15 feel-good shows to binge over the holidays

385848 27: Cast members of NBC’s comedy series “Friends.” Pictured (l to r): David Schwimmer as Ross Geller, Courteney Cox as Monica Geller, Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Cook, Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing, Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani and Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay. Episode: “The One Where They All Turn Thirthy.” (Photo by Warner Bros. Television)

Friends

Series availability: 10 seasons, 236 episodes
Watch now on Netflix.

“So no one told you life was gonna be this way! [clap clap clap clap]” Friends is one of the most iconic sitcoms in TV history, and it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t like it. The show first started over 24 years ago on NBC, and people still reference it on a regular basis. And thanks to Netflix and syndicated reruns on at pretty much every hour of the day, you can watch it over and over again.

Friends really is the perfect show to binge watch for several reasons. For one, there are a lot of seasons to get through, but the episodes are less than 30 minutes. That means you can get through a lot of them quickly, and since the episodes are so short, you never get bored. That’s part of the joy — and danger — of binge watching. You always want that good balance of a lot of seasons, but short episodes, so you can get through the series quickly, but not too quickly!
Another reason why Friends is the perfect feel-good show to binge watch is because it’s still funny, even all these years later. Phoebe’s naive charm will always make us smile, Monica’s shrillness and obsessive tendencies are just as funny (though maybe a bit more relatable as we’ve gotten older), Chandler is basically all of us, Ross gets more awful every time you watch the series over again, and Joey will always be Joey.

Friends came close to getting removed from Netflix in the new year, but the streaming service assured fans it would stay for at least another year — and reportedly, they paid $100 million just to keep it for that long. So binge it while you still can!