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Last ever Friends

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07:52 / 29.05.04

DISCUSSION.

10:44 / 29.05.04

You go first.

D Terminator XXXIII

11:32 / 29.05.04

It was very, very -

Shoot. Wrong thread.

12:24 / 29.05.04

Sad, but not as sad as I thought it would be.

I did go "Awwww!" when Rachel appeared at the door.

I'll miss it.

14:43 / 29.05.04

I went 'awww' when Chandler and Joey hugged. The rest of it irritated me.

15:37 / 29.05.04

Any danger whatsoever of you actually starting discussion threads with, you know, some points for discussion? 'Cause you've completely failed to do so in yr time on the board so far.

15:53 / 29.05.04

Nah.

15:58 / 29.05.04

Figured as much.

16:30 / 29.05.04

Cool.

20:42 / 29.05.04

What a sucky thread.

21:11 / 29.05.04

Yeah! Great! Sucky thread, let’s throw it in Conversation!

Right. So, I stopped watching Friends when Tom Selleck left, which was - what, series 2? Series 3? Could someone tell me what actually happened in this so-called Last Ever Episode? And then maybe we can start saying what should have happened instead. This might yet be fun. And involve Tom Selleck at some point.

21:14 / 29.05.04

This is great this thread. It's exactly what I like about Barbelith. Cool and interesting discussion, words of more than one syllable. It ROCKS.

Whisky Priestess

21:16 / 29.05.04

Low on laughs, high on schmaltz.

In a nutshell:

Chandler and Monica's Jade-IQ surrogate mother gave birth to twins, fluffy handcuffs were discovered in Rachel's old room but turned out to be her gran's, they all moved out of the Friends apartment, Rachel and Ross shagged (actually the penultimate ep but you need to know) and Rachel nearly went to Paris but didn't, because look what happened to Carrie in SATC.

Phoebe and Joey mooched about and wondered if anyone was going to give them a storyline, ever.

21:17 / 29.05.04

Fuckssake.

Next time, hit me and tell me not to bother.

21:17 / 29.05.04

Oh dear, WP, that was about this thread, not your post.

21:18 / 29.05.04

It ROCKS.

Actually, I believe it RULES. Times three, la.

21:31 / 29.05.04

I think the whole problem with the Ross/Rachel thing (or one of the problems with the Ross/Rachel thing) is that that whole scene (in true Barbelith style, Character A realises they're in love with Character B on the eve of Character B moving away/getting married to someone else - and in not-so-true Barbelith style, there's then a hackneyed race to the airport/altar to resolve things ie. Character B willingly junks new career/spouse in order to re-engage with emotionally-stunted Character A) has been played out so many times that it's now just annoying.

21:36 / 29.05.04

Yeah! Great! Sucky thread, let’s throw it in Conversation!

The reason it was moved was because it's bollocks, basically. If there's a discussion to be had about the final episode of Friends, then I'm sure that there's *somebody* on the board capable of starting it in a manner that'll get people to engage with it.

Threads started by some prick more interested in bumping hir topic count than stimulating discussion? Destined to remain shit. I'd be equally happy to have put it up for deletion, but figured moving it was the action least likely to cause another pointless bitchfest.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

21:44 / 29.05.04

I lost interest the first time Ross and Rachel split up, whenever I looked back in it seemed that every time they got together it caused each of them deep psychological harm and distress... until the end of the episode. The moral of their story seemed to be, "Don't have a relationship with your friends, because if it goes wrong they know exactly how to feck you over". And what was all that with Emily? Did Ross and Rachel ever pay for the way they messed her around as she wandered unknowingly inbetween them? At the very least she should have hired hitmen to take them out. Did the coffee shop owner get his own spin off show? And in the very end, were there ever any black guys with speaking roles in the show?

22:32 / 29.05.04

Yeah. Nothing necessarily un-comedic about 'deep psychological harm and distress'. Without wishing to repeat the really obvious criticism that’s always being trotted out, the fact that they’ve all remained such chums for so long is pretty dull. And completely weird. I think I would have been happier to learn that they all totally fell out in the last episode, or even just lost interest in each other and drifted apart, like real friends do all the time. In fact, that sustained period of tension in the group when Rachel and Ross were proper arch-enemies for a while, just after their first break-up, that was good. But it all got forgotten so quickly and they returned to blandness. If I’m going to keep on watching a long-running show, I at least want some hefty grudges and rifts.

Pah. What do I know? Should sitcom characters be expected to actually develop and grow, or is that unrealistic? Have any, ever? Apart from Reggie Perrin, possibly.

22:58 / 29.05.04

And what was all that with Emily?

Turns out the only reason the writers had Ross and Emily divorce was because Emily got pregnant in real life. Presumably, she wanted off the show and they didn't want Ross to have a baby with her so, divorce. In fairness, it did lead to some good Ross/Divorce jokes later on.

23:01 / 29.05.04

any black guys with speaking roles in the show?

1) Guy who interviewed Chandler. Chandler said "Poo."
2) Chandler's boss at the Advertising firm.
3) Ross's divorces lawyer.
4) Umm...

23:19 / 29.05.04

Perhaps a "Fantasy Final Friends..."

Ross has been a woman THE WHOLE TIME!

Joey is a sleeper for Al Queda and has aquired the last ingredients for Plan X!

Phoebe is revealed to be the Greek moon goddess Phoebe. The old gods return demanding obedience and sacrifice.

Chandler discovers he has prostate cancer. Names it "Franklin" and starts a Vaudville act.

00:31 / 30.05.04

Monica's OCD crosses the wavering line from Amusing into Pathological, and she spends an entire episode weeping as she endlessly repeats senseless checking and arranging rituals, scrubs her hands raw with a Brillo pad, and eventually overdoses on Clomipramine.

00:51 / 30.05.04

Evil aliens leave copyright-flouting, body-snatching pods in the Friends’ apartments. No-one notices as the replacement Alien Friends blandly parrot their way through their stock lines and responses. No-one, that is, apart from Tom Selleck, who returns to work it out, and gets to be all steely and totally action-heroic as he tries to save New York from the pod people. There may or may not be a scene of Tom staving in Chandler’s fat, soft, vegetable-matter head with a tire iron.

02:33 / 30.05.04

Ross is elected President of the United States on the "Benevolent Dictator" ticket. He immediately strips Congress and The Supreme Court of their powers and invades Greenland. The remaining Friends realize that they are the worlds last hope against Ross and form the Super Friends. The show then revolves around our heros zapping Ross' robotic Nazi cyborg monkey warriors and breaking into song-and-dance numbers when the enemy is defeated.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

03:18 / 30.05.04

I prefer a "Final Fantasy Friends" where they discover that Sephiroth is going to drop a meteor on the apartment building and have to go on a long quest to gather up things to stop him. And they get a former Army Major as their friend who teaches them how to shoot, smoke cigars, and find Airship pilots named Cid.

Come to think of it....

12:07 / 30.05.04

4) Umm...

There was a black guy at Monica's sucky party when they were trying to keep Rachel's parents apart. His only line, I think, was "I hear you can get people out of here".

13:16 / 30.05.04

Lekvar, you're forgetting Ross' degree in Dinosauring!

Surely he would go Jurassic Park on us and use Greenland as his genebase for a storm-legion of dinotroopers?

Then sleeper agent Joey, redeemed Alien Chandler (after the beating with the tire iron) and Detective Tom Selleck can kill Red Ross, destroy his orinthopter armada and free the Earth for angry justice

10:07 / 31.05.04

I'm with Ganesh. The Joey/Chandler farewell - presumably because they had to keep a lid on the romance for heterocentric reasons, and thus couldn't allow it to spill over into totally unabashed schmaltz - was the best-done and most moving part of the show. The rest: ehh. I also found it very hard to release my emotions for, eg, "Monica & Chandler's" newborn twins, when half the time they were leaving the twins alone in the flat to dismantle a fussball table and the rest of the time they were bonding disgustingly over how much the babies looked like them in front of the mother, who was still in labour. Or - why am I supposed to feel happy about Ross & Rachel getting back together but forget completely about how neither of them seems to care that much about their baby? (Why isn't Ross looking after Emma and flying her over to Paris instead of Rachel's mum?) And forget completely that Joey was in love with Rachel for two years? I get confused over what I'm supposed to consider "real" and what I'm supposed to consider "comedic", which makes it hard to follow.

But I disagree that it would have been better if they'd drifted apart "the way friends do in real life". There are groups of friends who are loving and supportive to each other in practical and concrete ways for much longer than ten years, and I think it's nice and should get more airtime.

10:28 / 31.05.04

Oh, ignore me. I’m just a grumpy old bastard. Pah, etc.

10:29 / 31.05.04

presumably because they had to keep a lid on the romance for heterocentric reasons

I personally can't see anything but very close friendship between Joey and Chandler. Romance?! No, I must be really missing something there. Any chance you could enlighten me...

I agree entirely with the rest of your post though. Ross is a shocking father, isn't he?

10:44 / 31.05.04

There was a black guy at Monica's sucky party when they were trying to keep Rachel's parents apart. His only line, I think, was "I hear you can get people out of here".

And the big guy who delivered the Racing Car bed.
And the young intern at Chandler's ad firm. "It's USA, sir."

11:35 / 31.05.04

I'm pleased the Joey/Rachel thing was dropped, because Joey doesn't do anything, and I'd rather he ate his way through doing nothing then emoted over Hair Girl his way through doing nothing.

I also like them staying together. Chummy, emotional, nice friendlyness, big group pleasentry porn makes me happy. I'm all for feeling happy.

I don't think Joey/Chandler is a sexing thing. It's a comfortable, plateaued marriage with casual physical intimacy (not random sexxxy groping, more just an ease around each other with friendly touching). See also: the two male teachers in Teachers. I really just can't see there being any passion between the characters.

17:06 / 31.05.04

Any chance you could enlighten me...

Well, the writers are on record as saying they wrote Chandler and Joey as a couple ("written gay, acted straight"), but that fizzled out when they sacrificed Chandler to marriage, so it was nice to see them return to it - especially in a way that makes _pin's reading make sense (retrospectively bridging the gap between the "couple" years and the "best friends" years).

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