都市女孩》(Girls)那样玩世不恭，更不像《大城小妞》(Broad City)那样是讲述瘾君子的混乱生活，所以你很难理解它为什么能重现魅力。《老友记》是在洛杉矶的摄影棚里拍摄的，它给我们呈现的纽约场景显然是假的，但并不是幻想出来的。

Having debuted¹⁷ during the first few months of the Giuliani administration, the show keeps things dingy¹⁸ and menacing way past the point at which the city itself had exfoliated its grimier layers. The seemingly genial¹⁹ neighborhood tailor is likely to grope his male clients before altering their trousers. The guy you can see outside your apartment window is naked and creepy. Phoebe and Ross are mugged in a back alley²⁰ seemingly borrowed from the set of “Rent” near their coffee bar, Central Perk²¹, well into the first Bloomberg term. At another point, Phoebe and Rachel decide they need to learn self-defense to ward²² off predators²³.

该剧开播之时，朱利亚尼(Giuliani)刚担任纽约市长几个月。当时的纽约市已经焕然一新，但是该剧所展示的生活环境却还是肮脏、危险。貌似友好的街坊男裁缝很会在改裤子之前揩男顾客的油。住在对面公寓里的男人总是光着身子，让人感觉怪怪的。菲比(Phoebe)和罗斯(Ross)在他们最爱的中央公园咖啡馆(Central Perk)附近的一条背街里被打劫，那条街似乎是借用《吉屋出租》(Rent)的布景。那时候，布隆伯格(Bloomberg)在纽约市长位置上的首任任期已经过了相当一段时间。在另一集里，菲比和蕾切尔(Rachel)决定学习防身术来抵挡罪犯。

What’s novel about “Friends,” or what must seem so to a certain subset of New York teenagers of whom so much is expected, is the absence among the six central characters of any quality of corrosive²⁴ ambition. The show refuses to take professional life or creative aspirations²⁵ too seriously. What does Chandler Bing actually do? I was never entirely sure. In the series’ ninth season he is an advertising²⁶ intern²⁷. On “Girls” you have writers who are trying to be Mary Karr; on “Friends” you have actors who want to be on “Days of Our Lives.”

至少对一部分被寄予厚望的纽约青少年来说，《老友记》的新奇之处在于，六位主人公没有任何有害的野心。这部电视剧无意强调事业或创造性志向。钱德勒·宾(Chandler Bing)到底是做什么工作的？我从来也没弄清。在该剧的第九季里，他做过广告公司的实习生。《都市女孩》中的作家梦想有一天像玛丽·卡尔(Mary Karr)一样出名；而《老友记》中的演员只是想出演《我们的日子》(Days of Our Lives)。

The dreamscape dimension of “Friends” lies in the way schedules are freed up for fun and shenanigans and talking and rehashing, always. “In the back of our minds we know it’s unrealistic,” Maggie Parham, a 15-year-old who lives on the Upper West Side, told me. The characters “have nice apartments and lots of free time but there is something about that perfect lifestyle that is fun to watch,” she said, adding, “They all work, but they seem to be able to get out of work easily.”

《老友记》的幻景在于主人公们总是有空玩乐，搞恶作剧，闲聊，翻旧账。“从内心深处，我们知道这是不现实的，”住在上西区的15岁的玛吉·帕勒姆(Maggie Parham)说。她又补充，那些人“住着很好的公寓，有很多空闲时间，但是这种看起来很有趣的完美生活有个问题。他们都工作，但他们似乎都可以随便离开工作岗位”。

Another high school girl I spoke²⁸ to, a 17-year-old who lives in Brooklyn, told me she had watched every episode of “Friends” and half of them twice. “That’s true for a lot of my friends,” she said. “We are really into categorizing each other as a Rachel or a Monica; it’s fun to play into that.” This girl asked that I not use her name because she was in the process of applying to colleges, and in the world as it is, a public statement about an entertainment produced not in the 18th century — a statement a college-admissions officer might find on the Internet and regard as frivolous²⁹ — is considered perilous³⁰. “I think, for people my age, it’s such a stressful time in terms of school and college applications, and ‘Friends’ is a funny show that you can watch before bed and just chill out,” she said.

另一位住在布鲁克林的17岁高中女孩说，《老友记》的每一集她都看了，有一半看了两遍。“我的很多朋友也是这样，”她说，“我们非常喜欢讨论对方是蕾切尔型的还是莫妮卡(Monica)型的，很好玩。”那个女孩让我不要透露她的名字，因为她正在申请大学。在如今这个社会，公开评论一部非18世纪文娱作品被认为是危险的。大学招生处的人可能在网上看到她的评论，认为她太过轻浮。“我觉得，我这个年纪的人因为学业和大学申请都觉得很有压力，而《老友记》很好玩，你可以在睡觉前看一下，放松心情，”她说。

It did not escape her attention that the characters are almost never stressed out about their jobs. “All they do is hang out in a coffee shop or a really nice apartment,” she said. “It’s the ideal situation.”

她也注意到，剧中人物几乎从未为工作感到压力。“他们成天在咖啡馆和一个很不错的公寓里闲聊消遣，”她说，“那是一种理想化的状态。”