Not many… aside from the Aniston/Schwimmer revelation, there wasn’t much there that wasn’t already well-known. That I more-or-less enjoyed it anyway demonstrates the cultural gravity that Friends had for my generation… we were all sucked in for life.
So the reunion itself was mostly just a reminder…
- …that Friends wasn’t a brilliantly written show… the well-cast actors did most of the heavy lifting, turning mundane material into frothy magic.
- …that whoever ran the costume department loved Jennifer Aniston dearly and made her the best-dressed chick on television for most of the ‘90s. (I can randomly fire up any ep from ’95, and she looks flawless in every frame. Except in the fucking overalls.)
- …that LeBlanc is more charming in real life than all of them put together. Speaking of Matt, if you want to see him at his professional worst, go to Hulu and track down his “backdoor pilot” buried in the middle of Married… With Children. (Backdoor pilots were a thing TV executives used to try when they weren’t confident a new show could stand on its own… they’d typically shoot a pilot, temporarily insert one or two characters from it into an established hit to give them exposure, and then air the pilot the next week as if it were an episode of the “mother show”. Married had that happen a lot, over its 11 year run… they tried to make Matt LeBlanc happen at least twice, Joey Lauren Adams a couple times, and they even tried to launch the career of Keri Russell, a year or two before she landed Felicity. But all of Married’s real and faux spin-offs ultimately failed.)
- …that even the cast tacitly considers the last couple seasons to be forgettable junk that they’ve selectively retconned from their recollections. (Which is amusing, since those seasons made them some of the richest people in sitcom history.)