'FRIENDS' TILL THE NOT-SO-BITTER END THEY FULFILLED OUR FANTASY OF BEING THERE FOR EACH OTHER, AND NOW THEY - AND WE - SAY GOODBYE.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

There's a very deft silent gag in a season-six episode of ``Friends.'' In ``The One With Rachel's Sister,'' Ross, Phoebe, Rachel, Chandler, Joey and Monica are all gathered for some sort of game in Monica and Chandler's apartment when there's a knock on the door. The friends do a silent head count, note that all their company are present and look at each other in puzzlement. Who from the outside world could possibly have business here? Turns out the intruder is one of the show's legions of ``Famous Guest Stars'' - Reese Witherspoon, playing Rachel's spoiled kid sister, Jill.

For 10 years we've seen the six function as a kind of extended family unit. Over the years, the question arose again and again: How do you sustain those relationships and that kind of closeness (times six) when you're halfway through your 30s?

The answer is you can't. While the ``Seinfeld'' quartet might have spun a few more seasons out of their cracked insulated universe, the friends of ``Friends'' have outgrown their series' formula.

So what you do is open the door. You let new people in. If you're Rachel, you take that job offer in Paris with or without Ross. If you're Chandler and Monica, you move to the 'burbs with your adopted child. If you're Phoebe, you spend more time with your non-inner-circle husband, Mike.

And, if you're ``Friends'' producers David Crane and Marta Kauffman, you end the series. With as much fanfare, tears, retrospectives and advertising as humanly possible.

So farewell, ``Friends,'' and thanks for not overstaying your welcome.

``From a psychological standpoint of what is healthy, realistic, normal and expected, you shouldn't stay 'stuck in second gear' for 10 years,'' says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for Popular Television at Syracuse University. ``The show is this nether region where the characters exist before they settled into responsible adulthood. This season was pretty good, and they've been jumping the shark right and left every single time and getting away with it. It would have been very difficult for them to write another year.''

Why it worked

The ``shark jumping'' reference - for those unfamiliar - signals the identifiable moment when a popular TV series starts to go downhill. It could have happened, TV critics maintain, with Chandler and Monica's wedding or the birth of baby Emma. But ``Friends'' shrewdly hung on because it never shook up the formula. They may be 30-somethings now, but they're the same group of six we met 10 years ago. And they're just as tight.

That's why the show worked. Because if we don't believe that Rachel, Ross, Chandler, Monica, Joey and Phoebe will eventually end up side by side in the same six-wide coffin, then why have we been tuning in?

Oh, sure, it's a clever enough show with chemistry aplenty, big-name guest stars and occasional water-cooler fodder. But the Gen X-ers who tuned in when Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc and Lisa Kudrow were virtual unknowns stayed with them and took delight in living vicariously through them.

We all wanted Chandler's job - whatever the hell it was - Rachel's hair, Monica's apartment and Phoebe's freedom. Above all, we wanted a Central Perk and a pack of buddies guaranteed to be there whether we felt like seeing them or not.

``At some level, the idea of six friends all staying together and not getting married and leaving each other is probably unrealistic,'' admits Kathy M. Newman, an associate professor of English at Carnegie Melon University, and a ``Friends'' devotee. ``Connectedness is, at some level, a fantasy, but it's a compelling fantasy.''

Newman is 37. Like half the known female population, she requested a ``Rachel'' 'do from her stylist at some point during the '90s (``But you also have to have Jennifer Aniston's hair,'' she says). She watched the show on a regular basis, often with friends of her own.

She didn't always warm to the plotting, pointing to a fourth-season subplot that had Lisa Kudrow's Phoebe agreeing to be a surrogate mother for the triplets of her brother and his much older wife. Far-fetched, yes, but a point was made.

``I realized that was a way for there to be procreation without the group splitting up,'' says Newman. ``To me, that's what made the show compelling. You have a group of people who managed to stay successfully in each other's lives over a long period of time in spite of the relationships they had with other people outside their circle.''

Who needs family?

That these characters had little but their friendship in common was another departure from sitcoms of years past. ``Friends'' isn't a comedy centered around a family or around a bunch of people who all work at the same job. Combinations of the friends did live together (Monica and Rachel; Chandler and Joey), and, in at least one case, married (Monica and Chandler). If they're not at somebody's apartment, the friends are usually hanging out at Central Perk, the coffeehouse where Aniston's Rachel Green was a waitress during the show's early years.

``Friends'' wasn't even the first show to depict a bunch of developmentally arrested New Yorkers forming their own clan. ``Seinfeld'' played the formula first, albeit with a completely different tone, according to Thompson.

`` 'Friends' of course picked up on (the 'Seinfeld') formula, changed it and brought more to the table, made it a little more user-friendly,'' says Thompson. ``The show added two people, made them prettier and softened the edges.'' And made them their own family. When we meet the senior Gellers, Bings and Buffays - or what's left of them - we discover dysfunction personified. Phoebe's mother committed suicide, Chandler's father had a sex change, Ross and Monica's parents are nut cases. Is it any wonder the friends invariably turned to each other for comfort, support, money and, occasionally, sex? It's all there in the title of that catchy little theme by the Rembrandts, ``I'll Be There for You.''

``Friends'' may have been a rip-off and has itself been ripped off many times since its debut, but no sitcom since has succeeded this well with the same formula. And not since ``Seinfeld'' has an ensemble meshed this effectively.

Ten years ago, of course, nobody knew who any of these actors were. With the exception of Cox, who had played Michael J. Fox's girlfriend on the last seasons of ``Family Ties,'' the ``Friends'' cast were a collection of attractive, white 20-somethings with no major credits to their names. Kudrow, the oldest, was 31.

A tight ensemble they began, and an ensemble they have stayed. Though the ``Rachel and Ross: apart or together'' plot was always bankable, the writers distributed the story lines evenly among the sextet. No friend eclipsed or upstaged another. As Syracuse's Thompson notes, the friends - collectively and individually - became a factory designed to generate TV Guide and People magazine covers.

Off of ``Friends,'' they all did movies, and a few grabbed tabloid headlines. Perry battled weight and drug problems, Aniston married Brad Pitt, and Cox married David Arquette.

And, as has been well-documented, the camaraderie extended past the soundstage. The six ``Friends'' negotiated their now-famous $1 million-per-episode contracts together. For many of the early years, none would allow him or herself to compete in a leading performer category for award consideration. The ensemble won numerous awards. All but Cox has been Emmy-nominated at least once, with both Aniston (lead actress) and Kudrow (supporting) emerging victorious.

The unions should take notice, says Dee LaDuke, supervising producer on UPN's ``Girlfriends.''

``More power to them,'' says LaDuke, author of ``Making Great Television - Four Essential Ingredients.'' ``I think it was brilliant of them to put the group before their individual popularity. We should all have that sense of solidarity.''

Ultimately, ``Friends'' departs leaving behind one spin-off, a ton of episodes recycled endlessly in syndication and six very wealthy TV stars, a few of whom will have to sidestep typecasting for the rest of their lives.

And one overhyped finale. LaDuke plans to watch. Although slightly older than the ``Friends'' actors, LaDuke was a consistent watcher of the series. Until she tapered off.

``I got a life, got myself a husband and a baby. My attention went elsewhere,'' she says. ``It's the same with these characters. It's time for them not to be each other's family. They have to go out and start new circles.''

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

FRIENDS

What: A two-hour show beginning with a look back and the final episode at 9 p.m.

Where: NBC (Channel 4).

When: 8 tonight.

UNIVERSAL HOSTS PARTY

If you can't fit all your friends into your living room for the big event tonight, take them to Universal CityWalk, where they claim to be hosting ``the world's largest 'Friends' Finale Viewing Party.''

The party starts at 7 p.m. and will be hosted by NBC Channel 4's Fritz Coleman, who will be joined by personalities from KIIS, KOST and KBIG on a stage set to look like Central Perk. There will be a ``Friends'' trivia contest and some ``Friends'' giveaways.

The broadcast begins at 8 on the giant Astrovision screen at CityWalk. Admission is free.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Time to go

We help you see your `Friends' off with fun facts, profiles and a look at how they stuck together

(2 -- 3) no caption (cast from ``Friends'')

(4) The ``Ross loves Rachel'' plot line has proven reliable.

Box:

UNIVERSAL HOSTS PARTY (see text)