Pop Culture Throwdown: What’s the best TV friend group?

Welcome to Pop Culture Throwdown, a weekly column where Mashable’s Entertainment team tackles the big questions in life, like what Star Wars movie is best and which superhero would win in a fight.

This week, we asked each other (and all of you, on Twitter): What’s the best TV friend group? 

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

NINE-NIIIIIINE! Alright, first things first — yes, the dream team running Brooklyn’s 99th Precinct are co-workers by definition. But c’mon, your pals Jake, Rosa, Amy, Holt, Terry Jeffords, Boyle, Gina, Hitchcock, and Scully are the most unlikely group of pals, and — probably leaving Hitchcock and Scully on the roof with their microwaved burritos — eventually, the best of friends.

Where else will you find the likes of Charles, who will do anything for his BEST friend Jake, constantly proclaiming their BEST friendship loudly to the whole precinct? Or Rosa, who does the unthinkable and goes into a wedding dress shop to support Amy? Whether they’ve known each other from childhood, or were thrown together on the job, the Nine-Nine not only have each others’ backs in the field, but through the biggest days of their lives. 

Whether it’s coming out to your unsupportive parents, missing out on your big promotion, finding a new apartment, or being a crucial part of each others’ weddings (and unfortunately, honeymoons), the team are always there with a brewski at the end of the day — however much Rosa does not want any talk about feelings (she does). That being said, all glimmers of friendship are duly thrown out the window every Halloween. –Shannon Connellan, U.K. Editor

Broad City

Abbi and Ilana are the best friends you’ve always dreamed of having. They have literally zero boundaries with one another (let’s not forget the mid-sex FaceTiming and video calls while sitting on the loo), and they have each other’s back unconditionally. Remember the “Can’t flush. Wanna die” scene where Abbi lives our very worst nightmare: not being able to flush after pooping when your crush is in the next room. Enter Ilana, self-professed “doo doo ninja” who makes it her mission to disappear the unflushable poop. Only the truest, most loyal friend would do something so completely gross just to help a girlfriend out in a moment of need.

This dynamic duo also publicly celebrates one another’s greatest assets —like Ilana’s constant mentions of Abbi’s “ass of an angel”. I think what we can all learn from Broad City is this: True friends will big you up, but the truest of friends will be there for the gross bits. –Rachel Thompson, Senior Culture Reporter

New Girl‘s loft weirdos

Many TV friend groups start out as a ragtag bunch of misfits and become a family. This one starts out as a bunch of vaguely oddball bro archetypes and an “adorkable” girlie girl who loves crafts and chick flicks, and (spoiler!) winds up as a family of deeply oddball ragtag misfits who’ve managed to pull their lives together a bit. Viewers who push through the early Zooey Deschanel Show phase are rewarded with a roommate hangout sitcom that fuses the best elements of Happy Endings‘ running jokes and hot-mess breakdowns, the wholesome scrapes and life milestones of Friends, and the rarefied, precise weirdness of Community‘s study group (without the constant emotional warfare).

Multiple episodes hinge on outsiders stepping onto the fringes of this group and just not getting it, and even a casting hiccup (Damon Wayans Jr. left to join Happy Endings and was replaced by Lamorne Morris, but later returned) gave us not only the series’ best character but also a realistic series-long riff on friends who move away and back again and find their place in the group dynamic has changed.

As a neighbour scowls in one of the best episodes, “So much weird stuff happens in this apartment.” That weird stuff includes the most gloriously chaotic drinking game ever invented, True American, as well as friendships-turned-relationships and back again in ways that feel emotionally true, so many alter egos and rare insults (“You bird-shirted puzzle baby!” is hilarious in context, I promise), and a bachelorette party that just involved getting blazed and watching the OG Anne Of Green Gables. These are people who you want to hang out with, trust me. – Caitlin Welsh, Australia Editor