the real journey was the friends

The Friends We Made Along the Way – Meaning & Origin

“The friends we made along the way” is one of those phrases that you’ve surely seen over and over, particularly in fiction, but also perhaps in real life . But what does it actually refer to? And how could you even use it? This article will answer these questions.

The Friends We Made Along the Way – Meaning

The full phrase involved here is “the real treasure was the friends that we made along the way”, and this expression means exactly what it appears to say. In a quest where someone was trying to attain a treasure, the real treasure was the friends they made along the way.

It’s a classic trope in fiction, in which someone embarks on a journey to try to achieve or attain something. By the end of the journey, they’ve achieved their goal, and also had a realization.

This realization is that whatever their goal was is of lesser value when compared to the friends and companions they made in the journey to achieve their goal.

How to Use “The Friends We Made Along the Way” in a Sentence

You’d be surprised at how many different ways there are to incorporate “the friends we made along the way” into a sentence, and here we’ve created several example sentences to highlight exactly this very fact:

• The friends we made along the way were the real treasure all along, you see, and this is good.
• When I look at what I loved the most about this journey, it’s the friends we made along the way.
• The friends we made along the way were loyal companions, and they have a lot of value.
• The friends we made along the way are shining examples that the journey matters more.
• The friends we made along the way are fantastic people, and I love them all quite a lot.
• The friends we made along the way are all quite interesting folks, with a lot to say.
• When you think about the real value of this journey, it’s the friends we made along the way.
• Looking at the friends we made along the way makes me really thankful for this trip.

The Friends We Made Along the Way – Origin

There is no actually defined origin for the phrase “the friends we made along the way” or “the real treasure was the friends we made along the way”. It’s a phrase that people point to as a cliche, but that we don’t have a precise example of it happening.

The Friends We Made Along the Way – Synonyms

The general sentiment that what you encountered in the journey was more valuable than the outcome of the journey itself is a common one, and therefore there are several alternative expressions you can use instead of “the friends we made along the way”:

• The real treasure was the connections we made with each other.
• What really mattered in the end wasn’t the destination, but the journey to get there.
• The real value was from the things we discovered along the way.
• What really mattered wasn’t the prize of the tournament, but the matches themselves.
• The real treasure was the people we met along the way.

Phrases That Mean the Opposite of “The Friends We Made Along the Way”

There are some phrases that can express the opposite sentiment to “the friends we made along the way”, which would mean that they’d be talking about how the real treasure was not the friends we made along the way. Here are some of them:

• The real treasure was the big box filled with gold coins that we got as a reward.
• The real treasure wasn’t the friends we made along the way, but the money we got.
• The real treasure of the journey was the destination itself, and not the journey at all.
• What mattered in the end wasn’t what had happened in the way, but where we got to.
• The friends we made along the way were not the real treasure of the journey.

Correct Ways to Say “The Friends We Made Along the Way”

The phrase “the friends we made along the way” is a very variable one, because of how popular it is. Here we’ve logged some popular variations of the phrase so you can be somewhat more relaxed in your usage of it:

• The real treasure was the buddies we made during the journey.
• The real prize was the friends that we discovered along the way.
• The real value of the journey was the friends we made along the way.
• The true prize was the connections we made with each other during this trip.

In What Situations Can You Use “The Friends We Made Along the Way”?

In any situation in which you’ve realized that the true value of the situation was not its outcome, but the fact that you grew closer with the people around you during the process, you can use “the friends we made along the way” with no issues.

Martin holds a Master’s degree in Finance and International Business. He has six years of experience in professional communication with clients, executives, and colleagues. Furthermore, he has teaching experience from Aarhus University. Martin has been featured as an expert in communication and teaching on Forbes and Shopify. Read more about Martin here .

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It's the Journey That Counts

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"We are not asking him where the treasure is hidden! We're not even asking him whether there is any treasure or not! I'm not sure, but...everybody set out to sea, risking their lives to search for it!! If you ask this old man anything about it here and now...then I'll quit being a pirate! I don't want to go on a boring adventure like that!!" — Monkey D. Luffy , One Piece

The heroes have traveled far and wide, braved many obstacles and even challenged the forces of darkness to find the legendary lost treasure. Maybe it's a fortune in gold and jewels, left behind by a long-dead king, or perhaps it's a book of ancient wisdom, or a magic mirror that lets the bearer see the future; whatever the case, the protagonists (and any number of rivals) have good cause to believe what they're after is very valuable and/or powerful, the sort of thing that could change their lives - perhaps even change the world - and definitely not something that should fall into the wrong hands.

So they find the ancient tomb. They open the sarcophagus. And what do they find inside?

Nothing. No pile of treasure or legendary artifact, just an old coin and a note telling them that they've already found the greatest treasure of all.

And it's true. The legends may have been greatly exaggerated, but all of our heroes have become better people as a result of their experiences. What they found at the end of their journey may only have sentimental value, but its message is clear: these are lessons they would only have learned by setting out in search of it. As the old saying goes: "it's the journey, not the destination".

With this trope, the object of the seeker's quest turns out to be materially worthless, but also constitutes a revelation that the seeker has grown or developed in some meaningful way during the course of their journey. Of course, if the protagonist's development is nullified or ignored , then you have a "Shaggy Dog" Story on your hands. Wanting Is Better Than Having is another aesop that is often invoked with this one. Helping Would Be Kill Stealing invokes a similar philosophy in terms of letting someone learn by themselves, at least in principle.

Compare All That Glitters , where the twist is merely that the treasure is worthless, not that the characters have benefited from the search for it; Bluebird of Happiness , where the bird is often found back home; Going to See the Elephant , when arriving at the destination is simply not as important to the plot as the journey there; Magic Feather , where the protagonist discovers he's always had the abilities he ascribed to the MacGuffin ; and The Homeward Journey . Contrast Boring Return Journey and All Is Well That Ends Well .

Note that, by this trope's very nature, spoilers follow!

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• Spoofed in Dr. STONE , where Senku and Chrome go on a mining expedition that results in their forging a tentative peace with Jerk Jock and former enemy Magma. When they find the motherlode, Chrome says "the friendship we made is worth more than any gemstone!" Both Senku and Magma are creeped out by the sentiment, and even Chrome admits that he just kind of blurted it out on accident and regretted it immediately.
• Dragon Ball : Goku spends a good while trying to catch Korin before finding out that catching him is the training; the "magic water" is just that: water . Master Roshi, on the other hand, spends a lot longer trying to catch Korin (and finding out the truth).
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run , Pocoloco ends up winning the titular race and the prize money, but unlike our protagonists - who don't even finish the race - he's essentially the same character as he was when the race started, whereas Johnny and Gyro have grown and improved vastly as people over the course of their journey from San Diego.
• Martian Successor Nadesico : The heroes discover a MacGuffin which could theoretically be used as a Reset Button to prevent the war but decide not to use it because the sacrifices they have made mean too much to discard.
• Invoked in Medaka Box when Medaka sends the student council on a treasure hunt. Everyone is absolutely sure from the beginning that the reward will be one of these notes, and 50 chapters later it turns out they were right .
• Discussed in Monster Rancher : The Searchers note that Holly's Magic Stone , which is supposed to be guiding them towards the Phoenix, seems at times to switch directions. Holly and Genki suggest that it's about the experiences they're having along the way, finding allies and becoming stronger. Eventually, Monol reveals that Mocchi, Suezo, Golem, Tiger, and Hare contain pieces of the Phoenix's soul . While Monol knew this from the start, he didn't tell them right away because they needed to strengthen their spirits first through their travels.
• In Negima! Magister Negi Magi , Negi and the "Baka Rangers" (the five worst students in his class) go looking for a magic book that will make them smarter in time for final exams. In order to get the book, a giant statue quizzes them on translating English words into Japanese. Then they get stuck in a lower level of the library, and pass the time by studying. Then the giant statue shows up again, and chases them up a stairway barred by review questions. Then they end up throwing the book away to make the group light enough to take the only elevator to the surface . And in the end, the whole thing turned out to be a Secret Test of Character designed by the headmaster.
• The entire premise of Oddman 11 is basically gender-flipped Scott Pilgrim : The sole male Oddman, Itami, has 9 ex-girlfriends are also Oddmen, and his Oddman sister is in a relationship with him . When protagonist Setsu finds this out, she's convinced by her friends to defeat Itami's exes in order to become his girlfriend " just like in that movie ", despite Itami's insistence that it's completely unnecessary. Indeed, the entire battle hasn't really brought Setsu and Itami any closer together, but the ongoing battle has resulted in her amassing an Accidental Harem of the Oddmen she's defeated, and over time she seems more interested in expanding her Oddmen harem than going after Itami specifically.
• Luffy absolutely refuses to listen to any information about the titular treasure he's heading toward when the opportunity arises, or else he will quit being a pirate — because he does not want to have a boring adventure. In the Non-Serial Movie One Piece Stampede , Luffy destroys an Eternal Pose that would've taken the crew directly to it because he refused to become the Pirate King by cheating, an act which once again proves him to be Gol D. Roger 's true successor as that's the exact reason Roger cast the Pose into the sea to begin with .
• In a more meta example, fans have asked Oda, the author, if One Piece is an actual thing, or if One Piece itself is this very trope. Oda has always answered that One Piece is in fact an actual treasure, and not the friends we made along the way.
• Turned into a joke in the dub of Episode 996 when Carrot says that the greatest treasure was the friends they made along the way, while Nami has a death grip on Zeus and declares that he is her "friend" while Zeus sobs in fear at Nami's Tranquil Fury .
• Saitama in One-Punch Man comes at this realization backwards. He starts out wanting to become a hero that can defeat any enemy in one punch , and by the time the series starts he's already reached his goal, only to find that A) Victory Is Boring and B) there's more to being a respected hero than just punching out bad guys.
• In Pokémon: The Series , Ash Ketchum's life goal is To Be a Master , but nobody knows how one actually goes about doing this and even after becoming the very best, like no one ever was, he's at a loss at what to do next and starts aimlessly Walking the Earth . After reuniting with old friends and making new ones in Pokémon: To Be a Pokémon Master , he comes to the conclusion that being a Pokémon Master means seeing the world and meeting all the Pokémon in it rather than being the World's Best Warrior .
• Sabagebu! : Parodied . Momoka leads the Survival Game Club on a quest to her old home in search of a "treasure" her younger self buried. When she gets there, she digs it up, only to find a note from her younger, more innocent self telling her it's the journey that matters, not material things like money. Momoka — being Momoka — is infuriated that there's no money.
• In the Sakura Wars OVA, Sakura Shinguuji receives a scroll purporting to carry the secrets of her family's sword-fighting style. It turns out to be blank. She spends a good long while looking for secret writing before figuring out it means she needs to look within herself for the secrets.
• In Gold Digger , Gina finds herself trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine with a pair of supervillains. Gina manages to break herself out because every time she is given her greatest desire, she gets consumed by questions about how she got there. Unfortunately, the two villains, who gave up on evil after discovering that Constant Victory Is Boring , end up seeing her memories on the subject and become reinvigorated towards conquest .
• In Tintin: Red Rackham's Treasure , Captain Haddock leads a treasure hunting expedition to find a pirate treasure around a deserted island. While they do not find the treasure itself, they do find numerous artifacts including a strongbox containing various documents. Furthermore, they make a new friend, Professor Calculus, who was allowed to test his shark submarine prototype on the expedition. With that done, Calculus examines the documents and finds that Haddock is the heir to a palatial family estate and uses the money he earned selling his sub design to purchase it for the captain. When Tintin and Haddock explore the mansion, they find the treasure was there all along and that discovery would not have been possible without the expedition and having Professor Calculus accompany them.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction It's A Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door , Twilight Sparkle comes down with a terrible case of Horn Rot, and Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity go on a long and dangerous quest to Find the Cure! . While a lot of fans of the story pointed out they could have just asked Twilight's mentor Princess Celestia for help, over the course of the story the three girls learn and accomplish a number of things they never would have if they hadn't done it themselves.
• In BIONICLE : Mask of Light , Takua could have put on the mask at any time to become the Toa Takanuva. He had to take the mask around the island, learn to stop running from danger and face his responsibilities to be worthy of possessing Toa power. His village elder Turaga Vakama explains as much when Takanuva muses over all the losses it took to find himself.
• In The Brave Little Toaster , had the appliances all stayed at the summer cottage like Kirby had initially suggested, the Master would have come back for them to take them with him to college, but they never would have gone through all the experiences that turned them from barely being able to get along and constantly bickering into Fire-Forged Friends .
• Kung Fu Panda has the Dragon Scroll: after much build-up, the scroll turns out to be blank, shiny paper. Later, Po, the eponymous hero, realizes it's a mirror, and learns the lesson. In a twist on the usual trope, Master Shifu, who gave Po permission to take the scroll, had no idea it was blank, because his master, Oogway, never told him what was on the scroll, either. This realization is entirely lost on the main villain, Tai Lung, who had spent years violently trying to obtain the scroll, believing it to be an Upgrade Artifact , and is immediately enraged when it turns out to be blank. When Po tries to explain the scroll's true meaning to him, Tai Lung cannot accept it and his fighting suffers, leading to his defeat. Tai Lung was so focused on the prize that he couldn't handle the realization that there wasn't one, despite how great of a martial artist he became in his journey to get it.
• In The Polar Express , as the Hero Boy arrives Home, the Conductor tells him that the thing about trains is; "It doesn't matter where they're going. What matters is deciding to get on".
• Treasure Planet —one of the biggest deviations from the original book (aside from the movie being a Steampunk Space Opera with aliens, of course) is that Captain Flint rigged the treasure to blow... and Long John Silver gives up (most of) what he could save of the treasure in order to save Jim. Everyone acts like it's all okay, because they're all the better from the experience.
• Up : While Ellie did want Carl to take her to Paradise Falls when she was a kid, as an adult she came to appreciate that her life with Carl was a wonderful adventure in itself. She filled her adventure book with photos of their married life together. While Carl does make it to Paradise Falls to honor her wishes, and the house lands exactly where she would have wanted it, he ultimately builds a new life being a father figure to Russell, seeing the new adventure just as she wanted.
• Circle of Iron . The protagonist Cord goes on a quest for the Book of All Knowledge. When he finally finds it, he opens it and discovers... a mirror. And then he laughs at the monks who guarded the Book when they practically begged him to tell them what was in it - they were forbidden to look, after all.
• It should be noted that the reason for this ambiguous ending is that Lee died before the final scene of Game of Death could be finished, and Lee never wrote down what was supposed to be at the top. Speculation includes a scroll with an inspiring message, another opponent, riches, something supernatural, or — as suggested by several of Lee's friends — a mirror , which was based on the philosophical idea that since you had become the ultimate fighter by reaching that stage, YOU WERE the treasure .
• The Indiana Jones movies play with this trope. While there usually is an actual treasure, the central journey of each of the movies generally involves Indy reaching some deeper understanding about himself or the nature of the treasure over the process of finding it; he often doesn't end up with the actual treasure but comes away from the adventure a better person regardless. The fact that the treasures he seeks throughout three of the main four films of the franchise are all eventually revealed to be worthless in the "they are a death trap" sense (and conveniently take out the villain ) help a lot.
• The Last Dragon starts with Leroy Green's master telling him there is no more he can teach him. "Bruce Leroy" insists on learning more. His master gives him a dragon-shaped amulet and tells him to seek out a master of "The Final Level" in Chinatown. Throughout the film, Leroy protects his friends, family, girlfriend and neighbourhood from villains, and unlocks "the glow" , but returns to his master in shame, never finding the hidden master of Chinatown. Whereupon his master informs him he learned everything he needed to in his struggles, and the amulet was merely a belt buckle .
• The Mummy (1999) ends with the protagonists heading home, Evie and Rick having found love with each other and Jonathan bitching that they ended up empty-handed ... only for it to turn out that, unbeknownst to them, the saddlebags of their camels have been stuffed with gold that another character had meant to steal.
• Subverted in National Treasure . When they enter the fake treasure room , Ben's group starts into this to him. Then they find the real treasure.
• In The Neverending Story Atreyu is outraged that the Empress knew how she could be cured all along yet still sent him on his harrowing quest. She explains that he needed to carry out the quest so a human child, Bastian, would follow him.
• Discussed Trope and paraphrased in Pirates of the Caribbean .
• A deconstructed example comes from Vacation (the 2015 sequel to the first Vacation ) when Rusty plans to fly home to Chicago after suffering, much to Clark's befuddlement. Rusty: I mean, they always say "it's not the destination, it's the journey", right? Clark: The journey sucks. That's what makes you appreciate the destination. You had a dream to take your family to Walley World. Never let that go. I know I didn't.
• The Wizard himself has a ton of these: he gives the characters worthless trinkets to symbolize the heart, brains and courage that they've earned in their quest to find him.
• A more metaphorical read on the same concept: Dorothy uses the ruby slippers to get back to Earth; she's always had the power, but it took the events of the story to teach her the true value of her Kansas home.
• In The Alchemist , Santiago goes through the whole book just to find out that the treasure he spent the whole book looking for was buried right under his location from page 1 .
• All Tomorrows follows the evolution of mankind over the course of a billion years, from a civil war between Earth and Mars, to their war with the Qu , to the hundreds of post-human species that emerged as a result. While they eventually become a multi-galaxy society, the author reveals at the end that posthumanity ultimately disappeared from the universe millions of years ago. Whether they died out or Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence , the author concludes that it doesn't matter. What matters, where the very essence of humanity existed and still exists, are in the lives they lived.
• In Around the World in 80 Days , Phileas Fogg spends 19,000 pounds to win a 20,000 pound bet. When someone comments on how little profit he made on his three month journey, he counters that the experience more than made up for it.
• In BIONICLE , Norik tells this to Vakama and Matau at the end of Web of Shadows. While Keetongu could have cured them of the Visorak venom right off the bat, they had to become worthy of it first .
• For most of Book of Brownies , the adventure is dedicated to the bumbling titular brownie trio in their attempts at rescuing a kidnapped princess, but as their quest goes on, it becomes clear that the whole story is about the brownies redeeming their mischievous selves by doing good deeds, by rescuing a mermaid imprisoned by an evil goblin, helping a young girl flee from her abusive homeland, and later saving the Saucepan Man by banishing an evil dwarf. By the time the brownies reached the princess, they have more or less proven themselves to be good, and their exile from fairyland is no longer in effect.
• The Book of the New Sun : most of the four volumes is taken up with journeying. In a humorous moment Jonas lists all the things that Severian is trying to achieve at the same time note  serve Vodalus, go to work in Thrax, atone for dishonouring the Guild, find Dorcas, make peace with Agia and return the Claw . All Severian's successes prove ephemeral, yet he returns home a changed man, having achieved the unintended goal which he mentioned in passing at the end of Chapter One. In fact, large elements of Severian's journey were being orchestrated by beings who knew far more of Severian's significance than he ever realized.
• The Mirror of Llunet from The Chronicles of Prydain . After Taran's journey, it shows him exactly as he is: his faults, his strengths, and how much he's grown. It is a revelation that makes him Take a Level in Badass . The Big Bad of the book, Dorath, however, was expecting riches like the legends told, and, not comprehending the true meaning of the mirror , crushes the sacred mirror with the heel of his boot in a rage.
• Older Than Print 'The Conference of the Birds' Manṭiq-uṭ-Ṭayr a Persian poem by Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar, 1177. In the poem, the birds of the world gather to decide who is to be their sovereign, as they have none. The hoopoe, the wisest of them all, suggests that they should find the legendary Simorgh. Most of the birds perish on the journey, but the birds make it to the abode of Simorgh learn that they themselves are the Simorgh.
• Day of the Dissonance by Alan Dean Foster has the apprentice making a lonnnnng journey to find medicine for the very ill mentor. The apprentice is not amused by the lesson, but does understand it. It helps that said mentor is up front about being a Jerkass Trickster Mentor . Extra: The apprentice, Jon-Tom, is a UCLA law student pulled into the magical world, which are the setting for 8 books, called the Spellsinger Series. This is the third. The medicine is aspirin, which Jon-Tom had with him in his college backpack at the mentor's house when the wizard first started feeling poorly.
• Invoked in Discworld : Granny Weatherwax orders a sick man to make a pilgrimage to a remote pond every day for a month to appease the water spirits. It turns out she was just making him take a walk every day to improve his health.
• The Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventures novel The Ultimate Treasure plays this one incredibly-to-the-point-of-eyerolling straight; the titular "ultimate treasure" that the Fifth Doctor and Peri get roped into searching for turns out to be, naturally, exploring the wonders of the universe and making friends along the way. There are two other possible doors that the characters can choose from, one filled with material wealth and the other that fulfils their greatest dreams, but the former turns out to be full of gas that suffocates anyone who enters it and the latter hooks up those who enter to a Lotus-Eater Machine that allows them to live out the rest of their lives in a simulation where their greatest dreams come true.
• In the novelisation of Fire Warrior , the main character's commanding officer eventually tells him that when confronted with the harshness and brutality of the Crapsack World they exist in, he realised that the vaunted 'Greater Good' all Tau strive towards simply doesn't exist. However, he then stresses that it is still worth pursuing those ideals because in striving towards them, the Tau can become more virtuous as a race.
• Discussed Trope in The Great Divorce : the (apostate) bishop believes that "to travel hopefully is better than to arrive," while his more heavenly-minded friend disagrees—if the destination isn't worth traveling to, then how could anyone go anywhere in hope?
• The way of hiding the Resurrection Stone within the Snitch is this in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows . It is literally with the hero at all times - however, it isn't until he achieves the maturity to accept his mission that he is able to fully implement it.
• In Robert Bloch 's story "The Hell-Bound Train," protagonist Martin makes a Deal with the Devil that the Devil can have his soul if he, Martin, has the power to stop time when he reaches the moment of perfect happiness. Because Martin is always convinced that he could be happier, he never uses that power during his lifetime. After his death, he acknowledges this trope and uses his power to stop time aboard the hell-bound train so he can enjoy an endless journey with "all the jolly crew" of the damned .
• Little Vampire Learns Kung Fu has one of Little Vampire's human friends learning kung fu from a supernatural teacher so that they can reach the top of a temple and read a scroll that will tell them how to be a true master. The scroll ended up reading "If you were able to reach here, you already have learned all the kung fu you need to be a master."
• Marauders of Gor had the tomb of a great hero, which turned out to contain nothing but an arrow. The protagonists realize that the arrow means they need to step up and become heroes themselves.
• The Redwall book Loamhedge had a few of the main cast go on a journey to find a cure for another main character's paraplegia. After a long arduous journey (where one of them nearly dies from thirst and two others do die in battle), they discover that there's nothing there but a poem, and that the main character they did the quest for learned to walk on her own. On the bright side, all three of the younger members of the questing group were immature, rude, and spoiled, and they came back from the journey much more matured. Two of them grow up to be the Abbess and Recorder respectively.
• Geraldine Harris's The Seven Citadels series plays this trope mostly straight; after an arduous quest by the main characters to acquire seven keys to unlock the prophesied savior , the hero unlocks and enters the cave of the savior, only to see his own face reflected in the mirror that is the only thing there. Toyed with by the fact that he has been religiously forbidden to see his own face (until now), so it takes him a moment to realize who that face is... and then the wife of his god shows up to hammer the point home in case he couldn't figure it out himself.
• The Knights Radiant swear oaths called Ideals in order to join and advance through their specific order. The First Ideal , which is the only one that is shared by all ten orders, is "Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination". Their philosophy is that the importance of the Journey applies to one's entire life, and it's how you got to the end that matters.
• The first book in the series, The Way of Kings shares its name with an in-universe book by an ancient king who decided to make a long journey alone on foot. The book is a set of parables describing the dilemmas he faces on the way and the value of the Journey as an experience on its own. It's implied that this text influenced the Knights Radiant Ideals mentioned above, although the Radiants' powers existed before the Book, so it's not entirely clear what the exact relationship between the two was.
• In The Tales of Beedle the Bard , The Fountain of Fair Fortune turns out to be exactly this. The trials that the heroes had to suffer through only forced them to recognize their own gifts and talents, or move on past their own heartache, or rely on each other. It works.
• A pervasive trait of the Xanth series. It's almost a formula: the protagonist(s) leave their home because some personal problem, visit the Magician of knowledge for a solution, and is sent wandering the land, picking up companions and having adventures. In the end, they find what they were sent out for, but realize that they no longer want or need it, because the journey has changed them - they've outgrown their old childish need, or realized that there are bigger problems to deal with, or the love they were hoping to win is shallow compared to the companion they've been journeying with.
• Many teams on The Amazing Race will say that being on the show and getting to play the game was more important than actually winning it.
• Better Call Saul is a show-wide case of this. Since it's a prequel to Breaking Bad , we know the eventual fates of Saul Goodman, Mike Ehrmantraut, and Gus Fring. But the show is about the journeys these three characters took that molded them into the personas they have in Breaking Bad .
• Doctor Who . In "Revolution of the Daleks" , Yasmin Khan expresses anger over how the Doctor introduced her to the wonders of the universe, then suddenly disappeared from her life without any indication if she was alive or dead. Jack Harkness, who has been through this himself—but for centuries instead of the ten months that the Doctor was apart from Yaz—urges her to just enjoy her time with the Doctor while it lasts.
• Discussed in the pilot episode of Firefly . Kaylee notices Shepard Book is more interested in ships , as opposed to destinations . When asked why, he replies, "Because how you get there is the worthier part."'
• Game of Thrones : Littlefinger believes in a villainous version of this: chaos is a ladder, and the climb is all there is.
• Subverted on Glee when Mr. Schuester tries to teach the Glee Club this when they place last in regionals . They do appreciate the journey, but it still sucks.
• Legends of Tomorrow : Played for Laughs in season 4, when the Legends finally become official freelancers working for the Time Bureau. Except they're still not getting paid. Nate: Being a Legend is all about the memories you make along the way. Unfortunately, you can't use those to buy an apartment.
• Invoked in Quantum Leap (2022) when Ben leaps into one of three sisters sent on a treasure hunt by their late father. The supposedly hidden treasure at the end turned out to be a note from him lamenting the time that he had spent on his own treasure hunts and away from them , reminding them that "the real treasure is at home, with family". Then that line turned out to itself be a final clue: he had found the treasure before he died and hidden it at home behind a family portrait.
• Raven : One of the things Raven says at the end of day 2 of the second week of series 9 is a paraphrase of this Aesop : Raven: It is not the end of the journey that is most important. It is the journey itself in the end.
• Appears as something of a Broken Aesop in Star Trek: Voyager 's final episode, where the characters talk about how the journey is more important than the destination... then risk their lives in order to skip the rest of their journey and get to their destination. (This dissonance is the result of minds changing during the writing process — originally, Voyager 's crew didn't get to "have [their] cake and eat it too", and they chose to sacrifice their shortcut home to deal a crippling blow to the Borg.)
• Aerosmith 's "Amazing": Life's a journey, not a destination, And I just can't tell just what tomorrow brings.
• " Ain't about how fast I get there / Ain't about what's waitin' on the other side / It's The Climb. "
• Linkin Park 's rap remix of "In The End": Because from the start to the end no matter what I pretend, The journey is more important than the end or the start.
• Marillion 's Happiness is the Road , in this case crossing with Survival Mantra : Happiness ain't at the end of the road, Happiness IS the road.
• "One Tin Soldier": "Now the valley cried with anger, 'Mount your horses, draw your swords!' And they killed the mountain people, so they won their just reward. Now they stood beside the treasure, on the mountain dark and red. Turned the stone and looked beneath it; PEACE ON EARTH was all it said."
• In Prickly City , when Carmen speculates about what they are looking for, and whether they could recognize it or find it, Winslow offers this trope. Carmen assures him he's quite a find.
• This is the chief dogma of Fharlanghn, the god of travel, in Dungeons & Dragons . He teaches that the only real way to know the world is to roam it, seeking new horizons. Cleric initiates are taken on an extremely long journey; if they ever ask when it will be over, they fail.
• Tokaido is all about this. The goal isn't to get to the end of the path first—in fact, at multiple points in the game (the Inns), you have to wait for the other players to catch up. Instead, the players try to accumulate the most points from activities along the way, representing their characters attempting to have the most fulfilling experience possible on their travels.
• In Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book , Plachta tells Sophie about the Cauldron of Knowledge, an alchemy cauldron that will make Sophie into a great alchemist. In the end, she doesn't get it, but in the process of searching for it and fighting the alchemist who was using it for evil, she had to master alchemy anyway.
• Parodied at the end of the Captain Scarlett DLC of Borderlands 2 , where just as you reach the treasure room the game cuts to the credits and a child acting as the narrator claims that the real treasure were the friends they made during the journey. Marcus, the real narrator, points out how lame of an ending that is. Thankfully, after the credits you get to loot Captain Blade's treasure room for real .
• In Castle, Forest, Island, Sea you are on the titular island for a reason, which you get to pick. But it changes nothing about the gameplay, and you finish the game by leaving the island.
• The Crusaders, a playable class added in the expansion to Diablo III , were founded in order to seek a solution to the corruption within the Zakarum faith . They never expected they would succeed at such an abstract goal, however; they believe that the quest has value unto itself. In practice, this mostly means Walking the Earth and doing good deeds.
• In Dicey Dungeons , the Witch repeatedly claims that she's more interested in the dungeon experience than being rewarded. Though when Lady Luck tells her that if she doesn't declare what she's playing for, she won't earn anything for winning, she quickly offers up her request for ten million actual followers.
• Five Nights At Freddys VR Help Wanted : Played for Laughs by the Pirate Ride minigame in the Curse of Dreadbear DLC, which places the player in a cheesy , pirate-themed, on-rails Shooting Gallery ride. Said ride's storyline (told in cardboard cutouts) begins with Foxy the pirate fox sailing off on an adventure before being attacked and dragged underwater by a Kraken , followed by the scenery transitioning to an underwater environment with treasure, mermaids, and ghost pirates (whose roles are filled by mascot characters from the series's in-universe Suck E. Cheese's ). After this point, the ride is abruptly cut short by this trope in an in-universe Ass Pull , ending anti-climactically with an aesop about friendship being the greatest treasure of all.
• Journey (2012) , as implied by the title itself, has this as its major theme. Especially apparent in the ending .
• During Aqua's quest in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep , she ends up with Peter Pan and his Lost Boys on a quest for treasure. Eventually, it turns out that the treasure map simply led them all on a circle around Neverland to the same space they started — at which point Peter points out that the supposed treasure didn't matter, what did matter was that the boys pushed themselves to overcome obstacles in order to get to it.
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom : Finley convinces Sasan to come along and investigate reports of a glowing rock in a southern Lanayru cave. With Link's help, they discover that it's a Shrine of Light — but since they have no way of activating the Shrine, the expedition has to end there, to their disappointment. Nevertheless, Finley says that going on an adventure with her sweetheart was satisfying in its own right.
• Parodied in Life Is Strange: Before the Storm 's bonus episode "Farewell". A tape recorded by William Price tells Max and Chloe not to forget "the real treasure...", and the girls guess "Love" and "Friendship" respectively, but William finishes by saying it's their college funds.
• In the Mass Effect series, particularly the second game , this is the reason the non-Heretic and not-automatically-hostile geth concensus give to explain why they rejected outside help from the Reapers, even though they are both synthetic species . They cite that the process of arriving at a more advanced state is as important as attaining that state, and to take shortcuts would cheat them out of important learning processes. Given that one of the big spoilers of the series is that both the interstellar Portal Network that spans the galaxy and allows for interstellar travel and civilization to develop, as well as the ancient giant space station currently called the Citadel at the center of it, were intentionally made and left by the Reapers to encourage biological civilizations to develop along familiar and predictable lines before they come in to cull them all every 50,000 years , they may have a point.
• Minotaur Hotel : Storm comforts P by telling him that even if they don't find the hotel, he still managed to give him another chance at life, along with whatever they did during the week (give peace to the dead souls that were in Nini's dream, remove the curse of the Hinterlands, etc.).
• In Pillars of Eternity , the monk Zahua has a sidequest to unlock the ancient secret of the anitlei, which will allow him to become an unstoppable warrior, so that he can rescue his tribe, which has been conquered and enslaved. He goes on a shroom-induced vision quest to discover this secret... only to realize from his introspective visions that he must come to terms with his survivor's guilt and accept that his tribe cannot be saved. (Confusingly, completing this sidequest gives him the anitlei attribute anyway, which turns out to be a fairly disappointing stat boost.)
• In Skies of Arcadia , Vyse is split up from his friends, who wind up separately searching for the Treasure Of Daccat. At the end of their quest, they're re-united, and when they're looking inside the big honking treasure chest, all they find is a single gold coin, and a letter which lampshades the lesson, explaining that that Vyse's friends are the true treasure note  The dungeon was designed to be explored by two trusting parties working together from opposite sides of the tomb... which the heroes had done completely by accident! . ... Also, the single coin has just about the highest selling price of any item in the game.
• In the first Street Fighter Alpha Gouki / Akuma's ending is a rather bitter version of this. He has reached the end of his journey to become the absolute best, but upon reaching his goal, he finds himself feeling empty. The final quote of that ending is "For some it's the path not the goal."
• It is the central theme in Uru: Ages Beyond Myst : Yeesha sends the player to explore the mysterious worlds of the D'ni to learn about their not-so-honorable history and wrongdoings. The "journeys" are also pieces of cloth scattered around each of the Ages the player visits, and must all be activated in order to complete the Age.
• In WarioWare: Get It Together! , after defeating the True Final Boss , Wario asks where the treasure is. He's horrified when told there's no monetary reward of any kind at the end. Master Mantis suggests this trope was the real treasure... which doesn't comfort Wario at all. The player gets a reward at least, because said boss joins them as the last playable character to be unlocked.
• 8-Bit Theater mentions this trope. Then, of course, it mocks it as meaningless.
• In El Goonish Shive , Pandora met her husband-to-be on a quest, and offered all sorts of advice. He waved her off, despite her insistent warnings that he really needed the information: namely, that there was no actual treasure, and a ferocious monster guarded the cave. He didn't mind, though, as the adventure and the joys of exploration and discovery were the entire point.
• Oglaf parodies this trope in "Delivery" (NSFW), as shown in the page image - he was the Princess all along!
• Paranatural : Parodied. Max: Are we at least paid for this ghost-busting business? Spender: The real reward is the adventures you'll have! ...and the only reward. We are not paid.
• Used in Far Lands Or Bust pretty much verbatim.
• Parodied by one group that has a lizardman in it when looking for food.
• The Door Lord tries to invoke this on Adventure Time by stealing things so that their owners can band together and discover the real treasure: friendship . Which is all well and good, but not enough to excuse the theft .
• DuckTales (2017) has the episode "Treasure of the Found Lamp". In it, a man named Djinn quests to obtain a lost family heirloom. The main characters and even the villains don't realize this at first, believing this sacred lamp that Djinn is talking about to house an actual genie with wishes (which is partly due to Djinn using phrases like it being "devastating" if it "fell into the wrong hands" , by which he means that it would be personally devastating). When Ma Beagle tries to summon the genie , nothing happens and Djinn starts laughing. Ma Beagle and the main cast are rather angry to realize the treasure is basically worthless only for Djinn to explain that the treasure is a part of his family history and holds sentimental value while recounting the story of his ancestors' love. Having reclaimed the lamp, he explains the point of his journey was simply closure to his family's legacy and to return an heirloom, and that the treasure itself is less important than the journey it represents. This inspires Scrooge to open a museum where he can show off all the treasures he's collected and explain why they're so significant, and the adventure that went with each one.
• In an episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy , Mandy goes on a journey to get her nerve back after it's stolen by Billy. The nerve rejects her and she walks away, only to realize that going on such a risky adventure and facing all the challenges that came with it meant that she still had her nerve to begin with. She then promptly gives her old nerve a "Reason You Suck" Speech .
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002) had this and Magic Feather as the origin of King Grayskull. Grayskull seeks the power to defeat Hordak, and is told by a seer to give up his sword and journey to find a new magic sword. When he does, he finds the seer, who returns Grayskull's sword and tells Grayskull he always had the power, he just needed the trip to focus his abilities.
• The 90's children's series Magic Adventures of Mumfie is a great example of this trope. On his adventures, Mumfie does not seek a goal, but rather likes the journey he goes on. "If you want adventure, this is where to start" indeed...
• The Christmas Special Nick & Noël runs entirely on this trope. What began as a quest to deliver the Christmas letter of a little girl who wanted nothing but a new mother instead became the quest that brought a cat and dog together as friends And it brought their two neighboring humans together. The neighbors even married, and Sarah, in the end, got the mother she was wishing for.
• In an alternate future with Lisa as president, Homer decides to run around the grounds of the White House in search of Lincoln's gold. He eventually finds a chest, with a note saying that his gold is in the heart of every American. Homer isn't amused.
• In another episode, Mr. Burns holds a team-building retreat in the mountains. When Lenny and Carl reach the "finish line", the cabin that's supposed to be there is nowhere in sight; Carl suggests that the "cabin" is a metaphor for the trust they built over the course of the journey. Lenny is disappointed because Burns said there would be sandwiches. (In reality, there is a cabin, but Burns and Homer got there early by cheating and subsequently ended up buried in an avalanche.)
• Played with in the episode "Fourth Grade". It's apparently played straight when, as part of Ms. Choksondik's training to teach the fourth graders of South Park, she goes inside The Tree of Insight, only to find nothing there. Though at first disappointed, she realizes that it means she already has what she needs to reach the kids. It's then subverted, as Mr. Garrison goes in after her and does find a physical representation of his "gay side."
• Subverted again in the episode "Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes". The boys are told that in order to destroy Wall-Mart, they have to find and destroy its heart. Stan and Kyle make their way to the TV section (where the heart is said to reside) and encounter the Anthropomorphic Personification of Wall-Mart itself, who directs them to a small door. They open the door and find a mirror, which Wall-Mart says is "the heart" of Wall-Mart, i.e. the consumers. Stan and Kyle, however, take the instructions to "destroy the heart" literally, and smash the mirror, causing the building to implode.
• An episode of Teen Titans focuses in Robin trying to find a Master to teach him kung fu so that he can defeat the episode's bad guy, who's also trying to reach said Master by using Robin to bypass the mountain of challenges. By the end of the episode, Robin manages to defeat the bad guy before finding the Master, who is the old woman he met before.
• Parodied in Tiny Toon Adventures where Buster (as " Pasadena Jones ") is searching for the tomb containing the secret of the "Meaning of Life". When he gets there, he finds Babs, Plucky and Hamton there to explain that the meaning of life is friendship. Buster is not impressed, declaring that "in the sequel, I'm going after some gold!"
• Parodied in the Wander over Yonder episode "The Matchmaker" (though later played straight in "The Party Poopers" and "The Heebie Jeebies"): "We'll just end up in a temple, solving a bunch of riddles, dodging poison darts and getting chased by a giant bolder just to find out that the greatest treasure's our friendship, which we already knew."

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One Piece: The REAL One Piece Is the Friends Made Along the Way

The One Piece is great and all, but it's nothing compared to the treasure of friendship.

WARNING: The following article contains potential spoilers for One Piece

For nearly 21 years, mangaka Eiichiro Oda  has plotted out an exciting, slow-burn mystery about the One Piece—a treasure guaranteed to rock the world and make the one who discovers it King of the Pirates. In an interview with the author of Chibi Maruko-chan , Momoko Sakura, Oda actually clarified that the One Piece is a reward that a pirate crew deserves after years at sea and adventures, rather than something that can be found with an 'x' on a map.

But, while the true nature of the One Piece remains an enigma, it could be that the friends the Straw Hats made along the way and the adventures had with them are worth far more than anything at the end of the Grand Line.

RELATED: Power Levels Are The DEATH Of Good Shonen

In the Sabaody Archipelago Arc, Rayleigh advises the crew to take their time to explore the world, as their conclusions towards the One Piece may differ from that of Roger and his crew—implying that One Piece is more than a monetary prize. To truly appreciate the treasure, a pirate crew has to develop certain perspectives garnered by understanding and following the Poneglyphs spread across the Grand Line.

On their journey, the Straw Hat Pirates encounter a myriad of people connected to the Void Century, the hundred-year gap in recorded history. With each new adventure, the crew learns more about the world and forge lifelong relationships with friends and allies. Wherever the crew goes, they form everlasting bonds that further connect their world—and it's those bonds that lead them closer to the One Piece.

RELATED:  One Piece Vs. Star Wars: Is Haki Or The Force Stronger?

In the Alabasta Saga, the Straw Hats befriend Princess Vivi Nefertari, whose family has protected and hidden the existence of a Poneglyph from the World Government for centuries. In Vivi, they find a lifelong friend, an honorary member of the Straw Hat Pirates and, characteristic of Oda’s storytelling, he brings Vivi back years later to highlight the crew’s numerous royal ties post-Alabasta and their use. The Vivi connection ultimately brings them to Nico Robin, who joins the crew and is indispensable in interpreting the Poneglyphs that will reveal Laugh Tale's location.

From Skypiea to Zou Island, the crew has faced challenges that test their bonds. Each time, Luffy proves himself to be a strong captain willing to make an enemy of the world to protect his friends. Each time, the crew discovers a piece of history that ties their adventures together. And each time, they create new allies and spread the influence of the Straw Hat Pirates.

RELATED: One Piece: Skypiea Is the Arc You Either Love or Hate

Oda makes it a point that One Piece should be enjoyed as a group, as the treasure is something beyond what one person can handle. Even White Beard said that the One Piece will turn the world upside down. So for the crew to be prepared, they must have the necessary strength developed through their adventures, but also a healthy dynamic so they can share in the emotional highs and lows of their journey and be better able to split the One Piece among themselves.

Chapter 967 of the manga also reveals Gol D. Roger’s journey to reach the One Piece, and it's fairly similar to what the Straw Hats have experienced so far. When Roger finally discovers the treasure, Joy Boy's  story, and the history of the Void Century, he laughs. He considered everything to be a “funny story” and thus dubbed the final island “Laugh Tale.”

RELATED: One Piece: Why (And How) The Straw Hats Took A Two-Year Break

“Laugh Tale” suggests that the truth of the One Piece is something more on the wholesome or ridiculous side of things—a treasure perfectly suited for the Straw Hats. It aligns with Luffy’s conviction to go on exciting adventures and stare death right in the face. For him, the journey isn't necessarily about finding treasure and becoming rich, it's about the experience had while searching for it and every adventure on the way. From Roger's experience, knowing the truth of the One Piece universe is a freeing situation, enough to make a man the Pirate King—the person with the most freedom. But that freedom doesn't come entirely from the treasure, it comes from  people.  It comes from befriending all kinds of people from all kinds of places and being able to move among them as a friend.

If that's the case, then Luffy and the Straw Hats might be closer to the One Piece than they seem. Because in the end, the journey is best rewarded with wonderful memories and a tale of laughter—and the Straw Hat Pirates have plenty of those.

KEEP READING: Luffy Vs. Mister Fantastic: Which Rubber Hero Would Win in a Fight?

Workshop Heretic

Thursday, august 29, 2019, maybe the real journey was the friends we failed along the way: "up here" by tristan hughes.

What a wonder it was, this magic trick of distance, that could conjure you so effortlessly into another existence. In a different far away my other life stuttered and failed, and here it meant nothing. It was no great fall, hardly a topple really (though up close it might have felt that way). I'd published a few books and not many people had read them. 

I told them I was very keen to learn these things. I told them I wanted to share in the kind of stories they told...I told them I admired and envied them for having such a practical purchase on things, for being so solidly enmeshed in the world. I think that may have been the phrase I really used. The firefighter smiled indulgently, and surreptitiously put the beer he was about to hand me back in the case. 

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The Evolution of True Friendship

Some interesting implications of our evolved friendship detectors..

Posted September 12, 2017

St. Thomas Aquinas famously mused, “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship .” I recently came across this quote, and it seemed like an easy statement to agree with. But the more I thought about true friendship , the less I felt like I understood.

So I did what any scholar of human nature would do and continued to scroll through quotes on the internet. One idea kept popping up: true friends are around when times are tough. “Friends show their love in times of trouble and not happiness ,” wrote Greek philosopher Euripides. “A real friend walks in when the rest of the world walks out,” quipped radio host Walter Winchel. And I even found this gem, attributed to the sometimes brilliant Justin Bieber: “friends are the best to turn to when you’re having a rough day.”

I went bleary-eyed reading pages of quotes like these, which usually means that the nugget of wisdom isn’t a particularly deep insight into human behavior. Of course we want our friends to be around when times are tough. That’s what friends are for! But why ? Why do we place such emphasis on our friends being there during tough times? This seemingly simple question is actually part of a deep evolutionary puzzle.

The puzzle starts with acknowledging that friendships exist because two people can benefit from the relationship. It makes us uncomfortable to think of our friends in these terms, as people who can benefit us (e.g., “ my friendships aren’t about what I get in return”). But let’s be honest, if you aren’t getting some benefit from your friends, you should probably get some new friends.

The real problem with the quid-pro-quo of friendship isn’t that it’s distasteful, it’s that it sets up a nasty paradox: we most need our friends’ help when we are least likely to repay them. In other words, when we are, sick, sad, or broke—that’s when we really need our friends—but being in such a sorry state means that we’re least capable of returning the favor. This creates the unfortunate incentive for our friends to abandon us when our need is greatest. And this happens. We call them fair-weather friends: people who disappear when we get sick, depressed , or lose our jobs, and then reappear when we’re back to normal. But as horrible as fair-weather friendship seems, from an evolutionary perspective, the real question is: Why aren’t all friends fair-weather friends? This is exactly how it works among other animals; a deer running from a predator doesn’t double back to help a friend. So what’s so different about human friendship?

The solution to the paradox, of course, is that true friends don’t abandon us in times of need because they know that when we return to health, happiness, or gainful employment, we will repay them the favor. This is a valuable arrangement to have, but the important thing to recognize is that true friendship wasn’t inevitable. It could have been otherwise, and a number of key pieces of human psychology had to evolve before true friendship could exist in its current form. Specifically, the biggest thing our species needed was a way to separate fair-weather friends from true friends. How do we do this?

In the same way that our eyes evolved to be sensitive to salient cues in our environment, our friendship detectors have evolved to be particularly sensitive to salient cues about whether our friends will abandon us in times of need. This isn’t to say that our friendship detectors only focus on being abandoned in tough times; we choose our friends based on many different characteristics, like who devotes the most time to us, who adds the most happiness to our lives, and who is the kindest, the funniest, or the best looking. But the point is that there was intense evolutionary pressure not to be abandoned in tough times, and this has a profound effect on how human friendship works.

Here are three of the most interesting consequences of our evolved friendship detectors:

1. Indebted to Those Who Help Us in Times of Need. The most obvious consequence is that we feel indebted to those who help us during tough times. We know this, of course, but consider how extreme we are in this regard. We all know people who are in friendships that are otherwise not very healthy, but they remain in them because said friend helped them at some critical juncture (e.g., “Liz was there for me when on one else was.”). We can also do hundreds of nice things for a happy friend, but all is forgotten when we drop the ball on a sad friend. This behavior only makes sense if we recognize that our friendship detectors are especially tuned to make sure we’re not abandoned at the worst possible time. In sum—for better and for worse—the strength of our friendships is often less about the total amount of happiness we add to our friends’ lives, and more about whether we were there for them in specific times of need.

2. Seeking Friends Who Think We Are Unique. Have you ever noticed how our friends really appreciate the skills we have but they do not (e.g., “Gertrude is so great, she’s such an amazing DJ, our parties would suck without her,” “Greg does such an awesome job planning our vacations—what would we do without him?” etc.). At first, it seems obvious why our friends would notice our unique traits—they are right there on display for anyone to see—but the hidden evolutionary logic of our friendship detector suggests another reason: perhaps we choose our friends in the first place based on who is most likely to appreciate our uniqueness. Why? This is exactly the strategy one would adopt to minimize the risk that our friends would ditch us in times of need. If we pick friends who value our unique traits, then we are hard to replace (or so they think), and so our friends are more likely to be there for us when it counts. In sum, no friendship is unconditional and when it comes time to ask for help, it’s better to be irreplaceable, and so we evolved to make friends with people who view us as unique.

3. The Difficulty of Modern Friendships. This implication is more speculative, but the nature of our friendship detectors might also help explain why so many people find it difficult to form close friendships. We are all living longer, healthier, and safer lives than at any time in recorded history, and this is a good thing, but it also means that many of our friendships have never been tested. Indeed, to know who really has your back, there needs to be some diagnostic event that separates true friends from fair-weather friends. We’ve all struggled at points in our lives, but modern friendships more often involve going to the mall than summiting Everest, exploring a harsh new frontier, or going to war. In sum, it takes a watershed event to separate true friends from fair weather friends, but these events are rare and so many of our friendships remain in true friendship limbo.

It might seem odd to take an evolutionary perspective on a question like true friendship. After all, friendships are a matter of personal taste, they change over the lifespan, and vary across cultures. But if there is one enduring truth about friendship, it’s that we want our friends to be there in times of need. This seems obvious to us, but it’s interesting to think that it could have been otherwise. It could have been that we judge our friends by who spends the most time with us, or who brings joy to our lives most often. Or it could have been that all friendships were fair-weather friendships that we ended as soon as we stopped getting proportional returns.

But our model of friendship is different. We give our friends our bottom dollar, put our lives on hold to visit when they are sick, and forget our own problems to help them with theirs. And because this is how friendship works, it has a number of consequences, including making us constantly on alert for possible signals of abandonment in times of need, motivating us to make friends with those who value our unique traits, and sometimes feeling uncertain about who are true friends really are. All this is part of the hidden evolutionary logic of true friendship.

Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1996). Friendship and the Banker’s Paradox: Other pathways to the evolution of adaptations for altruism. In W. G. Runciman, J. Maynard Smith, & R. I. M. Dunbar (Eds.), Evolution of Social Behaviour Patterns in Primates and Man. Proceedings of the British Academy, 88, 119-143.

Gus Cooney is a social psychologist at Harvard University who researches social interaction, decision-making, and happiness.

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18 things we learned from 'Friends: The Reunion'

This image provided by HBO Max shows Jennifer Aniston, from left, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc in a scene from the "Friends" reunion special. (Terence Patrick/HBO Max via AP)

LOS ANGELES -- After so many years -- and episode re-watches -- could there BE anything left to learn about "Friends"?

As the highly-anticipated, almost two-hour reunion special for HBO Max shows (and with apologies to Matthew Perry for continuing to borrow his lines), "Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes."

One thing that we didn't need to learn (because we already knew it) was just how truly there these six characters were for the audience.

In the 1990s and early-aughts, the cast of "Friends" provided hours of joy -- first just on Thursday nights when new episodes aired, but soon enough five nights a week in syndication.

Within the past decade, diehard and casual fans alike could spend any time of any day with Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Perry and David Schwimmer, as the show became available on streaming services.

This sextet has helped their audience get through so much, now including the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did "Friends" see a spike in viewership in the earliest lockdown days according to Nielsen, but also, just before the world fully reopens, they gathered together to shoot "Friends: The Reunion."

"It was life-changing, not only for us but for whoever watched it, and that's just such a great feeling," Cox said of her experience on "Friends."

Within the special, they reminisced over their time working together while walking around recreated versions of Joey and Chandler's apartment, Monica and Rachel's (turned Monica and Chandler's) apartment and the Central Perk coffeehouse, as well as while sitting down on the ironic orange couch for an outdoors interview with "The Late Late Show's" James Corden.

They performed scene readings from "The One Where Ross Finds Out," "The One Where Everybody Finds Out" and the Season 4 premiere, "The One With The Jellyfish." They also took part in a trivia game, designed and shot identically to the one in "The One With The Embryos."

In doing all of these things, they revealed behind-the-scenes tidbits and showed off special relationship dynamics that expanded even the biggest fan's knowledge of their favorite show. The one thing they did NOT do was dance in a fountain.

Here are 18 things learned from "Friends: The Reunion."

The One Where Ross and Rachel Were on a Break! Corden asked the six stars to reveal whose side of that infamous argument they fell on, and they all agreed that Ross and Rachel were on a break when he slept with Chloe (Angela Featherstone). Admittedly, they all had different levels of enthusiasm about that belief, but the authorities have spoken, so debate no more!

The One With the Crush Borrowing a question that Janice (Maggie Wheeler) once posed to the six characters, Corden asked the six actors who became romantically involved with each other while filming. "The first season I had a major crush on Jen," Schwimmer admitted. "It was reciprocal," she shared. But, he went on, "It was like two ships passing because one of us was always in a relationship and we never crossed that boundary. We respected that."

LeBlanc piped up with a fake cough and a "Bullshit," which sent the audience into wild applause. But he was joking, and Aniston clarified that she once told Schwimmer, "It's going to be such a bummer if the first time you and I kiss is on national television." But, "sure enough, the first time we kissed was in that coffee shop. So we just channeled all of our adoration and love for each other into Ross and Rachel."

The One Where Ross and Rachel Almost Didn't End Up Together "Friends" co-creator David Crane, who was sitting in the COVID-safe audience during Corden's interview and gave in an off-site interview for the special, shared that in working on the final season, the writers' room did consider more ambivalent endings about the status of Ross and Rachel. But ultimately love won out definitively because, "People have been waiting 10 years to see this couple get together, we've got to give them what they want, we just have to find a way to do it so the journey is unexpected."

The One Without a Movie For anyone holding out hope that the experience these actors had coming together for only the second time since "Friends" wrapped in 2004 would spark interest in more, we're sorry to burst your bubble, but that is not going to happen. "That's all up to Marta and David," Kudrow said. "I once heard them say, and I completely agree, that they ended the show very nicely, everyone's lives are very nice, and they would have to unravel all of those good things in order for there to be stories. And I don't want anyone's lives to be unraveled." Kudrow also added, "At my age, saying like, 'Floopy' -- stop. You have to grow up." Aniston took things farther and said they probably wouldn't even do another reunion like this.

The One With Where They Are Now Kudrow may have crushed many people's dreams about actually seeing where the characters would be at this place in time, but she said she imagines Phoebe is still married to Mike (Paul Rudd), with kids, living in Connecticut. "I think she was probably the advocate for her kids...and all of the other kids who were a little different, creating the arts program," she said. Aniston said Ross and Rachel got married and had some kids, and Ross still "played with bones."

Cox said she believed that because Monica is so competitive, she would still be "in charge of the bake sale in elementary school," even though her and Chandler's kids would be out of school by now. "She's just got to keep things going, PTA. And you are still making me laugh every day," she said to Perry. "Just wanted to make sure I factored in somewhere," he replied. And Joey? "I think he probably opened a sandwich shop on Venice Beach," LeBlanc said.

The One Where the Audience Inspired Monica and Chandler's Relationship The audience reaction was so loud -- and long -- at the reveal that Chandler and Monica slept together in "The One With Ross' Wedding Part 2," it made the writers re-think plans for that storyline. Originally, Crane said, it was going to be a "brief thing where we had fun with it afterward, 'What did we do?'" Since that episode was the fourth season finale, the writers and producers had time to reflect on the reaction, and ultimately expanded it from being "just one night in London," as Crane said it was originally meant to be. This opened up a wealth of stories, from dating in secret, to having multiple characters find out about the relationship at different times, to eventually getting engaged, married and adopting twins.

The One With the Grudge Against Marcel When asked what part of the show the cast members did not enjoy, poor Marcel came to mind immediately. Cox clarified that this was because "the monkey scared me," but Schwimmer had some serious complaints. "The monkey didn't do its job right," he said. Marcel (real name: Katie) was a trained working capuchin, of course, but Schwimmer noted there would be choreographed bits the human actors worked out that didn't perfectly align with the monkey's own timing to hit his mark, "so we'd have to reset, we'd have to go again, because the monkey didn't get it right. This kept happening over and over."

But he didn't stop there: Schwimmer also remembered how Marcel would be fed live grubs while sitting on his shoulder. "I'd have monkey grubby hands all over. It was just time for Marcel to fuck off." (The irony is that the producers shared a story about how Schwimmer had such a bad time doing a previous TV show he had quit this side of the biz to only focus on theater and in order to get him to agree to do "Friends," they had to swear up and down it would be different. And it was different, but not always better for him, judging by his still-palpable anger about the monkey all these decades later.)

The One With Missing Set Pieces As detail-oriented as the production design team and art department were in rebuilding the sets for this special reunion, they could not replace every item exactly. Cox pointed out that the cookie jar in Monica's kitchen was different because the "original cookie jar is at Lisa Kudrow's house." Additionally, Aniston shared she took a mug from the original set and LeBlanc took the foosball from that iconic table. While those items are small enough that the casual viewer would never know, "Friends" fans have been re-watching the old episodes for years in anticipation of a reunion like this and certainly would have freeze-framed moments in the kitchen to call out that cookie jar, if nothing else, had Cox not said something.

The One With the Beam The beam should have been the seventh billed in the "Friends" reunion, as almost every cast member called it out when stepping onto the set of Monica's apartment. In early episodes (and others that James Burrows directed), there was a wooden archway that separated the kitchen and living room sets on that part of the soundstage. It provided a convenient piece of story in Season 3's "The One with the Giant Poking Device" when Monica banged her nephew's head into it, but it limited camera angles and interfered with lighting, so it was usually absent, wreaking havoc with continuity and raising questions about just how much work a renter could do on a New York City apartment. It was restored in all of its nostalgic glory for the reunion special, truly bringing the experience full-circle.

The One With Courteney Cox's Cheat Sheets As LeBlanc walked through Monica's meticulously-recreated kitchen during the special, he paused at the table and pondered aloud whether Cox's line would still be written on it. Although he sounded like he was kidding at first, he revealed to Aniston, Kudrow and Schwimmer that he caught her doing it once and asked her what it was. "Mind your business," he recalls her telling him. While he didn't name what episode this happened during, it would not be a surprise if she did it often. The writers used to rework jokes during the live tapings so much that the show became notorious for its tapings running extremely late. Their bar for quality was so high, they would finesse as much as they could based on the live audience's reaction on Stage 24 on the Warner Bros. lot, which required the cast members to be quick on their feet to absorb the new material immediately. Cox ended up joining the group as they were reminiscing over her keeping scripts in the sink and she added, "I had so much of my dialog within these apples," while messing with the bowl on the table.

The One Where They Gambled on Jennifer Aniston Don't let Rachel herself know, but Crane referred to the character as "incredibly selfish, self-involved, spoiled." He noted that, "In the wrong hands, you don't like Rachel." This is partially why she was the last character cast. When they found Aniston, they felt she was perfect but she was already committed to a show called "Muddling Through." They hired her anyway and shot the pilot, as well as a few subsequent episodes, figuring they'd see what show won later. "If CBS would have picked ['Muddling Through'] up," Crane recalled, "we would have had to reshoot the first three episodes of 'Friends.'" Aniston added that she loved "Friends" so much she actually went to her other producers and asked to be released from it. The response? "That show's not going to make you a star," she remembered being told.

The One With Janice's Laugh Maggie Wheeler, who played Chandler's on-again-off-again girlfriend Janice, shared that she created Janice's iconic laugh (second only to her delivery of, "Oh my god") because she was acting opposite Perry, who was so funny she knew she would end up laughing in the scene and potentially ruining the take. So she worked a unique laugh into the scene as Janice's response to Chandler, and the rest is history.

The One With Matthew Perry's Confession Perry revealed to his former cast mates that he often "felt like I was going to die if [the audience] didn't laugh" at his jokes on tape night. "It's not healthy, for sure, but I would sometimes say a line and they wouldn't laugh and I would sweat and just go into convulsions. ... I would freak out." It was something he kept to himself while working on the show, but he said he felt like that "every single night."

The One With Technology Schwimmer, who directed 10 episodes of "Friends" (and two of its spinoff "Joey!") marveled at the sitcom cameras on the stage today, compared to what they used on "Friends." These, he noted, could be operated by one person, but back then, each one required three. "It was a huge crew," he said. " four cameras, the choreography was incredible."

The One With Memory Lapses Much fun was to be had with the fading memories of cast members -- but to be fair, they don't binge their own show. In fact, a few of whom shared they never watch the show at all. "There are seasons I've never seen," said Kudrow, which Perry seconded. Schwimmer said he only recently looked back at some episodes because his daughter has started watching the show. LeBlanc seemed to have the most details teed up and ready to be talked about (somehow he magically even correctly identified Joey's hand twin just by looking at hands), but even he didn't remember that the length of Rachel's letter to Ross was 18 pages... front and back.

Perry didn't remember that by the end of the series, the foosball table had been destroyed; Aniston still thought Chandler's job was a transponster; Schwimmer didn't remember the titular plot in "The One With The Ball" (Season 5) even though his character started the challenge of not dropping the ball in the story. Nobody remembered Mr. Heckles' name -- though Kudrow knew the actor who played him was Larry Hankin (who made a surprise guest appearance, in costume) and no one could finish the lyrics to the barbershop quartet's message from Ross in the third season episode, "The One With All The Jealousy." Behind-the-scenes details fared better, though: Aniston even remembered what some of her fellow actors were wearing during the first table read.

The One With Real-Life Friends as Character Inspirations Co-creators Marta Kauffman and Crane have always talked about being inspired by their own lives in New York City in their 20s when creating the show, but here Kauffman revealed that the character of Chandler was even named after one of her friends. (We hope he didn't take offense when, in the fourth season, Joey listed multiple reasons Chandler is a terrible name when he was trying to get Phoebe to name one of the triplets Joey instead of Chandler.) In this same interview package, Crane shared the one-line pitch for the show as being "about that time in your life when your friends are your family," which seems both like a perfectly universal show any network would want and also way too broad to be sold on that alone today.

The One With the Rough Audition The night before LeBlanc was set to audition for "Friends," he told Corden, he was running lines with a friend who said that because the show was about a group of friends hanging out, they should go out drinking. They did, and LeBlanc crashed at his place after, where, after he "got up [to go to the bathroom] too fast, I kind of blacked out, as you do, and fell face-first into the toilet," he said. "A huge chunk of meat came off my nose." When he went in the next day, Kauffman asked what happened. "I told the truth and got the job," he said. What made this story even more special was that executive producer Kevin Bright revealed in an interview package that the role of Joey, in the end, came down to LeBlanc and Louis Mandylor -- who went on to play Carl, the guy Joey hired to pretend to be his twin brother to get into a medical science study in the sixth season.

The One With an On Set Injury Not to make this all about LeBlanc, but the reunion special also revealed how he dislocated his shoulder during the third season of "Friends," which resulted in him wearing a sling for a few episodes. In "The One Where No One's Ready," he had to dive for the chair after Chandler came back into Monica's apartment fully dressed and vying for the vacated seat.

During one take, which the cast watched raw footage of together, LeBlanc landed wrong on his left arm, resulting in production being paused so he could go to the hospital. Although they wrote the sling into a few episodes so everybody could go back to work, they didn't finish filming this particular episode until LeBlanc's arm was healed. "What started out the simplest 'Friends' episode," Bright said, "ended up taking the longest amount of time to shoot." If you're superstitious, you might say the reason this episode went so wrong was because the cast didn't do their usual pre-show huddle that night. "It was sort of early on, but then after that we'd say, 'Do we need to do the huddle?' And he'd say, 'Yeah,'" Kudrow said of LeBlanc.

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Paisley and McGuinness: the movie. But is it a travesty of the truth?

A fierce row has broken out over a “docu-drama” portraying the unlikely friendship between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness that developed during the Northern Ireland peace process.

The Journey is a fictionalised account of the relationship of Paisley and McGuinness during the political negotiations in Scotland that led to the 2006 St Andrews agreement and paved the way to a once unthinkable power-sharing partnership. The film stars Timothy Spall as Paisley, the former Democratic Unionist party leader, and Star Trek actor Colm Meaney as McGuinness , the Sinn Féin politician and one-time IRA chief of staff.

Veteran watchers of the odd-couple bromance of Paisley and McGuinness have told the Observer they regard the film, on release from last week, as abusing poetic licence to create a myth that distorts history. The criticism concerns the film’s central plot device, in which a scheme is hatched to throw Paisley and McGuinness together in the Scottish wilderness so that they can bond. In the film, the two are delayed by an MI5-engineered “crash” on the road to Edinburgh, as Paisley tries to return from the peace negotiations to attend his 50th wedding anniversary party in Belfast.

MI5, headed by the late John Hurt, has placed a secret camera inside the car and security service agents alongside Tony Blair then watch the relationship between Paisley and McGuinness develop. Paisley’s son, Ian Jnr, and Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams are shown as in on the plot to push the two political leaders together.

Arthur Aughey, emeritus professor of politics at the University of Ulster, described the plot as “fake news on celluloid”. Aughey said: “In these post-truth times it is easy to see how this piece of thinly stretched fiction could become an accepted version of the actual events in only a few years. We could end up with some of my first-year students telling me this was what happened at the St Andrews negotiations when it so obviously didn’t. That is why, in the interest of historical truth, that this film should come with a major health warning.”

The screenwriter, Colin Bateman, who is based in Co Down, said his critics were confusing documentary with drama, and that “every film ever made about historic events is a work of fiction, from Saving Private Ryan to Schindler’s List ”. He pointed out that McGuinness and Paisley did travel home together to Belfast during the negotiations.

“This was confirmed to us – after the script was written – by both parties. But the interesting thing from my point of view was that neither side could agree on what happened on their flight home, McGuinness saying they just said hello and Ian Jnr telling us that they got on like a house on fire. We’re telling a story that in reality played out over 40 years within the confines of a 94-minute movie – this is what drama does.”

The film has also been criticised over the omission of key participants in the talks, most crucially George W Bush’s special envoy to Northern Ireland , Mitchell Reiss.

In her definitive account of the St Andrews negotiations and their aftermath, Peace Without Consensus , American academic Mary Alice Clancy revealed that it was Reiss who pressured the Blair government not to back down over the DUP’s insistence that Sinn Féin must support the policing and justice system before entering government.

“Those who were willing to tackle the issues of policing and criminality, Mitchell Reiss and Michael McDowell [the Irish justice minister at the time], are wholly absent from the film,” she said.

“Perhaps the film can be written off as a bit of harmless fluff, but the danger is that such cultural artefacts often become shorthand for wider understandings of the peace process. The plot is admittedly ridiculous and a work of pure imagination. That said, the film appeals to some audiences as it taps into what we want to believe about peace: that once implacable enemies can find common ground by recognising the other’s humanity.”

Ed Moloney, co-author of a critically acclaimed biography of Paisley, said while he had only seen trailers and reviews of The Journey , the storyline “strikes me as a cartoon, fictionalised and make-believe version of the peace process”. He said it appeared to be “a perfect example of why Hollywood should not be allowed anywhere near recent history. Unfortunately a lot of people will see this film and believe it.”

Nick Hamm, director of The Journey , said: “This is not a documentary and we have been extremely clear from the beginning that this is a work of fiction. The film has played to thousands of people, including a rather extraordinary and emotional premiere in Belfast on Thursday night. We screened it to schoolchildren in Belfast, not one of whom mistook what we were doing for historical fact. We also showed the film recently in the House of Commons. Former ministers, civil servants involved in the talks and family members were present. None expressed any trouble with being able to separate fiction from reality.

“The believed ‘truth’ is that both these men forged a friendship and that friendship went on to enable and encourage a peace process that we felt deserved celebrating. As we all know it is very hard to achieve peace but harder still to keep it.”

• Northern Ireland
• The Observer
• Martin McGuinness
• Ian Paisley
• Timothy Spall

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“Friends” and the illusion of perfect adult friendships

The TV show sold us an idealized vision of these relationships. For young adults, the real thing is far harder to find.

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The friendships of Friends are something of a marvel. Six vastly different people in their young adulthood with disparate wants, goals, professions, and relationships all closely orbit one another (and a single coffee shop). Whenever they need each other, there’s always someone available to help or comfort them. Whether it’s Monica letting Rachel move into her apartment at the series’ beginning, or Phoebe rushing Ross to the airport to try to win Rachel back at the series’ end, the tightly knit bonds of their lives are so interwoven that they experience all of their milestone moments together.

Monica, Rachel, Chandler, Ross, Phoebe, and Joey live together (sometimes literally) and love each other — and eventually find their happily-ever-afters with each other, too. But the cruel lie of Friends, which comes to HBO Max for a reunion special on May 27, and so many shows like it is that in real life, friendships often don’t operate like that at all.

Television and movies have long given us unrealistic expectations for romantic relationships. There are rarely any perfectly timed meet-cutes or mad dashes to the airport, and the chances of an ironic misunderstanding that lead you to the love of your life are slim to none. But less attention has been devoted to how television and movies shape our perception of friendships, too, in ways that don’t always reflect reality.

Modern adult friendships aren’t just challenging to create and maintain — some evidence suggests they are also in decline . Twenty-two percent of millennials in a 2019 YouGov poll said they had “no friends,” compared to 16 percent of Gen Xers and 9 percent of baby boomers. The reasons can be pinned on a variety of factors: Americans today lead increasingly busy lives, and as members of our friend groups grow into their careers and relationships, incomes and schedules start to vary . People move away for new jobs or to be closer to family. Distance and time become barriers in a way they weren’t when everyone was young, single, and devoted to their found families.

But you’d never know that from watching television. From Friends to Living Single to Grey’s Anatomy to New Girl , TV reinforces the fantasy that true friendships are and should be deeply close but require no real effort to maintain. It’s a stark difference from the way we know friendships operate in our own lives — as meaningful but sometimes fleeting relationships that can eventually dissolve because we have no language, script, or social expectation for how to seriously integrate friendships into our adult lives.

When Grey’s Anatomy’s Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) anointed Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) her “person,” she originally meant it literally — she’d put Meredith’s name down as her emergency contact for a planned abortion procedure. Still in its early seasons, the show had found a way to signify the depth of their budding platonic romance. Cristina didn’t need to say much; Meredith understood her intuitively and didn’t need to crack her friend wide open in order to support her. The scene was the basis of their decade-long relationship and the seed that planted a whole new lexicon for talking about female friendship. It was as swoon-worthy as any declaration of love because it was a declaration of love — just not the one we’d been conditioned to expect.

But Meredith and Cristina’s relationship was one crafted in a writers’ room. Real friendships are rife with conflict, separations, jealousies, and reconciliations. They are relationships like any other, stretching through their growing pains and sometimes snapping from the stress of ongoing tension. But none of that ever seems to make it to a television screen. As a result, we’re left idealizing relationships that wouldn’t happen outside the context of scripted television.

TV friendships, for example, rarely depict friendships that survive big life changes. In that world, jobs, families, and children are always given more value than the friendships its characters have been building for years. Have you ever noticed how many TV shows about friendship end with everyone leaving a central, grounding location ? The Friends finale had the gang say goodbye to Monica’s (Courteney Cox) purple apartment, New Girl ended with a farewell to the loft, and Broad City saw Abbi (Abbi Jacobson) leave New York in favor of Colorado. Even workplace comedies such as The Office and Parks and Recreation end with their characters moving on from the jobs that brought them all together in the first place. In every one of these shows, the story ends as the characters move on not just with their lives but also with the very narrative premise that binds them.

And as an audience, we want closure when stories end. We spend years with characters and invest in their lives. It makes sense that our journey ends as they exit the phase of life in which we met them. But over time, this accumulation of choices has trained us to associate friendships with the spaces where they initially thrive. And we don’t have great models for how friendships should endure when they exist outside the realm of convenient proximity, despite the fact that in the real world, people’s locations and jobs are constantly changing: The average American adult moves 11.7 times and changes jobs around 12 times in their lifetimes. Millennials in particular are lonelier than they’ve ever been and have less time than ever to cultivate the kinds of deep, meaningful friendships we see depicted on television.

But the characters on these shows not only live and work together, they also date and marry each other and go through many major life events by one another’s sides. They often have no significant relationships outside of the designated group, and when they do, those people are either presented as a threat to the established collective or are eventually subsumed by it.

Workplace comedies are especially guilty of this. For shows such as The Office and The Mindy Project , professional and private boundaries quickly blur. In both Parks and Rec and Brooklyn Nine-Nine , the main characters get married in the workplace itself because all of the people important to them are already there.

In contrast, for dramas like Scandal , How To Get Away With Murder , and Being Mary Jane , the chief complaint becomes that the main characters have no friends at all, only colleagues they try to keep at arm’s length. Frustrating as that is — especially given that this narrative loneliness seems confined to Black female characters — in a way it’s almost a truer, more honest depiction of how friendships tend to operate in our modern, hyperconnected lives.

But for all of these shows, characters tend to begin or end at the point at which they are attached to the group. No one ever has a college friend who’s in town for the weekend or a family emergency that takes them back home for a week or two. In every way that matters, these characters are one another’s entire worlds. They rely on one another in times of crisis and triumph. They are each other’s support systems. And they value each other above all others.

The way television depicts friendship has progressed in some ways. Female friendships especially have shifted in the last decade in largely positive ways. We’ve come a long way from the sexist presumptions of catfighting in films such as Mean Girls to the wonderful, supportive vibrance evident in movies like Someone Great and Bridesmaids . And while the new visibility of friendship in media is a refreshing change from its usual focus on heterosexual romantic relationships, pop culture has sometimes swung too far in the other direction: Now, intensely romantic but platonic friendships must fulfill all the emotional needs that should rightfully be spread across multiple relationships.

Broad City is a classic example of a sincerely loving friendship that borders on toxic codependency . In the show’s final season, when Abbi announces her intention to move out of New York for good, Ilana (Ilana Glazer) has a full-blown meltdown . The show presents her tantrum as a testament to the depth of the women’s friendship — and it is. But it’s also a sign that the women cannot function without each other. As envious as their friendship is, it’s also all-consuming. Their very identities are challenged at the prospect of its potential dissolution or separation. But the show also makes clear that in their quest to be each other’s everything, they’ve neglected to become whole people of their own.

But perhaps more insidious than the portrayal of a too-close friendship is the lack of work their relationship seems to require. Disagreements and miscommunications between them are quickly resolved within the span of an episode or two, and very little time is allotted to working through the disloyalties, real or imagined, that have infected their friendship. Conflict resolution is unnecessary when your love for each other supersedes all.

Slowly but surely, television is catching up to this glaring emotional disparity. Shows such as Insecure are finally taking a hard look at what happens when a friend group fractures, and how deeply wounding it can be to fall out with the person who used to know you best. Issa and Molly’s “breakup” in Insecure’s most recent season resonated with audiences because it acknowledged that friendships — like all relationships — are work. It takes time and dedication to maintain them. The fallout felt real and hurtful, in part because there have been so few honest, realistic cultural scripts in media for how friendships should end.

The upcoming Friends reunion won’t undo the story choices that came before. The trailer suggests it will be rooted more in nostalgia than in advancing the storylines of what 17 years could (and likely would) do to a close group of friends. This reunion special, like so many others before it, will likely exist as a form of fan service: Perhaps what viewers really want, if we’re being honest, is for the friendship dynamics of our favorite TV characters to never really change or evolve as they do in our real lives. We want them to stay frozen in that inexplicably spacious purple apartment in ’90s New York City.

If only our own friendships could be so pat.

Cate Young is an award-winning writer and culture critic. Her work has appeared in Vulture, Glamour, Jezebel, NPR Music, and The Cut. She currently works as an audio producer in Los Angeles.

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Common terms and phrases, about the author  (2017).

Shannon Hale is the bestselling author of many books for children, including the Ever After High series, Princess Academy (Newbery Honor book), and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl middle grade novel. She co-wrote the graphic novels Rapunzel's Revenge and Calamity Jack and the chapter book series The Princess in Black with her husband Dean Hale. They live with their four children near Salt Lake City, Utah. LeUyen Pham has illustrated more than one hundred books for children, including the Caldecott Honor book Bear Came Along by Richard T. Morris and the bestselling Princess in Black series by Shannon and Dean Hale. She is the co-creator, along with Shannon Hale, of the bestselling graphic memoirs Real Friends, Best Friends , and Friends Forever. Her own books include The Bear Who Wasn't There and Big Sister, Little Sister . A graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, LeUyen lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.

Bibliographic information

Book Reviews | Open Book Society

Read, review & discuss, real friends (real friends, book #1) by shannon hale: book review.

Real Friends    

Real Friends Series

By Shannon Hale    

ISBN: 9781626724167

Author Website: squeetus(.)com

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Andra                   

Shannon and Adrienne have been best friends ever since they were little. But one day, Adrienne starts hanging out with Jen, the most popular girl in class and the leader of a circle of friends called The Group. Everyone in The Group wants to be Jen’s #1, and some girls would do anything to stay on top . . . even if it means bullying others.

Now every day is like a roller coaster for Shannon. Will she and Adrienne stay friends? Can she stand up for herself? And is she in The Group—or out?

Newbery Honor author Shannon Hale and New York Times bestselling illustrator LeUyen Pham join forces in this graphic memoir about how hard it is to find your real friends—and why it’s worth the journey.  (Goodreads)

Real Friends is the first graphic novel in the Real Friends series by Shannon Hale and illustrated by LeUyen Pham. I am torn about this title, especially as a learning read for the middle school young girl. I found it both entertaining and disturbing – for very different reasons.

The overall message that not everyone is your friend and that in due time, you will find your group where you fit in and can form true, lasting friendships is good – I found the treatment of Shannon both by a bully named Jen and her sister (her sister no less!!) abhorrent. Why was there not any adult intervention?

I was quite uncomfortable with Shannon getting hit by her sister with no adult reprisal from the parents – my oh my:

When I took the story at face value – that it was to help teach young readers that we do not always need to be liked by everyone – I found the story good. The tenacity of Shannon to try and fit in with Jen’s crowd was a good lesson – do not give up for what you want. 

I also found the graphics very good. It showed a lot of depth and I loved the coloring, especially when differentiating between what happened and what Shannon was thinking.

With the violence by the sister being tolerated with no repercussions from the adults in their lives and the fact that the messaging could have been tempered a bit, I am sad to say that I would not read this title to my youngster.

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The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time.

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