Why do so many people still love Friends? Because it reminds them of a time when life was still fun | Zoe Williams

The 90s were a decade of carefree optimism and comically low stakes. Matthew Perry’s death brings us crashing back into the now In 2004, the author Damian Barr published Get It Together: Surviving Your Quartlerlife Crisis. Barr would go on to write poignant and beautiful books (including the memoir Maggie and Me) but this wasn’t either of those things. It was more of a fun, generational howl: how’s this stuff supposed to work? How are you supposed to become an adult in these conditions? The dream of life in your 20s – flailing around not sure what to do, mooching from one dead-end job to another but still managing to afford a gigantic, lovely flat in the centre of everything, failing romantically, hilariously, while it all turns out for the best, never feeling anxious for no reason or as if you’re slipping through the sieve of polite society, too small and weightless to remain in the in-crowd – well, that dream was cracking a little. As Barr put it in a radio interview, the question, e