Saturday, August 1, 2009

Another Summerless Year

Originally Posted 6-15-08

Season Three ended with Ross figuring out what room he will go into. Rachel's room or Christine Taylor's room? Season Four began with the same exact shot.


So, this pretty much means that they just skipped the summer of '97. Anything that happened in that summer didn't really happen in Friends land. So, I wonder if Princess Di is still alive in their world. I also wonder if they have trouble watching the first two Terminator movies.

"Skynet becomes self-aware and destroys the world on August 29, 1997."
"August 29, 1997? Could you be a more fictional date?"

I'm not sure what happened, hair-wise, with the characters. Some characters were like, "I'm away at the Hamptons, I'm going to dye my hair reddish."


"I'm going to make my hair poofier. The more the hair, the more the grease, right?"



Also, it looks like he just stepped out of the barber shop.



The good thing is that Chandler got over his Yoo-hoo jones really quickly, and was seen drinking it only once since the beginning of the season. Maybe he only packed two cases of the stuff for his trip to the Hamptons, and it didn't last the vacation. By the time he got back to Manhattan, he didn't have such a strong need for Sweet Lady Niacin—one of the vitamins and minerals that Yoo-hoo offers. Now, he's just an occasional user.



Note that Chandler waited until he got back to dye his hair. I seem to remember a promo for Comedy Central where Matthew Perry was sitting at Craig Kilborn's desk for The Daily Show. "Hi, I'm Matthew Perry and you're watching Comedy Central, and I apologize for the color of my hair." I'd have to assume this was this period of time. Either that, or his hair will continue its decent into further ridiculum.


Oh miracles of miracles, Monica returns from the Hamptons to discover that the phone destroyed by Phoebe has magically healed itself, or has been fixed. It makes one wonder why two people who go through cordless phones like bottles of shampoo would bother to get this phone repaired, when it seems that a cordless phone bush on the balcony yields a seemingly endless supply of phones.

It also makes me wonder why the props master would take a legitimate excuse to replace their phone and totally whiff on it and replace the phone with the same model.


Hey, look, everyone! It's Christmas! In October!

Only it's not really, and literally two minutes later in the same episode, the Manhattan skyline corrects itself.



Getting back to the hairstyles, a scant two seasons ago, Phoebe offers to cut Monica's hair. This was after she supposedly cut their Joey's and Chandler's hair while Rachel went to the airport—the episode where the summer of '95 had skipped. Monica asks Phoebe to cut it to make her look like Demi Moore. Phoebe gives her a Dudley Moore haircut, and Monica freaks.



Two years later, Monica is sporting an "Arthur" (not to be confused with the 'Arthur' that George Harrison sports in A Hard Day's Night) Phoebe is a good enough sport to not bring this up and guilt Monica for making Phoebe feel so bad two years earlier. Phoebe is a better person than me, because I would've never let Monica hear the end of it.



I, of course, have enough sense to not bring a cat into a public eatery. However, this is Central Perk, where anything friggin' goes. Behavior like this may even get you some positive attention from the waitstaff.



I question Ross' parenting.



Ohio Art clearly states that the Etch-A-Sketch are for children ages 4 & up. Even if Ben is genetically predisposed to be intelligent, at 2 1/2, he is way too young for this toy.

First of all, he probably doesn't realize that turning the knobs has bearing on what is happening on the screen, nor does he have the motor skills to make a picture. If you want to get a 2 1/2-year-old interested in art, start with crayons.

Also, it doesn't seem very safe. I remember my Etch-A-Sketch leaking that silver stuff. Maybe this was because my Etch-A-Sketch was a hand-me-down from my older brother, so the leaking came with age. Maybe Etch-A-Sketch improved it's technology to make it more leak proof. Assuming these 'ifs' are not true, that kid better be careful not to touch the edges of the screen, or else his little fingers will have silver spots. And you know 2 1/2-year-olds are all about putting stuff into their mouths. Ben is definitely ingesting aluminum powder on this fateful night.

This is what probably turns him into the insufferable little brat he becomes in later seasons.



This is the last we see of Chandler's laptop. I, once being a victim of burglary, didn't really find the laptop stealing as funny as the studio audience/laugh track participants. This guy took the laptop and the boombox in one trip, and we later find out that he cleaned Joey and Chandler out. Joey's comically oversized microwave, the ever-changinge foosball table, even the all of the furniture, and he stole it all without being detected by anyone. While I'm not one to condone stealing of others' property, this guy is efficient. I wonder if he's available to help me move next month, because I have a couch that was a bit of a pain to get through my doorway, and I think anyone who could remove two recliners, by himself, would be a valuable helper on moving day. There's no enough pizza or beer in the world to repay him.

In the past, I've called to question the use of brand packages. Sometimes, the packaging is presented as is. Sometimes, one letter of the name is blocked out.



For example, here, it appears that Monica is flashing gang signs at her bottle of Diet Snapple. However, at closer inspection, you can see that it's actually a bottle of "Diet _napple." In the past, I've voiced my confusion over this. Maybe they can't use the Snapple name, but that is clearly a Snapple bottle, blocked out 's' or not.



Here, we have Joey looking at a box bearing the image of the character from the Quaker Oats (who, by the way, bought out Snapple in 1994) cereal Cap'n Crunch. However, the cereal isn't Cap'n Crunch, it's a cereal called "Love That Crunch." It's odd that they wouldn't use the name "Cap'n Crunch," but they would pass off Cap'n Crunch's slogan of "Love that crunch" as the fictional brand name. "Love that crunch" was already printed on the box in smaller font just to the left (our left) of the man himself.

So really, what the hell Quaker Oats? Are you advertising on Friends or not?



Hey, remember Alicia LaPlaca? She was on the '80s FOX sitcom Duets, which spun-off Open House, which featured Ellen Degeneres. Anyone? No? Am I the only one that hyper-aware of FOX's Sunday line-up from the '80s?

I like how FOX uses the word spin-off there. "Spin-off" implies that the original was successful enough to warrant two series to exist at the same time. For example, you had Cheers, and then you had The Tortellis which aired in the same period, and for a half a season. The two shows lived on the same network. Then there's Frasier, which was the other kind of spin-off. Cheers had its successful run, went off the air after running its course and then spawned Frasier which had a successful run of its own.

My point, usually, to spawn a spin-off, there had to be a successful series to spin off from. FOX ignored this rule and brought in an equally forgettable series. Hence Duets, Open House, and the piece of TV trivia that pops to my mind whenever I see the boss Rachel had who slept with Chandler.



Less exciting, Phoebe's boss is apparently Mrs. Roselli from Who's the Boss.

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