They're Still "Friends"!

Aniston's five costars are getting the same, big, fat, historic contract extensions--with the cast of Friends agreeing late Monday to a projected $150 million package deal that'll bring the top-rated NBC sitcom back for a ninth (and ostensibly final) season next fall.

For the calculator-challenged, that works out to about $1 million an episode per actor over the course of a projected 24-episode season. The actors currently earn $750,000 per episode.

The pay raises will help make Friends the most expensive half-hour on TV--ever. The total tab will reportedly run NBC about $7 million per episode. That'll make the show worth more, minute-by-minute, than NBC's other mega-investment, ER (currently clocking in at $6.5 mil per half-hour).

"We are enormously pleased and excited to be returning for a ninth season," stars Aniston, Courteney Cox Arquette, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer said in a joint statement Tuesday.

If you think the stars are "enormously pleased" because they're going to be enormously wealthy, you're possibly confusing yourself for them. Rather, the Friends say they're pleased because by agreeing to new contracts, they're, like, doing a good deed.

"We could not ignore the outpouring of public support for the show and we are looking forward to creating one more season with the best writers, producers, directors and production people in television," they said.

Blowing smoke? Maybe not. Op-ed columns, noting how Friends has been ratings resurgent this season, even in the face of CBS' Survivor, have argued that post-September 11 viewers are hungry for the sort of safe, "comfort TV" Friends offers.

Then again...

"I don't think NBC or the actors are doing this as public service to a wounded nation that needs the comfort of Rachel, Ross, Joey, Monica, Chandler and Phoebe," says Robert J. Thompson, professor and director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "I think NBC sees this Thursday night has yet to have [an] heir apparent to Friends."

No, developing a successor to Friends is not something for which NBC has proved a knack. Unless you consider The Single Guy, Inside Schwartz and Jesse misunderstood classics.

Those sort of flops arguably would explain why NBC is, to quote, "thrilled" to be backing up the truck to the houses of Aniston, Arquette, et al.

"It's no secret how important Friends is to NBC," NBC Entertainment president Jeff Zucker said in a statement. "This is a great day."

Friends is easily the most-watched show on television this season, averaging nearly 25 million viewers a week.

Monday's deal was sealed remarkably fast compared to the last renegotiation, which dragged on until just before the network's drop-dead date. (With only a few scripts still left for this season, NBC needed to know now whether to start preparing for the end.)

Additionally, the deal comes one day after NBC denied a tab report that Aniston's character might die during childbirth in May's season finale.

And the deal comes after Friends writers seemingly have exhausted every plot twist and character combo. Rachel and Ross. Ross and Rachel. Rachel and Joey. Chandler and Monica...

Then again...

"It's still one of the best-written shows on broadcast TV," Thompson says." "It's sure better than a lot of the comedies."

That may not sound like a ringing, $150 million endorsement. But NBC'll take it.