They’ll be there for you—or else. The first episode of CollegeHumor’s new series Bad Internet, now available on YouTube Red, imagines a terrifying dystopian future in which all of society is divided into categories based on BuzzFeed’s “Which Friends Character Are You?” quiz. Irene Choi plays Sarah, the fresh-faced heroine just waiting to find out whether she’s a Monica, a Chandler, or even—gasp!—a Gunther, while Cheri Oteri plays the “head Rachel” who must quell the revolution Sarah sparks when her quiz results fall outside of the Friends universe.
The first episode is obviously littered with Friends references, including some spot-on impressions and deadpan gems like “Our jobs were a joke, we were broke … and a nuclear holocaust wiped out most of humanity.” But the show also mines the entire dystopian young adult genre for clichés, with clear parallels to Divergent and to Black Mirror, which Sam Reich singled out as an inspiration for the series. It’s very funny stuff, and it’ll be interesting to see how future episodes manage to handle a post-Friends society.
