It was six days ago, but a near-perfect spring night. A little bit cool for an outdoor screening, but a zipped-up windbreaker proved to be warm enough. I sat with Kerry and her friend in plastic folding chairs on a pier on New York's West Side, on the Hudson, in TriBeCa, just blocks north of the World Trade Center. It was the Friends finale shown on the big screen at the TriBeCa Film Festival's "Drive-In" theater, the end of a 10-year sitcom set in New York, and I was in New York to see it.

Friends began in the fall of 1994, which is also the same time I started college, and while I'm pretty sure I've not seen every episode, I've followed the show for a decade and it's got to be the first program to last that long that I can remember from start to finish. Like ER, it didn't hold the same excitement it once did once Thursday came around, but I still watched. I didn't moan if I missed an episode, and over the 10 years, I probably missed less than 20. Reruns and cable and the local WB have helped with that. Sure, the show lagged for a few seasons, but I'm of the belief that it rebounded in its final two. The jokes may have been the same, but they were packaged and delivered differently, and I still laughed. I laughed right up until the end. Forgive me, but I thought Ross's line, "Unless we're on a break," was great. It might have been predictable and far from brilliant, but it was one of the rehashed lines that brought a smile.

I'm not sorry to see Friends go because 10 years is just fine. They wrapped it up pretty well and didn't do anything outrageous. But in watching the last episode, it ocurred to me just how much of the jokes were recycled. Joey's slow, Monica's compulsive, Ross is nerdy, Chandler is snarky, Phoebe is flighty and Rachel is needy. It was time to go.

As the sun set over New Jersey across the river, the sky became a deep, dark blue. Jersey City glissened across the water, the Colgate clock perched on the shore in the distance. Had the finale been scheduled a week later, it probably would not have been dark enough to see the screen clearly enough from the 150 or 200 yards from where we sat. We had to take their word for it when a stick figure on stage was introduced as Aisha Tyler. Not so much with Penn Jillette (the Penn half of Penn and Teller), because he's bigger and has that recognizable Michael Bolton hair and a distinct voice.

At the end of the night, I quickly made my way back to the subway in order to join Casey on the 10:45 bus home. I didn't really have time to dwell on the final episode, and I haven't thought much about it or read anything on it since. I caught part of Jay Leno's interview with the cast later that night, after we had watched the peniultimate episode of Survivor. I taped the finale and preceding clip show, but I've had no desire yet to watch it again. I probably won't for a while. As a rule, series finales are sad to me -- for shows I enjoy -- and once they're over, I prefer to just let them go. Once I have some distance from them, I can go back, but for now I just plan on enjoying Thursdays without any 8 p.m. appointments.

Finale Week continued on Sunday when Casey, Kathleen and I were again in New York for Survivor: All-Stars. Parking at Port Authority at 5:30, we figured we had some time because the confirmation e-mail we'd received said check-in wouldn't start until about 6:15. So we wandered down 8th Avenue and I ignored the two guys in a doorway who tried to get the attention of one of the girls by exclaiming, "My God! You're gorgeous." Hindsight being what it is, I realized later I should've turned around and said, "Why, thank you!" It could've been funny. Or painful, had I gotten my ass kicked.

We entered Duane Reade for snacks and strolled over to 7th Avenue and down to the Madison Square Garden entrance. Then we saw the line. Out of the concourse it came, turned south on the sidewalk down 7th, then cut left at 32nd St. and went halfway down the block. It was 6 p.m. But for such a large production -- not the show, per se, but the logistics of getting 5,000 spectators with unassigned seating into the theater -- it went quite smoothly. By 6:30 we were checked in, by 6:45 we were seated, and by 7 p.m. Kathleen and I had walked back to the lobby to get some of the free snacks they were giving away -- Oreos, Nutter Butters, Pringles, M&Ms, Coke and water.

Then the people watching began. We saw several former Survivors, from Christy and Shauna outside to Ryan and Frank and Darrah inside. Clay looked even fatter than he did on the finale of his own show. Guess he eats well on $100,000. Casey wanted to yell to Osten, "Look out for that pelican!" When Johnny Fairplay and his boyfriend -- the one who visited him in the Pearl Islands and delivered the news about his grandmother's fake death ("She died, dude.") -- walked in through the same doorway we'd entered, two women screamed as if he were Paul McCartney circa 1964. Clad in a gray suit with dark sunglasses on, he turned to them and gave them the finger, a wide grin on his face. He continued to flip off just about everyone who cheered for him, relishing in his renewed 15 minutes. Later, as he walked back toward the lobby through the doorway to our right, a woman asked for his autograph. He refused, but made her lean down for a kiss.

You'd think most of the people present had never been to a TV taping before. (Sarcasm; of course most of them have never been to such a thing.) The 10-year-old girl and her mother behind us tried to outshout not only one another, but our entire section. The theater cheered for the survivors during the first immunity challenge as if they were competing live in front of us, not on tape six months ago in Panama. And when Tom faked out Rob during the final tribal council, no one present knew what was said because the entire place was screaming and groaning and cheering.

To tell you the truth, it was empowering when our simple boos drove Jerri into seclusion when she left the show during a commercial. Suck it up, wuss. You know what your reputation is as depicted on the show, and you spent half of your time on All-Stars crying about the rain, bitching about the weather and moaning about the game. What did you expect? Jeff enjoyed the rowdy crowd. Toward the end of one TV timeout, he turned his mic back on to address the audience, saying it was like none they've ever had. "It's like a wrestling match -- 'boo!' here and 'yay!' there. You guys are great!" That's paraphrasing, but that's the gist. In a way, I think he said it was the best crowd they've had yet for a finale.

By the time we got home at midnight, we were exhausted after five hours of waiting, sitting, and watching small screens from 200 feet away. My one regret is that during the live reunion show from 10 to 11, I watched the screens more than I watched the live action on stage. From our seats, we couldn't see much detail, but we could see who was who. I've had worse seats at concerts. But I wish I had watch Jeff read that last vote live, rather than on the screen behind him, and that I had looked over at Rob and Amber myself rather than look for her reaction on screen. I taped the show at home and could see that later.

I hope the networks don't get too carried away with their plans to introduce more and more new shows during the summer months, the traditional hiatus. I'm comfortable with the current setup, with my nightly viewing schedule from September to May revolving around various sitcoms, dramas and reality shows. Summer should be left to evening walks, dinners on the patio, baseball games on TV. It's when Casey and I plan to catch up on the movies we've missed and the DVDs we've stockpiled. It's when I hope to get a little more Xbox in. I may be a TV junkie in so many ways, but I'm not about to let it take over my summer.