Ichabod Crane and Aristotle on friendship

In the latest episode of Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane, who's been resurrected into the present and tasked, along with police lieutenant Abbie Mills, with stopping the imminent apocalypse, finds a map of purgatory drawn by the late George Washington, which Ichabod uses to reunite with his dead wife, a witch, who's a prisoner of Moloch ... eek! ;)

Ichabod is helped by a sin eater played by Walter of Fringe ....



They find the map of purgatory in Washington's tomb ...



But before this, Ichabod has asked Abby for a new cell phone ...



She loans him her phone to try out and in doing so, he discovers through her Facebook updates that she has 500 friends ...

Ichabod: How is it you have 500 friends? I had only seven close companions. Four of them died, and those were good odds.

Abbie: We use the term 'friend' more loosely these days.

Ichabod: Aristotle would be most unimpressed.

This cracked me up because I have gone through most of my life since college telling myself that it's ok that I only have a few friends, based on Aristotle ;) ...

Aristotle makes it clear that the number of people with whom one can sustain the kind of relationship he calls a perfect friendship is quite small (IX.10). Even if one lived in a city populated entirely by perfectly virtuous citizens, the number with whom one could carry on a friendship of the perfect type would be at most a handful. For he thinks that this kind of friendship can exist only when one spends a great deal of time with the other person, participating in joint activities and engaging in mutually beneficial behavior; and one cannot cooperate on these close terms with every member of the political community. - link

I like this show!