Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
“I’ll drive, I only had white”: funny dialogue or maybe the most irresponsible decision made on a TV show, oh, ever? Gonna go with the latter, on that one.
Friends From College was met with a lot of flack from critics when it premiered on Netflix last month, but found much more luck with viewers, which led to the series earning a second season order from the streaming platform. At their core, these are unlikable people: they lie and cheat and make crazy reckless choices, especially for a group of adults. In fact, it is this exact group of Harvard-educated pals that influence each other to make such terrible decisions on a regular basis.
So in episode 5, “Party Bus,” when the group of pals board a party bus to visit “4 premiere vineyards” during a North Fork Winetasting day, things go even worse than expected. Keegan-Michael Key’s Ethan organizes the day of fun so that his wife Lisa (Cobie Smulders) can cheer up after a failed IVF cycle, even though she makes it clear she would rather stay in bed and watch movies. We all would’ve been better off that way. But the old pals, plus Max’s (Fred Savage) boyfriend Felix (Billy Eichner) board a bus with neon pink designs on the side and set off to sip some wine.
Ethan has dubbed this adventure “adult spring break,” which turns out to be truer than any of them can predict, and he even went ahead and planned a decidedly un-spring break-like full itinerary for the day that culminates in a sunset dinner by the bay. On the way to stop number one, a highlight of the outing comes in the form of Felix letting the crowd know he’s decided to “go ahead and try to like you” and that he’s “not here to judge how unhealthy or juvenile these friendships are.” You have no idea, bro.
While stop number one goes OK, the day starts to get sloppier than the attendees aboard the bus. You see, their driver Joe (William Hill) joins in on the action, completely dismissing his designated driver duties, or as Nick (Nat Faxon) explained, “We can’t leave Joe in the van, it doesn’t seem fair while we’re getting our drink on,” to which the driver offers, “I was getting lonely.” Still relatively sober, Ethan counters with, “OK well dude hey, drinking and driving is uncool,” but don’t worry because Joe lets him know, “I got a high tolerance because CrossFit.” Who knew that a group of such terrible people could find their match in a party bus driver?
And they truly have. He’s swerving over traffic lines on the way to the next stop, and the pals don’t seem to mind because they’re too busy pole dancing to a soundtrack of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” and Kesha’s “Tik Tok.” And if you haven’t tried it before, pole dancing is no easy feat: it requires a lot of muscles. Or, in their case, a lot of alcohol to not care and just worry about the subsequent bruises they’ll be racking up at a later time.
By the next destination, Joe has fully joined the group and their shenanigans only prove how drunk they really, really are. So much so, that Joe is passed out! Which is when Marianne (Jae Suh Park) offers what she should be lucky are not in fact her famous last words: “I’ll drive, I only had white.”
The passengers are either falling back and forth on the bus, or in Joe’s case, in a deep sleep as she whines, “This does not have responsive steering, why are the back roads so busy?” Ethan even encourages her to get on the highway to go back to the city, before she’s stopped by a low bridge, one that he helpfully slurred, “Are you gonna clear that bridge?” at before it knocked a vent and antenna off the back of the bus. But all hope is not lost for this group, as they can see those beautiful golden arches down the road and decide to snack on fries and Big Macs before realizing…they left Felix at the last stop.
Which is actually the fact that got my anger brewing in the first place; I immediately noticed that Felix wasn’t present and had to actually rewind a bit to make sure I wasn’t the one that missed something. But, nope. It wasn’t on me. It was all on them. I mean, really, who could forget Billy Eichner?
Marianne gets back in the divers seat (oh my god, why) and drives back to pick him up, which causes Felix to promptly breakup with Max, as he truthfully tells him that he doesn’t like the person he becomes with this friend group and that they’re “stuck in some 20-year time warp, it’s fucking pathetic.” Don’t worry though, Joe peacefully naps though all of it. Of course Marianne gets BACK behind the wheel to drive them all home, dozing off along the way until she finally punishes her crew by turning the lights on so they can’t leave her as the only awake person there.
So look, it’s understandable that drunk driving would be included in the behaviors of these people. They don’t give a shit about other people’s feelings, which is why they continue to be unfaithful and rude and snarky, and this makes for a lot of great comedic moments throughout the series, which, as a whole, I actually enjoyed very much. But this incident simply cannot go overlooked. Drunk driving? There’s no need for it! It’s not as though it was the only place for the storyline to go. What would this group have gotten themselves into if they had all stayed put and been stranded at one of the vineyards for the entire afternoon and evening? What would the bickering look like if they had to split Ubers back to the city? Could Joe have been a sober voice of reason throughout the day? There are plenty of creative avenues that could have been explored instead of this extremely irresponsible way of telling the story.
Luckily, and rather miraculously, there were no serious, life-changing repercussions to this series of terrible decisions. Joe might have to pay for the party bus damage (which should be the least of his concerns) and Max might have to sign up for a Grindr account, but the group as a whole remains largely unaffected, expect for the monster hangovers they surely experienced the next day. They could’ve severely injured or killed themselves or others, and the show displayed how they came close in a handful of situations.
As viewers, we are asked to suspend our disbelief repeatedly, but it’s not like this is some kind of superhero show. These are realistic humans, and the sad part is, these types of humans might make the same terrible choices IRL. It was so jarring it snapped me out of enjoying a half-hour comedy program. It’s hard to accept and get past, especially as something intended to be funny. Instead of using the opportunity to have the characters learn a lesson, and not that these particular ones ever do, it’s presented as a silly romp they’ll all look back on and laugh about — but it’s not ok. It’s plain wrong and could’ve seriously hurt someone, even as fiction, and would’ve made a run for the biggest bummer of the series if that were the case. If these people want to endanger themselves, or their relationships due to cheating, or their bank accounts due to a ticket for public sex, or even their best friend’s pet rabbit due to multiple bad decisions, fine. I can understand this as character development. But drunk driving? Come on. Why go there? The line has to be drawn somewhere, and never, ever swerved over. So please, take a lesson from these friends from college and do not drive drunk. As this show expertly demonstrated, it is never, ever funny for anyone.
