As this summer without a song fades out, I am once again thinking about the finale of F·R·I·E·N·D·S. A sitcom so ubiquitous, it has beaten any other show of its time to keep the promise of its theme song, I'll be there for you. Yes, it's about six friends and sometimes lovers, as well as the various people who kaleidoscope in and out of their lives, but more than anything, it's a sitcom about place. The strongest small screen addition to the "New York is a character" canon, despite being filmed in a Californian studio, with the occasional jaunt to London or Barbados, the stock establishing shots of a singular apartment building in the Village, accompanied by a fruity guitar sting, are just as iconic as any scene featuring plot points or catchphrases.

The six prepare to disband forever by leaving Monica's mauve-doored apartment, moving on, to houses, to babies, to another State. The apartment was a base as certain as gravity, an enabling force through the "frigging steal" of its rent controls. Chandler gets the very last word, "Where?" Greeted by the audience as a punchline in itself, given the inevitability of their Central Perk patronage, seemingly the only living caff in New York, another guaranteed place. The last seconds of this cultural juggernaut of English-speaking television are spent in this apartment. Now empty of tenants, we are left to say goodbye to the Seventh F·R·I·E·N·D.

So the generation that couldn't achieve adult milestones en masse is, like everyone, not spared the mercy of time. Ageing, mired in nostalgia, rewatching episodes of TV shows broadcast 21 years prior. Never mind if you can't buy your own home or rent somewhere to live that's affordable, the digital realm is present all the time. However abstract its location may be, the internet is increasingly becoming the key to unlock areas of the physical world.

"It used to be a different kind of door!" this old lady screams at clouds. The shiny screen that had its own room opened up a world beyond your immediate vicinity, from the minor discoveries of buying rare vinyl to the major shifts of expanding consciousness of how other human beings existed in the world. Terminally online, we say now. Incurable, a death sentence. I didn't realise the escape hatch was a trap until it swung shut behind me. I am not so convinced anymore that technology is the means of travel to the future. At least, not a promising one.

We might have dry rot in our house. I say house, not home, though there's nowhere else I wake up and return to with any regularity, but I can already feel myself detaching in futile attempt to be less emotional about the prospect. "It gets stressed," my neighbour tells me, passing on the words of the expert they had round to give it a look, "and then it spreads." Stressed and spreading through the very structure of where we live while we go about our silly little days. I almost sympathise.

After the ripple of laughter from Chandler's punchline fades, the very final shot unfolds. A glacial zoom, moving towards the quirky photo frame that surrounds the small peephole. The lens focuses on that tiny viewpoint looking out onto the hallway, the scene of multiple farcical misunderstandings.

There for you.