Friends: they lived perfect lives in a time of plenty. Of course we want them back

The bells were pealing in Entertainment World on Wednesday for the announcement of a Friends reunion. The stars of the bewilderingly popular US sitcom, which ended 12 years ago, appeared to be cashing in their nostalgia chips to appear on prime-time television again. A two-hour special in February would see Monica, Joey, Phoebe, Rachel, Ross and Chandler back together.

But the story didn't stand up to scrutiny. Yes, the Friends actors would reunite, but it would be as part of a two-hour special honouring their former director James Burrows. Actors from his other shows would also be appearing. Then it became clear that the actors wouldn't be playing their Friends characters and might not even be in the same room together. Then one of the six – Matthew Perry – announced that he wouldn't be there at all, as he had to be in London for a stage play.

Still the clamour continued. And it was a job well done by NBC, the US broadcaster that used to show Friends. The network had its biggest hit with the show, and it may have been stealthily focus-grouping the public response to a possible reboot of the sitcom for 2016 audiences.

The finale in 2004 was watched live by 53 million viewers in the US. The six stars were each paid a then record of $1 million (€900,000) per episode – which is to say per week. The comedy affected popular culture in numerous ways, from haircuts to how people spoke. One study has found that the current trend of using an emphasised "so" to modify adjectives – as in "so hot", "so lame" – began with Friends.

And all of a this for a show that was twee, maudlin, startlingly unrealistic – living in a Greenwich Village loft while working a minimum-wage job? – and hideously homogenous. It has been pointed out that there were more black faces on The Dukes of Hazzard, a show whose reruns have been pulled because of the controversy about the symbolism of the Confederate flag in the US.

When it first aired, in 1994, Friends was ahead of the curve on the rise of coffee culture – the characters would regularly hang out at the Central Perk cafe – and had an obligatory will-they-won't-they narrative conceit between Rachel and Ross that was stretched beyond breaking point.

It premiered just three years after Douglas Coupland had identified Generation X: twentysomethings who had never had it so good; affluent bien-pensant liberals whose aspirations were more than matched by rude economic health.

The original NBC press release for the show, from 1994, trumpeted that it was about “six people in their 20s. It’s about sex, love, relationship and careers – a time in your life when everything is possible. It’s about commitment and security. And it’s about friendship, because when you’re young and single in the city, your friends are your family.”

You can’t choose your family, but you can choose what flavour of macchiato you want and what “benefits” you require from your friends.

And if hilarity ensued whenever a career choice went wrong, that was okay, because careers in those days were like buses.

Unlike its predecessors Roseanne and Taxi, which featured blue-collar struggles, Friends was aspirational. Being white, young and orthodontically correct in New York city gave Monica, Joey, Rachel et al a new televisual canvas that allowed for inane life-coach speak – "Be your own dream" – and foreshadowed the self-obsession of social media.

Set in a decade when a Fleetwood Mac-loving president occupied the White House, and the economy boomed like never before, Friends was comfort-food zeitgeist TV – with views of the Manhattan skyline from a spacious 15th-floor apartment to match.

A reductionistic approach to gender identity and the definition of a new flexibility in romantic and sexual attachments – remember when Ross and Rachel were "on a break" from their relationship? – made Friends urbanely conservative: the box set you could bring home to your parents.

That may explain the irrational outpouring of warm, fuzzy nostalgia this week for the possibility of the show’s returning.

Set in a time of full employment, in a world where you could live across the hall from your best friends, in an endless televisual gap year of coffee, sex and waitressing, Friends was a coming-of-age sitcom that never grew up.

As for a reunion, there’s a symmetry to the way that its stars’ careers have declined along with the economy. Like many these days, the six have spent the intervening years scrambling from one job to the next – bereft of the “commitment and security” that was promised in the show’s press release.

Twelve years on, the only friend to retain celebrity wattage is Jennifer Aniston. Sitcom has moved to a more cynical place. Realism is the new escapism. Those commanding creative heights are now Amy Schumer and Louis CK. And our 1990s Friends are pushing 50 and would only bore us to death talking about quinoa and hot yoga.

If you want to see how twentysomething friends in New York exist these days, take a look at Broad City, on Comedy Central. Featuring two women with jobs they hate, who smoke enough marijuana to floor an elephant and whose dreams are spat back in their faces, it's infused with whiplash humour and genuine affection.