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Last week, I advised you to memorise how the episode finished, with the
Christmas decorations still up in the large apartment, and they
still wearing their dance costumes. That was because this week's episode
begins with a massive continuity error - Joey bursts into the apartment
IMMEDIATELY after he kisses Janine for the first time, and yet all signs
of Christmas have suddenly vanished. This can't be because the holiday is over, for it is still the night when
he took his friends to a television studio, 2 weeks before
the Millennium, even though everyone including Joey is wearing different
clothes. I have an explanation which I'll unveil after briefly reviewing
the two stories in this episode. To start off, Rachel is pleased to receive a Pottery Barn catalogue. For
European fans, this is a chain of trendoid housewares stores rather like
IKEA, and their White Plainss branch is located just north of NYC.
Ignoring Monica's warning that Phoebe dislikes mass-produced furniture,
Rachel buys an 'Apothecary' coffee table, with drawer space for 300 CDs.
But when Rachel lies that she bought it at the flea market, dear sweet
trusting Phoebe totally believes her friend, and imagines she can still
smell the apothecary's potions in the drawers. Rachel is undone when Ross makes Phoebe's point (that everyone ends up
with the same stuff) by buying an identical table. As Rachel protests, he
suggests that as a twin, Phoebe herself is not one of a kind, for she is
a mass-produced person, identical to a woman that she so dislikes. This
illustrates how Ross understands Phoebe better than any of the others do. When Phoebe discovers the second table, Rachel tells even more lies to
cover her ass, so deluding poor Phoebe that she gets away with filling
the apartment with Pottery Barn furniture. Ross is so offended he tries
to catch Rachel out in her lies, but Phoebe is too trusting to notice,
even though Rachel's grasp of history is yore, colonial, & yesteryear! Upon the first airing, some fans were sure that Ross got so angry that
he was about to strike Rachel, because she flinches when he suddenly
turns round to glare at her as yet another of her lies is exposed. I
am convinced that is so not the case, Rachel was just startled. In the end, Phoebe walks past the store, whose window now resembles her
living room, and she realises three things. She has been utterly deceived
by her best friend, she actually likes the range of furniture, and she
wants Rachel to carry on living with her. Since Phoebe still believes the
apothecary table itself was genuine, Rachel carries on deceiving her. For the second week running, Rachel was quite obnoxious, but at least
Phoebe was back in character, once again the laid-back easy-going woman
who at the same time is more innocent and more knowing than the rest of
the group. Ross's behaviour was not above criticism, but it was sweet
to see how he took Phoebe's side against Rachel. Meanwhile, the other story consisted of poor Joey despairing as Janine
slagged off his friends & neighbours for reasons which in Season 6 have
become true! After a double date, in which Chandler secretly paid Joey's
expenses, Janine privately complained that Monica was very loud for such
a small person, and Chandler was a little blah. Monica is indeed more strident now, and she always has been the shortest
member of the cast, while Chandler is given far fewer jokes to do than he
once was. The thing is that there was no clue that Janine disliked them
before this, but all of a sudden she does. As Claire Abraham says, this
is a recurrent theme in "Friends" - the guest star who suddenly reveals
a nasty character trait only when their contract runs out. At least Joey was very good in this, his credibility remaining intact by
sacrificing his love for the sake of loyalty to his friends. In a telling
moment Joey pointed out to Chandler & Monica that they owed him for all
his help at the start of their relationship, when he helped them sneak
around while he had to look like an idiot, and be humiliated. Note that at the end, Janine ran away from Monica in exactly the same way
that we've seen Joey run away from difficult situations. But this time we
saw Joey make the mature decision to give up on Janine, before going with
Chandler to watch the girls fighting in the street. Sadly we were denied
this scene, even though we have been allowed to witness some stupendous
Monica/Rachel fights in the past. What I what I most didn't like about this episode (and last week's) was
they way they made me dislike Rachel, Phoebe, and Monica - I do not want
to, but I did. It was only the qualities of Ross, Joey, and Chandler that
saved these shows from being execrable. Janine wasn't *that* bad in the
end, but then she wasn't that good either. Janine's presence adversely affected the natural chemistry of the show,
in a way that Richard or Janice never did, maybe because the writing is
weaker now, and so it was unable to compensate. And yet, yippee, she's
gone! At last a heavy weight is lifted from the show, so do we now walk
in sunshine for the rest of the season? Okay, so why was there that hideous continuity error? This explanation is based on my opinion that this was yet another poor
episode, making it 4 bad ones out of the last 5. Furthermore, these were
the episodes that featured Janine for more than a few seconds, and it was
a relief to learn at the end that she had packed her bags & left. It is
quite obvious that Miss Macpherson was not doing well in her role as
Janine, and her part was drastically cut back. "TOW the Apothecary Table" was originally number 610, and 610 "TOW the
Routine" was originally 611 "TOW the Rocking New Year". The spoiler of
TOWTAT that the addicts assiduously discussed turned out very different
from the episode, so it changed a great deal before it was filmed. My theory is that 607 "TOW Phoebe Runs" and 608 "TOW Ross's Teeth" went
out as planned, but with Janine LeCroix not working, she was virtually
cut out of 609, and then was written out an episode early. Accordingly,
the remaining episodes were originally something like this... 609 "TOW Ross Got High" - Janine has a lot more than 43 seconds of screen
time, and Phoebe doesn't dream of Jack Geller & Jacques Cousteau. Ross &
Joey finally get away from the Thanksgiving dinner, but when they arrive
at the dance studio, they discover that Janine's dancer friends are all
men. Janine sees how disappointed Joey is, and kisses him. 610 "TOW The Apothecary Table" - Joey runs into Monica & Chandler's
apartment after kissing Janine at the end of episode 609, well before
Christmas. Phoebe appears on the US version of the BBC show "Antiques
Roadshow" with Rachel's apothecary table which comes to an untimely end.
Janine refuses to get involved with a roomie, so Joey convinces Chandler
to pretend to break up with Monica, then swap rooms with Janine. However,
Monica & Chandler have nowhere to make out - so after a lot of sneaking
around, Janine finally catches them out, but instead of being mad, she
is touched that they would go through all of that trouble for her. 611 "TOW The Rocking New Year" - instead of taking place on 17 December,
it begins just before Christmas Eve, before jumping ahead to celebrate
the Millennium. Monica forgives Chandler for what he said at the end of
the previous episode, and takes him back in. Rachel tries to make Phoebe
confess that she invented Denise as she wasn't ready to take in a roomie,
except that Denise phones to wish Phoebe a Happy New Year. 612 "TOW Janine Moves Out" - after they all go on a double date together,
Joey discovers that Janine dislikes Monica & Chandler, so he is forced to
make a difficult choice between love & his friends. Janine departs, and
because she was so good, we are all sorry to see her go... Finally, there was something very peculiar about the dialogue in this
episode, where characters reacted to what someone had said while we were
not watching. Here are four examples... CHANDLER: I generally just go with Monica's drunk again. PHOEBE: Oh Ross, calm down, I'll give you the 80 cents. JOEY: I was humiliated, and I only made 200 dollars! PHOEBE: I think he's ready to get rid of, what did you call
it? The cheap knock-offs and dinosaur junk. No spoilers PLEASE from anyone who has already seen episodes 612-625. |
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I think this moment will stand as a sad symbol of the quality of the
show at this point (611, that is.) It's also a symbol of the writers'
respect of continuity.
So why on earth did the writers do this?
Clearly, they had to know that some people would remember the previous
episode (that was aired in the middle of December) when this one was
aired on January 6th. And that's just for the American viewers. For
the rest of us it's just plain stupid.
Unless, of course, Joey's interpretation of a "kiss" is an enormous
make-out session lasting for more than the "Twelve Days Of Christmas". I've really liked some of the Rachel+Phoebe stories we've seen this
year. These characters have a completely different dynamic than say
Monica and Rachel or Monica and Phoebe.
And this scene also shows us something we already knew:
Rachel has probably never even been to a flea market.
Phoebe, OTOH, may know her way around one. (She probably had to shop
at a flea market occasionally before she moved in with Monica.)
True enough, but I also thought it was a bit offensive. He seemed so
annoyed by the fact that she would hate something he loved so much.
And then he says something spiteful about one of the things that hurts
Phoebe the most. Her relationship with Ursula. (When are these two
going to make up anyway?) |
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