From left: Fred Savage, Nat Faxon, Keegan-Michael Key, Cobie Smulders, Jae Suh Park, Billy Eichner and Annie Parisse
Friends from College” initially sounds like a light and giddy sitcom, its title partly designed to trigger fond memories of successful comedy series like “Friends” and “How I Met Your Mother.” But, as it tries to be funny, the eight-episode Nextflix show often laboriously slogs through themes of infidelity and dissatisfaction.
A number of friends from Harvard meet up from time to time to celebrate milestones or just hang out, decades after graduating from the university.
A lawyer, Lisa (Cobie Smulders), and an author, Ethan (Keegan-Michael Key), are a married couple trying to have a baby for a long time. The latter, however, isn’t as devoted to his wife as he appears and is regularly seeing—and sleeping with—their old friend, interior designer Sam (Annie Parisse).
Other members of this clique include party guy Nick (Nat Faxon), yoga instructor Marianne (Jae Suh Park) and literary agent Max (Fred Savage).
They’re within close proximity in New York, so we get to see them often together. Ethan and Sam take advantage of this development, sneaking around a lot behind their spouses’ backs.
Max, meanwhile, is aware of Ethan’s problematic career path, both of them dealing with the latter’s hesitant shift to writing a Young Adult novel.
Cobie Smulders (left) and Annie Parisse
There is sexual tension between Lisa and Nick, too. But there’s little for Marianne to do, amid all the surprisingly mundane shenanigans.
Despite the talented cast and adult-oriented content, “Friends from College” doesn’t really offer anything new or deliciously scandalous. The Key-Smulders-Parisse triangle should be smoldering, but it isn’t, sadly. Their characters go ’round in circles, speak in clichés, and are trapped in infuriatingly rote situations.
Smulders, an integral part of “How I Met Your Mother” years ago, is underutilized—she figures in many scenes, but it gets especially hard to root for her uninteresting character.
Also deployed to little effect is the usually adept Savage, once the adorable tyke from “The Wonder Years.” His Max character is sedate—and drab, actually—when he’s with his doctor boyfriend Felix (Billy Eichner). He transforms into a loud, annoying person whenever his buddies are around, much to Felix’s—and our—chagrin.
The same with Key (“Key and Peele”), he’s undeniably talented, but the character here is just not that interesting.
There’s also forced humor—for example, the secret replacement of a dead pet, and even more desperately, a silly fart gag. Even more disappointingly, the season ends on a rather incomplete note, too.
Viewers don’t necessarily have to root for a show’s characters, but it’s truly hard to feel anything for this bunch. It’s a somewhat disparate circle from school, all grown up and needlessly problematic—a concept that could’ve been great had it been treated more adventurously.