Sadly, I must admit I watch quite a bit of TV. Right now, I think Scrubs is hilarious (Slim, you'll be glad to know that it has no laugh track and not filmed before a live audience). Haven't heard much support for Friends other than "I thought it was ok, but I hate it now", so I'll be bold, go out on a limb, and be the first to admit I'm one of the people who thought Friends was a great show. It was actually my favorite for a while. Like most shows it was much better when it started. As time went on, the writing got worse and worse, but I still thought the shows had its moments. This season however, was absolutely horrible. I think the series was supposed to end at 9 years, but NBC was making so much money off of it, they begged the cast to do another. Now, I completely understand why Seinfeld (which I never really liked much) ended before most people wanted it to.
While in a waiting room a few months ago, I was reading some celeb magazine and they had interviewed the Friends cast. Each cast member talked about what they liked best about their own character's personality. During this last season, those aspects of each character were really, really emphasized and exaggerated. It was as if the actors said "We'll only do this last season if you write our characters the way we want", which obviously made them all one-dimensional, and hard for the writers to write anything decent other than sketch-like comedy.
Kind of like that one South Park episode where Butters tries to come up with an evil plot, and each one he thinks of turns out the Simpsons had done it at one point or another. The writers just cant keep coming up with new stuff after a while, and so they
jump the shark. I think Friends jumped the shark a few seasons back... not sure when, but it did. All shows jump the shark eventually (unless they get cancelled), and it usually happens when the talent get even greedier and want more money and control. Or when the network stops seeing it as entertainment and start seeing it as a money machine.
Hell, I haven't watched the Simpsons in a while, but I hear people saying that even that show is going down the drain. Voice talent wanting more money? 12+ years, right? Not surprised.