On Jan, 1, Netflix released the complete, 10-season run of the hit NBC sitcom “Friends” on its streaming service, opening up a scrunchie-shaped portal in the space-time continuum to an era of big phones, high waistbands and a Smelly Cat.

For fans who lived the prime-time phenomenon in real time from 1994 to 2004, the release meant a nostalgia binge roughly coinciding with the 20th anniversary of its premiere. Now that we’re a few, dramatic decades away, we can better appreciate just how the light comedy about six pals in Manhattan, filmed in Burbank, Calif., in front of a live studio audience, helped define the time.

Ross and Rachel, Chandler and Monica, Joey and Phoebe. So what if they were gorgeous and lived in a sweet apartment no real twenty-somethings could swing? We still saw ourselves and our friends in them, their comic plights, loves and frustrations. Roughly 52.5 million of us tuned in for the last episode, the fourth most watched series finale in TV history.

“I was a fan from the very beginning. I always loved the show,” said Stacy MacGown-Moen, 40, of Colorado Springs, who was a new mom when she starting watching. “I just remember it was very, very quirky.”

Like many viewers, MacGown-Moen saw herself and her friends in the characters.

“Ross was so dorky and I was attracted to the dorkiness. And Phoebe was a total dork, but I felt I was just like Phoebe,” she said. “I still have a lot of my friends from high school, and if we were in an apartment together I’m sure a lot of that stuff would go on.”

Her friends would need to have last names like Jolie-Pitt or Vanderbilt (or a really good rent-control deal) to afford a place like Monica’s Greenwich Village digs, which would go for north of $5,000 a month in the real world.

Charmed by the sets depicting a tidy, idealized city, MacGown-Moen even imagined herself living in that great metropolis.

“At the time, I had never been. I lived in the country and I thought that’s what New York was like. I thought there was a cozy little coffee shop. I never expected it to be like it is,” said MacGown-Moen, who made a brief vacation visit to New York City.

Not everything about the anniversary-timed release cued a laugh track or good nostalgia, though.

“Twenty years? Oh my gosh,” said MacGown-Moen. “Now that just makes me feel old.”

Put off by what’s in vogue, Grace Kantor, of Colorado Springs, didn’t watch “Friends” during its broadcast years, but even in a pre-smartphone era, the pop culture juggernaut was impossible to avoid.

“I was young when it was out, but everybody I knew was watching it and everyone I knew was talking about it and I just didn’t care because I didn’t watch it,” said Kantor, 29, who’s currently making her way through Season 2 on Netflix.

“Now that I’m watching it, it’s a great show. Can I talk to my friends about it now that it’s 15 years too late?”

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Contact Stephanie Earls: 636-0364