Parents' Guide to Friends from College

The cast of this circle-of-friends show is so charming, and the writing so good, you'll find yourself liking them all despite the occasionally terrible, and often awkward, things they do. Of course, it helps that most of the cast members bring adorable reputations to the show, but they're also given very funny things to say, increasing the adorability quotient. At a meeting where Max attempts to get Ethan to slant his new novel in a YA direction, he pitches a couple of concepts: "Vampires with cancer -- you live forever, you die forever. Or you start backwards, you start with a title: Deathball! No one survives Deathball!" Later, at a tense dinner party with all six of the friends and their spouses in attendance, Ethan muses that "everyone's" dreams that he'd wind up with a Nobel Prize just may not come true. Nick tells him, "I think you're pretty good but..." and Marianne wrinkles up her nose skeptically: "A Nobel Prize?"

That's funny, and so are these people, whether they're poking at each other's sensitive spots, or simply alone, doing the funny things people do when they're alone. Friends from College is a very good ensemble drama-comedy with complicated moral messages, but these friends are interesting people we want to spend time with.