17 Reasons 'Friends' Is No More Than A White Ripoff Of 'Living Single'

I have literally NEVER seen a more blatant act of television plagiarism.

The creators of Friends are all a bunch of WASPs

Living Single obviously ripped off Golden Girls. Turned them young and black. How DARE they!

Well Friends became a worldwide phenomenon and Living Single didn't.

Boring sitcom formula follows boring sitcom formula. Big whoop.

R4, one was given a big budget and a prime time slot following a huge series on NBC. The other was a lower budget series by WB thrown up on FOX.

So was the Simpsons r6 and that was a big hit too. The mainstream public just wasn't interested in Living Single, not to mention the rest of the world. Sitcoms borrow from each other all the time anyway. Besides, a show about a group of twentysomething friends hardly started with Living Single. Three's Company did the same thing, and that was many years earlier.

How was Friends a ripoff? Did Queen Latifah fuck Tootie??

And Man About the House was before Three's Company.

All this seems to be revisionist history. I don't recall anyone comparing FRIENDS and LIVING SINGLE back in the day. In fact, it was Ellen DeGeneres' sitcom THESE FRIENDS OF FIME (later retitled ELLEN for Season 2), which debuted the same season as LIVING SINGLE (1993-1994) that FRIENDS was compared to. Even ELLEN joked about the similarities (including the opening title of Season1 with the outdoor furniture) in its second season when FRIENDS was starting its first.

Laverne and Shirley were like Rachel and Monica. Lenny and Squiggy were like Chandler and Joey.

The author of this article is most likely a millennial who has probably not seen more than 3 multi-cam sitcoms and doesn't realize that the premise of "a bunch of goofy singles living in the same building in the big city" was a tired trope even before Living Single aired. Friends was successful because more people (corny white people) identified with the characters.

R10 here. That should read THESE FRIENDS OF MINE.

I forgot all about Ellen's sitcom but yes it had more in common with Friends than Living Single did.

He’s LITERALLY never seen such, folks. JFC, it’s SERIOUS!!!

And Lucy and Mr. Mooney and Nanny Fine and Mr. Scheffield and Mr. Grant and Rhoda and Phyllis and Ethel and Fred and Max and Caroline and Norm and Frasier and Cliff and and Josie and the Pussy Cats and Barnaby and Betty Jones.

There was enough similarities to consider Friends the white Living Single, but it wasn’t a rip off. Sitcoms have been recycling stories and plot lines from one another going all the way back to radio days. One major difference between the two is that Friends had a gender balanced cast of three women and three men, LS had four women and two men and tended to focus more on the women.

This comes up EVERY FEW MONTHS here. The OP was obviously shirt stirring.

[quote]All this seems to be revisionist history. I don't recall anyone comparing FRIENDS and LIVING SINGLE back in the day.

Then you didn't have any black friends. It was a pretty common belief that Friends "copied off" of Living Single. Notice, people didn't say "ripped off."

[quote]There was enough similarities to consider Friends the white Living Single, but it wasn’t a rip off.

The best anyone can say is that Friends was likely pitched with a Living Single vibe in mind. The then President of NBC, Warren Littlefield, when asked if there was a show on another network he wished he had on NBC mentioned Living Single.

However, Queen Latifah had nothing but praise for "Friends" even after she acknowledged that the shows were similar. David Schwimmer didn't shoot down the idea that Living Single's success may have been a factor in Friends getting greenlit.

And that's usually how these things work in TV. They had a successful show on one network then another network made something similar.

They were two shows about 6 friends in their 20s, living in apartments across from one another (with the slight twist that Ross lived elsewhere), in different neighborhoods but in the same city. There wasn't a show like Living Single before it and it shouldn't be a shock that NBC greenlight a similar show because they knew the formula could possibly work based upon what they saw on another network. Yes, there are similarities between some of the characters but only Phoebe and Sinclair can compare directly.

So what? Why is it so important to tarnish the success of a show all these years later? Because it was vaguely similar to another show? It’s probably similar to a lot of other shows too, should we look for infringement and injustice there too. This is just stupid.

You know what? Before the Supremes, there were several trios of singing girls that were….White! Should they blame Diana Ross for cultural appropriation? Or for12 number one hit reason why the Supremes were no more than an Andrews Sisters ripoff?

[quote]Why is it so important to tarnish the success of a show all these years later?

R20, the article was written in 2018!

Black people invented poverty too.

Do they have the same issue with the tv show Girlfriends having copied them? Hm, wonder why?

R22, being gay AND a racist is not a good look.

[quote]Then you didn't have any black friends. It was a pretty common belief that Friends "copied off" of Living Single. Notice, people didn't say "ripped off."

Definitely, there were multiple articles about it in entertainment magazines at the time, that's why people kept asking about it in interviews in the first place, and as you mentioned multiple people involved on both shows have noted the similarities.

I mean the creator of Living Single was a writer on the Golden Girls and states that she based Living Single off the Golden Girls.

Must everything be about race????? Even this shitty show....

Are we sure there wasnt some tranny somewhere that pioneered sitcoms or probably invented comedy altogether that to whom even the creators of Living Single should be bowing down. Probably right after inventing the wheel and fire but shortly before exhaustively and single handedly fighting for any rights that homersexuals enjoy.

Actually they all stole the idea from Mindy Cohen's backdoor pilot episode in the last season of "The Facts of Life"

[quote]I mean the creator of Living Single was a writer on the Golden Girls and states that she based Living Single off the Golden Girls.

Yvette Lee Bowser started off her career on "A Different World." She never worked on the Golden Girls.

However, Kevin Abbott, a writer from Golden Girls claimed she asked him for a copy of the pilot script to use as a template to write the pilot of Living Single.

However, that author that got that quote probably didn't understand that when he said template he meant as a formatting template so she could do proper script formatting for a half-hour show.

The writing program, Final Draft, has copies of formats for most TV shows going back for decades to use as templates. Back then, especially, that was super important. You wrote pilots based on the formats of other pilot scripts.

Both shows play into the "4 Female Theory" of TV writing tropes, or rather people would often base TV shows around groups of 4 women but technically Kyle and Overton threw that off since they were regular characters on the show. The Golden Girls focused just on the women.

I used to work with a middle aged wife and husband, and the husband was Yvette Lee Bowser’s uncle. The wife was a trip. She used to talk about how stuck up Yvette was and how they never see her except at family reunions and funerals. I once gave them a headshot of mine to send to Yvette in the hopes that I’d hear something back, but they told me don’t count on it. I never heard anything.

How much diversity is there in Living Single? If Friends is the white version of Living Single and there's no diversity in it, why should there be much diversity in Friends?

R28, for your information, trans sex workers of color invented multi-cam sitcoms.

Friends' David Schwimmer Apologizes for Diversity Comments: 'I Didn't Mean to Imply Living Single Hadn't Existed'

My sister swears the Gilmore Girls stole most of their plots from Beverly Hills 90210.

[quote]How much diversity is there in Living Single? If Friends is the white version of Living Single and there's no diversity in it, why should there be much diversity in Friends?

R32 tried to make an argument about diversity on the series Living Single without

1. Ever having seen an episode of Living Single

2. Going off on a tangent about diversity when the topic is a comparison of both shows in an attempt to start an argument they've already decided the outcome of.

R36, there was the exact same amount of diversity on Living Single as on Friends. Namely, none. But, not surprisingly, only one is seen as a problem because white people are evil and black people are sainted victims.

[quote]there was the exact same amount of diversity on Living Single as on Friends.

Living Single had more Asian, Latino and Black actors and actresses than Friends ever had.

You wanna know why no one ever turns the argument around on Living Single?

BECAUSE THERE IS NO ARGUMENT.

Disengaging. Bye!

I guess you're all forgetting the famous Living Single/Friends crossover episode. It was groundbreaking television because it featured the first lesbian love scene, even before Ellen did it. Queen Latifah said to Jennifer Aniston "girl you need a little chocolate in your life. Let me suck on them titties." Commercial break. The next scene was Ross and Monica walking in on Queen eating Jennifer's pussy on the couch. It was a ratings bonanza.

I mean that's what white people do...

So

Precisely, R38. I’d have more respect for assholes like the one at R37 if they’d just outwardly own their racism instead of regaling us in thinly-veiled diatribes about how tired they are of “wokeness,” which itself is just code for “I don’t like black and brown people.”

[quote] Lenny and Squiggy were like Chandler and Joey.

Lenny & Squiggy were also the Maynard G Krebs of Laverne & Shirley. People would be talking about horrible, disgusting, crazy, stupid things and Maynard would walk in and say “you rang?” on Dobie Gillis. On Laverne & Shirley people would be talking about horrible, disgusting, crazy, stupid things and Lenny & Squiggy would walk in and say “Hello!”

"Must everything be about race????? " said the racist who's entire life is based on race because it's a "rebel" without a clue.

Rebel in the Confederate sense.

Confederate in every sense.

[quote]Definitely, there were multiple articles about it in entertainment magazines at the time

IIRC, Drew Carey called "Friends" a ripoff of "Living Single" in an interview he did back in the '90s with TV Guide, so you're right, this is definitely not something that's only come up in the last few years (as someone up above may have been implying).

In terms of TV shows, I think this is a debate that will never end; however, I also think the people who get upset about "Friends" being hit with this accusation need to keep two things in mind:

(1) One reason black people have always given "Friends" a side eye wasn't just because of the similarities to "Living Single" but the divergent reaction to both sitcoms -- i.e., when "Living Single" premiered in 1993, it was dismissed by critics who gave it very little, if any, credit for having a great cast with solid chemistry and funny story lines. Fast forward a year later, "Friends" premieres with basically the same premise (except white vs. black cast) and those same critics fell over themselves with adoration, praising the show's writing (even though it was no funnier than "Living Single") and acting as if Jennifer Aniston was the funniest female comedic actor TV had seen since Lucy back in the '50s (and the most beautiful since Farrah in the '70s). Add to all this an ever-adoring Hollywood, which proceeded to make megastars of all six cast members, showering them with magazine covers, movie offers, huge salaries, awards, etc. (the show won the Emmy for best comedy series and Aniston the Emmy for lead actress in a comedy). Now after all of that, hark back to the fact that "Living Single," which came before "Friends" and received none of these things, and you'll know why black people for the most part do not hold the latter in high regard (even while liking other white-centric sitcoms like "Seinfeld," "Frasier," "Big Bang Theory" and "Modern Family").

(2) After "Friends" became a runaway success, TV critics then went on a "name-it-and-shame-it" crusade with every new sitcom that premiered for the next 3-5 seasons, accusing each of being a "ripoff" of the so-called "original," while of course having never once acknowledged that "Friends" was fundamentally an exact copy of "Living Single," which had hit the TV landscape a whole year before. And for the most part, their mission to pick off each one of these duplicates worked because most if not all of them ended up getting cancelled rather quickly (one of which starred Nancy McKeon in her first foray back into TV following her long run on "The Facts of Life"). And as has already been noted here, no one is claiming that "Living Single" was itself an original idea either; I'm just saying that you know damn well had the year of their respective debuts been reversed and "Friends" had premiered in 1993 and "Living Single" in 1994, those same critics who willfully ignored their similarities would have happily taken "Living Single" down and branded it yet another copy of "Friends" just like they did all of those other sitcoms that came after. The hypocrisy is just so in your face, which is likely why David Schwimmer got all that blowback from his comments and had to backtrack.

Was Friends really all that similar to Living Single? I barely remember Living Single, but from what I saw of it I don't think it had much in common with Friends.

[quote] when "Living Single" premiered in 1993, it was dismissed by critics who gave it very little, if any, credit for having a great cast with solid chemistry and funny story lines.

While that reaction COULD have involved racism, a bigger reason was probably the fact it aired on FOX, which is also why it never got high ratings.(It wasn't until 1998, that FOX managed to get two shows in the yearly TOP 20.) It was also difficult for FOX shows to get any love from critics early on. For example Married With Children premiered before Roseanne, but Roseanne gets all the credit for popularizing crude blue collar sitcoms about poor struggling white people.

All ripped off from Petticoat Junction

Happy Endings is a much more blatant rip off of Friends.

Schwimmer has nothing to apologize for. Living Single is utterly irrelevant. Twitter activists are just pissed that the Friends reunion is a pop culture moment that has nothing to do with St. George Floyd and isn’t bending over backwards to kiss their ass.

They won’t be satisfied until 12% of the population dominates 100% of the conversation. And even then they won’t be happy. There’s no tit big enough in the world for some people.

R46 is 100% correct.

R51’s tone screams racist asswipe. And who exactly the fuck are “they,” bitch?

How was Friends a ripoff of Living Single? I don't think the shows were very similar. Yes, they were about a group of twentysomething friends but that was basically it. There have been many shows with the same premise. Living Single was four women in the main cast and Friends was three men and three women.

Do Black people ever get tired?

I have never understood the comparisons because, in my mind, LIVING SINGLE was really about the four women (a la FACTS OF LIFE, GOLDEN GIRLS), and the guys were just supporting characters. That was my perception, anyway, as an occassional/casual viewer. A hard-core fan may see it differently, but look at the S1 LIVING SINGLE dvd cover:

[quote]The author of this article is most likely a millennial who has probably not seen more than 3 multi-cam sitcoms and doesn't realize that the premise of "a bunch of goofy singles living in the same building in the big city" was a tired trope even before Living Single aired.

It's not about claiming credit. It's about being acknowledged.

Critics slobbered all over Friends when it first debuted and acted like it was some groundbreaking new show. I remember being baffled because not only Living Single but the Ellen Degeneres show had debuted the year prior. And it was basically the same concept as those two. But NBC clearly was paying money to promote the shit out of it.

All Living Single wanted to do was to be acknowledged. The mainstream (predominately white) media ignored it completely and gave Friends all the credit.

I thought they were all rip-offs of Seinfeld.

Actually, if we're being truthful, almost every show that has a single person as the main character owes a debt of gratitude to Marlo Thomas and That Girl. Including Seinfeld.

But Mary Tyler Moore took the concept, put it in a newsroom and got the credit as a groundbreaker.

It's time to give Marlo Thomas her proper due. And we can start with a Kennedy Center Honor.

I never heard of this show.

Anyone who says with a straight face that "Living Single" was boring or "shitty" is being obtuse and has probably never seen the show. It was well written and performed, the ensemble worked great together, and the characters were very original and entertaining.

I'd much rather spend time with Mary Richards than the ditzy Ann Marie, r58.

I feel like Girlfriends on UPN was more of a Living Single rip-off than Friends.

The lily white creators of Friends; David Crane, Marta Kauffman and Kevin S. Bright, should be ashamed and should apologize for their whiteness and white privilege. They may as well have named their show "Caucasians".

This is always repeated now, anytime Friends is brought up. On behalf of white people, we couldn't give a flying fuck if some black comedy show had the idea first, Friends was bigger and that's what gets under your skin the most.

Again, how was Friends a ripoff of Living Single? The two shows didn't seem to have much in common. Friends, like Seinfeld, was a show about "nothing."

Was there a coffee shop on Living Single? Where did the ensemble hang out on the show?

R65: anybody who watched that show but didn’t watch the far superior Black show which it was and is a ripoff of is a racist, plain and simple, and racism is incitement to violence. Period. [italic]Living Single[/italic] is a better show. It did it first and it did it better. To deny that fact is racism.

Of course you don’t care about white people stealing from Black people because you’ve been doing nothing but that since you first crawled out of the slime. You stole everything that wasn’t yours from land to property to whole nations. Just like you stole the island of Manhattan from its indigenous inhabitants who were in no way, shape, or form “white.“

The fact that racist whites won’t watch Black people but will gladly steal their shows is proof that the white race cannot be trusted and that TV “critics” are complicit in this same racist atrocity for not condemning it.

On behalf of all people of color everywhere, drop dead, you fucking racist white trash.

[italic]The Golden Girls[/italic] had a Black female writer named Winifred Hervey Stallworth.

[quote] On behalf of white people

I'm sure that your fellow Caucs (the ones that aren't racist pieces of shit) don't want your trash ass speaking for them, dear.

I love how the haters actually present a case for their hatred and the racist wypipo dismiss it out of hand.

Worst. Show. EVER! It will be forgotten in a generation once it is finally pulled from circulation just like [italic]Amos ‘n’ Andy[/italic] was.

Do you know what else began in 1994?

A whole new wave of terrorism against Black men. Except back then, they called it a “crime bill.“

Lol that I am racist if I didn’t care for living single.

Morons...

Denial of racism is a sign of racism.

This single clip from [italic]The Jeffersons[/italic] is funnier than every episode of this racist white trash show.

This thread is just race trolling, I'm on "asbestos eyeballs" it's grayed out even for me. Keep making stupid comments guys, it'll just get deleted and all your trolling will be wasted.

And I am re-posting the original article since that racist bitch Muriel tried to gray it out.

I don't feel like reading this article but I will say this. Friends is a extremely simple and bland show that nobody should put much thought into. It was a product designed to appeal to the broadest audience ever and it worked. It's an insult to actually funny shows like Living Single to have Friends mentioned in the same sentence. Sitcoms in general are simplistic and predictable and use the same tropes and ideas. Very few sitcoms end up becoming classics that are still remembered. Living Single was on Fox (was still a new network) and had a predominately Black cast. So it just wasn't as widely remembered similar to how Martin was and even sitcoms with white cast like Titus, Married with Children and Herman's Head. Friends was on NBC and ran along Seinfeld, so it had a bigger chance to get more popular.

Did Friends have a big butch bulldyke who could crack walnuts with her cuntlips? I don't think so.

Seems like the 2 males I Living Single were side characters the first couple of seasons and then promoted to be more highly featured once living single saw the success of gender-balanced Friends.

I guess Living Single was the copycat...

I’m not actually a Friends fan; just dumbfounded by the tone deaf comparisons.

What makes it all the more egregious is that both shows had the same production company.

In fact, if any show could make a case that this one ripped them off, it’s [Italic]Full House[/italic].

Not once did they acknowledge that both Matthew Perry and Matt Leblanc were actors on my show first. It should’ve cost next to nothing to license a [italic]Growing Pains[/italic] clip since that is also from the same production company.

Miller-Boyett recycled all of their plots and even had the same raspy-voiced singers and ugly yellow/white title font. Step by Step recycled Family Matters which recycled Full House which recycled Valerie/Hogan Family.

Whos the idiot that called a woman named Kauffman a WASP?

Are you saying Suzanne Somers was a second rate Sandy Duncan?

No. Sandy Duncan was a third rate sandy Duncan.

I was once told I’m “not a good person” if I didn’t like guardians of the galaxy. He was just a stoner though.

This drama queen thinks it’s racist to be unimpressed bu living single. Lol.

R90 is a narc in addition to being a racist. You dislike a Black show but you pretend its ripoff is in any way superior or even anything other than a piece of shit? You are literally too racist to live.

OP you are the racist one. All your [italic]Friends[/italic]-bashing is just anti-Italian racism. And if Italians can do the same business as the muglianos better than the muglianos can, then who’s the boss? We are! Our sitcoms are better than yours. No exceptions. We win all the Emmys and get all the ratings because we earned it. All your crappy shows are just affirmative action cases, even Cosby.

Viva Italia! How YOU doin’, you racist muglianos!

It wasn’t even the same idea. Totally different dynamics. If they want to blame any show for ripping it off, blame Sex and the City. But even then, it would be utter bullshit. No one in the nineties was rushing to networks dying to pitch the white Living Single.

Ask a member of the general public to recollect ONE moment from Living Single. Then ask them if they can recollect one moment from Friends. I think we all know the answer.

Facts are facts. The majority of white people want to watch stories about white people just like black people want to watch stories about black people. The majority of Americans are white and I don’t think they cared all that much about a FOX sitcom about black women in the twenties.

Going Places was the Miller/Boyett show with best theme song (followed closely by Perfect Strangers). I hated that they nixed Just The Ten of Us for it, though.

R93 exactly. it's a rule of demographics. Corny white women are the biggest viewing demographic in the US so that's who network execs cater to. The lowest common denominator more or less wants to see an aspirational mirror of themselves on TV. Is it racist? It's complicated.

[quote]Was Friends really all that similar to Living Single? I barely remember Living Single, but from what I saw of it I don't think it had much in common with Friends.

I was a huge fan of Living Single. I never liked Friends. The shows are not that similar.

Living Single is way more of a rip-off of Golden Girls than Friends is a copy of Living Single.

Not to mention, Living Single was "a workplace comedy" (just ask Valerie Cherish)

That article is wack.

Phoebe/Sinclair are the only similar characters. Maybe a little bit Overton/Joey but not really.

Khadijah (a successful entrepreneur) is nothing like Monica

Regine is nothing like Rachel. Regine is more like BLanche, stuck up, sexy, the best looking, man obsessed. Rachel is whiny girl from Long Island.

The only similarity between Kyle and Chandler is that they both of good jobs. Chandler is goofy, not confident, bad with women. Kyle is overly confident and a "playa"

Ross=Maxine is just too stupid to even comment on.

The sista who wrote that article is tryin' way too hard!

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