In the segments on family and lovers, there was mournfulness - for example, in the stories of the child adopted from an orphanage who had such profound problems with attachment, and the couple who sniped their way through infidelity and therapy. But some genuine and touching love shined through, too.

Now consider the narrative themes in the segment on friendship. There was the story of the man with Asperger's, for whom human connection was a daunting challenge. There was a discussion of loneliness, and how it can be worse for your health than smoking. There was a story about people who worked together as aerialists or musicians and the conflicts they had to face and work through in order to sustain the quality of their art as well as their friendships. Somewhere along the way was the quote, "Everyone's nice until you get to know them." Then, after Asperger's, loneliness, and conflicted co-workers, this segment that was supposedly about friendship drew to a close with a story about bullying that ended with the bullied child's hanging. Hey, no wonder friendships are linked to happiness!

In the segments on family and lovers, we were offered some insights into what might make those relationships so powerful. Not so for the part about friends.

The closest the friendship segment came to a depiction of ordinary friendship was in the stories of the people who worked together. Workplace friendships are important, but holding them up as the sole positive illustrations of friendship is misleading. By embedding friendship in an instrumental context, Gilbert missed one of the true joys and distinctive characteristics of friendship: It doesn't have to be "about" anything specific (such as coordinating a task, or raising children, or maintaining a joint household). Friendships vary in so many ways, but probably the most fundamental characteristic is that friends enjoy one another's company. If they didn't, they probably wouldn't remain friends.

I've been reading stacks of books and articles on friendship, and so far, I think the single most significant finding is this one: People more often experience positive feelings, and less often experience negative feelings, when they are with their friends than when they are with anyone else. They are happier with friends than with a spouse or partner, a child, a relative, a co-worker, or a boss (okay, no surprise about that last one). Seems like that should have been worth a mention in a television show on the importance of relationships to our happiness.

I was a bit hesitant to watch "This Emotional Life" at all, when I first heard about it from Nicole from Washington, D.C. (Thanks, Nichole!) She let me know that on NPR, just before the PBS show aired, Gilbert said that "people who aren't in romantic relationships are less happy than those who are." So I worried that this was going to be just another version of the misleading claim, "get married, get happy." The segment on lovers, though, actually acknowledged that happiness peaks when people first marry, and slowly heads downhill from then on, not creeping back up until the kids leave the nest, and even then, maybe not quite making it back to that initial peak of joy. (Gilbert didn't mention that for those who divorce, their happiness sinks lower, on the average, than it ever does for people who stay single.)

It is an interesting claim, though, that people in romantic relationships are happier than those who are not. The NPR segment previewing the PBS series began with this question, "Want to know the secret to happiness?" So if people in romantic relationships are happier than those who are not, should we all pursue those relationships? Again, I think the logic is the same as for marriage: If people who are currently married are happier than those who are not, that does not necessarily mean that if you get married, you will be happier, too. If you are in the huge chunk of people who divorce, it almost surely does not.

Is the same true for friendship? The empirical answer is that we do not know. The research literature on adult friendship is paltry compared to the academic industry that is the study of marriage and family.

Here's my guess. For intense, comprehensive friendships - the kinds that are like marriages, only without the sex - the profile of happiness risks and rewards is likely to be similar to the profile for marriage. But another thing that is special about friendship is that most often, it is not that intense or comprehensive. It is also not exclusive or greedy. Typically, we do not expect a friend to be our everything. We don't demand that our friends have no other friends but us. We don't expect to see them all the time. When our lives head in different directions, friendships can fade away or go on hiatus, without any big emotional scene. Of course, some friendships do end tumultuously, with searing implications for our well-being, but they are not the prototypes.

So let's start taking friendship more seriously. I'm all for learning more about Asperger's and loneliness and workplace conflicts and bullying and suicide, but please don't tell me that you've enlightened me about the role of friendship in human happiness if those are the only relevant tales you have to tell.

[One caveat: When I critique printed articles, I like to read and reread them before blogging about them. For this television program, I could not find a transcript online, so I'm just going by what I can remember from watching the show once. If I'm forgetting important points or getting anything wrong, please set me straight in the Comments section.]