While we're certainly not ones to criticize the welcome comfort of a trivial diversion, the timing of Entertainment Weekly's special "Best of Friends" issue -- which arrived in mailboxes and on newsstands the week after the events in New York and Washington -- seemed particularly unfortunate. It's certainly difficult, now more than ever, to whip up any excitement over "The Hair! The Homes! The 'Little Harmonica'!" or the obsessive cataloging of appearances by the Ugly Naked Guy.

But the feeling of irrelevancy that clings to this special issue is not simply a result of circumstance. When Entertainment Weekly produced a similar issue on Seinfeld back in that sitcom's waning days, it felt very much like an indispensable collector's item, a trove of knowledge that would one day assume a permanent place of honour on the back of your toilet along with Our Dumb Century and Roman Numeral Two!: Top Ten Lists from Late Night With David Letterman. The Seinfeld issue was a singular bounty, featuring all the guest stars! All the catchphrases! And letter-rated recaps of every single episode! (I went through one long and lonely stretch of life in which I kept the tattered issue by my TV-watching chair, gleefully forecasting not only which syndicated episode of Seinfeld would appear today, but which one would be on every single day for the rest of the week! And the week after, too! I felt like the Kreskin of late-night comedy.)

The "Best of Friends" issue serves up these same exhaustive amenities, yet somehow it all feels pointless, and not because of the timing or some flaw in the presentation. Rather, the issue inadvertently highlights a telling difference between the two shows -- one that comes sharply into focus as you're flipping through the pages of the Friends special issue.

Don't misunderstand -- Friends is a fine, fine sitcom, and one that has certainly earned its seat at the banquet table of our collective consciousness. And no other show currently on the air would seem more worthy of an obsessive special issue. (Though given EW's history and sleeve-worn affinities, I'd guess you'll see an Everybody Loves Raymond special issue before this decade gets much older.) But the cultural phenomenon that surrounds Friends has always had relatively little to do with what happens on the screen, and lots to do with what happens off it. When you think of your fondest Seinfeld memories, you think of particular episodes, story lines, and gags. When you think back over seven years of Friends, however, you're more likely to recall changing haircuts, rehab visits, weight fluctuations, and celebrity marriages. Offscreen, you had Jennifer and Brad. Onscreen, you had Marcel the monkey.

The Entertainment Weekly issue only drives this point home. Take the "A to Z collection of defining moments lifted from the Friend's [sic] loopy lexicon." Whereas the Seinfeld glossary included sticky catchphrases like "yada yada" and "master of my domain" that can still be heard echoing today, the Friends lexicon includes such unforgettable buzzwords as "Baywatch" ("favorite TV show of Chandler and Joey"), "Korea" ("subject of documentary seen by all but Joey"), and "sandwiches" ("Joey's favorite food"). Ah, who hasn't turned to their pals during an animated dinner discussion and blurted out "sandwiches," only to have the whole table crack up into hysterics? Scanning the entire list of "defining moments," there's only one -- "going commando" -- that could plausibly be considered a catchphrase with any sort of cultural currency, though you're much less likely to hear that phrase in the coming years than, say, "man-zeer" or even "Dy-no-mite!"

Even the episode recaps -- the centrepiece of the issue -- don't spur fond remembrances but rather emphasize just how all the shows have run together into a kind of indistinguishable blur, an impression only accentuated by the fact that the shows individual titles follow a cutesy naming convention; they all start with "The One" (i.e. "The One with the Boobies" or "The One with the Cop"). Thanks to syndication, Friends has become to television as the Gipsy Kings are to bookstores and coffee shops -- a kind of perpetual sensory wallpaper that's present all the time, everywhere, world without end. I was absolutely certain that, with the exception of one or two shows from last year (hey...Survivor) I'd seen every episode at least three times. Yet flipping through the episode guide, I found myself more often cringing in confusion than nodding with recognition. "Mark confesses his crush to Rachel and asks her out. Monica goes on another date with Pete. Joey lands a lead in an off-Broadway play opposite the sexy but contemptuous Kate." Yeah, I think I've seen that one...I remember Pete, and that play with Kate....Was that the one in which Ross and Rachel kiss? Or the one in which they argue? Or the one in which they break up? Or that other one in which they kiss again?

None of this can really be blamed on Entertainment Weekly, which does a bang-up job sorting through all these vaguely familiar episodes (and even sends a not-so-subtle message to the show's creative crew by granting dismal ratings to the most recent season, including a stretch of five straight episodes that each pull down a gentleman's "C"). Still, by the time you get to the last page -- an amusing sketch of the Friends as senior citizens -- it's pretty clear that the editors have had to whip up the issue from pretty thin gruel indeed. And they do make a few missteps of their own; for example, while they dutifully provide a lost yearbook photo of the ever-hilarious "Fat Monica" (Monica! Fat!), they shy away from an obvious if unpleasant review of the castmates own storied weight variances, including the increasing androidization of Cox and Aniston. Still, in the end it's the show itself, not its chroniclers, that comes up wanting in this carnival of unrelenting scrutiny.

Several years ago I had the unsettling revelation that, despite my unwavering affection for the dark brilliance of Seinfeld, I'd prefer to sit down and watch a rerun of Friends, the well-worn sweater of sitcoms. The very genius of Friends lies in its solidity, the fact that each episode provides pretty much the same kind of laughs in pretty much the same kind of way. When it finally flickers from our TV sets, it won't be enshrined among such landmarks as Seinfeld, All in the Family, or M*A*S*H, but rather join that league of comfy, second-tier reliables like Cheers or Family Ties: solid shows with sharp writing and top-notch casts, but ones that made little lasting impact on the cultural landscape. No doubt this is good news for those who'll profit from Friends's syndicated perpetuity. But don't bother clearing room at the Smithsonian for Chandler's Barcalounger, or one of Joey's famous sandwiches.