Friends: The Complete Series

A worthwhile way to collect all ten seasons at once
Since I notice all the questions seem to concern the logistics of the set, that is the main thing I will address in this review, since you would have to be a resident of another planet to not know the story behind the series "Friends". Suffice it to say it is a classic comic treatment of what I have always called the "post-college adolescent phase" of life, which is roughly the ten years immediately following college graduation as you strike out on your own and try to find your place in life. It is the time in life when you are likely to have the best health, the most freedom, the most disposable income if not necessarily the most total income, and the most fun if you are fortunate enough to have people to share it all with. This phase ends when you "settle down" both career-wise and family-wise, and I always found Friends to track this time in life quite accurately and with both drama and great humor.

As for logistics, this collection fits in a sturdy red box that's less...

Order the Individual Seasons separately
I love this show but I am returning this box set and decided to order the individual seasons separately for the following reasons:

1) Many of the DVDs are faulty and skip even when they are not physically scratched. I tested this with multiple DVD players which have never given me problems before. If you check other reviews this quality control issue is pretty common with the DVDs from this box set. From what I can tell the quality control on the original season sets is much better.

2) Disc 28 was missing and I got two copies of Disc 29 instead.

3) The corner of the collector's box was broken/damaged when i received it.

4) The discs are spread out through 6 scratch-prone cardboard-like sleeves for each character instead of by Season. Cute, but i don't want to have to open up a damn episode guide and look up the episode number to figure out which season i'm about to watch, while worrying about scratching my DVDs when taking them in and out...

Scratched discs won't play without skipping
This set has disc holders made of heavy cardboard that WILL scratch the discs as you take them out and put them back. I just received this set from Amazon today, and the first disc I started watching was scratched and it skipped quite a bit. I'm shipping this back immediately. This packaging is very poorly designed.

On a side note, the size of the box is also less than ideal. It's doesn't fit well with other DVDs on a shelf.

I'm going to buy the individual seasons separately instead! The individual seasons are properly packaged with slim plastic disc holders. Plus, they are the size of other DVDs.

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