memes

I think they explained it, the reason they could afford it was because Monica's grandmother lived there, and they've been paying 1980s rent because of rent control or something. Something similar for phoebe as well. Anyway show never explains how joey/chandler/Ross can afford those big houses.

I quite like the way How I Met Your Mother handles this - the size of the apartments is the narrator misremembering. There's an episode where the characters have been viewing a house in ~~New Jersey~~ Long Island - they return to the apartment and it's portrayed as the size it realistically would be.

It actually addresses this. Chandler was in a high paying job and lived below his means. And Monica’s (much larger, much nicer) apartment was rent controlled; The apartment complex still had her grandmother on the lease from the 1960’s, so Monica was essentially only paying a small increase in 1960’s rent.

That rent control was the topic of one episode, where Joey yells at the maintenance guy. In response, the maintenance guy threatens to tell the landlord about Monica’s grandmother being dead, meaning Monica would need to start paying full price for the apartment. Monica can’t afford the rent, so Joey has to do a favor for the maintenance guy and get back into his good graces.

Some of that is due to the realities of filming in a stage made to look like an apartment as you need the space for the camera crew to fit. This everyone lives in massive places.

My (soon to be ex-) wife buys large quantities of bottled water... One of many things about her I found irksome over the years, I went to the trouble of putting in an RO filter under the sink... and she was always so vocal about recycling... What's better than recycling? Not buying tons of plastic in the first place...

Now let us buy some American blue jeans and have hamburger sandwiches from McDonald's.

In the 90s what else were people doing if they weren’t hanging out? If I had no kids it’s perfectly plausible I could meet at the bar every day after work. How is a coffee shop any different? Just for clarity plenty of people drink coffee at night.

I thought the show was like a weekend and holidays only view into their lives with a few work stuff sprinkled in, so I discounted all the regular work related loopholes.

Sitcom characters spend ridonkulous amounts of money on stupid things nobody does irl. It's usually rationalized by saying the character is always broke, which makes sense until they blow $2500 to hire a mariachi band for somebody's birthday a week later.

Also notable that Hollywood types often lead lives with very loose schedules and will randomly hang out in places.

That was part of a joke at the start of an episode. Everyone complained that their boss didn't like them and Joey (working at the Central Perk at that time iirc) pointed out "yeah I wonder why none of your bosses like you. Maybe it's because it's Wednesday 12 pm and you are hanging out at a cafe".

there's nothing on the floor, that's peak organization

Also what exactly is this a picture of