'Friends' Season Finale

Never watched the show darlin' .... it will be back before you know it!

Jeez.....Thanks, Ma.

Joey is with Rachel! I'm in shock! I need someone to talk to about this!

Hee hee! I saw it after a season of "Survivor" and was like WHOA!

I'm assuming that was a twist thrown in to keep Rachel and Ross apart just a bit longer, so that the "real" ending (which was supposed to be this season when the season started) will be them finally getting together.

?

I have to say, what I've seen this year of Ross and Rachel's parenting bothers me! How old is the baby supposed to be now, as they go gallivanting off for a fun little getaway?

I think it was set up that Rachel is in lust with Joey, but not in love with him, really.

sozobe ~ if I haven't said it already ~ I love ya to pieces!

Yeah! What is up with their parenting?!? (Then again, it is television, but I'm still hooked!)

Trip to Barbados? Sure hon! Pack your bags!

love ya back!

(Careful, or Slappy will come nosing around... )

Ahhhhh, lust.....we'll have to wait until October to find out now!

<as long as Slappy doesn't 'see' us talking, we'll be fine.....>

What I'm wondering is what will happen with that paleontologist (sp?? whatever) chick. They DID seem like a pretty good match, her and Ross.

Think her name is 'Charlie' (short for Charlene). Yeah, the do seem like a pretty good match.

Have to admit, I've always thought Joey and Rachel would make a good couple.

Yeah, they were playing up the fact that they are both the "dumb" ones. But in previous seasons, Rachel has shown a lot more depth and intelligence, if not book learnin'.

I still think they're going to end up with Ross and Rachel together, since they have a child together. But this is an interesting twist.

We watched and I turned to my husband and said, "If they didn't already, they've jumped the shark." He said he wasn't sure about that, but that the writers definitely seemed to be giving everyone in the audience what they wanted, even briefly.

Now onto the show.

I thought the way that David was 'dismissed' was disturbing (don't get me wrong, I think Mike is a better match, but I didn't like how the end with David was handled). I thought Phoebe was unkind to him and he just bowed out so quickly that there wasn't even a chance for P. to say something like "I care for you and I'm sorry it didn't work out." or something like that. Then again, I've always seen Phoebe as nasty, not ditsy, and this confirmed that. Mr. Jespah agreed that it just didn't seem very nice.

Monica was even nastier. Very mean, very over the top competitively. I wondered why Chandler continues to bother with her. She also seemed dizzy and in earlier seasons she was smarter (same is true of Rachel). It's very disturbing to me that now all of the regular women on the show are dumb.

Chandler was finally less passive when he takes control with, of all things, ping-pong. He can't keep his wife from acting so competitive that she's barely this side of uncontrolled rage, but he can play ping-pong. Odd.

I agree, Ross and Charlie are an interesting couple. Given that "Friends" was roundly criticized a few years ago for having no minorities in the cast or even doing guest shots, she's a welcome sight, but also long overdue.

Joey continues to be so unsufferably dimwitted that it's a wonder he can dress himself (you can tell which characters I don't like). In the real world, he'd have at least one child out of wedlock and would have battled at least one STD. Not so in "Friends" fantasy world. He's sweet, yes, which to me puts him a step above Phoebe. Weird choice, putting him with Rachel. He was more believable when he was pursuing her last year. Now it seems contrived, although he is more mature.

Rachel, like I wrote above, has gotten dumbed down big time. Not that she was a super-genius, but the writers really tossed out a lot of her intellect to make her look like a match for Joey. It also strikes me as implausible that she'd have such a complete change of heart from last year, when she rebuffed his advances.

Knowing that the show will supposedly end next year (it might not; NBC still doesn't have a reasonable substitute for what is still a monster hit show), and knowing that the Joey character has been mentioned as the one most likely to get a spinoff deal, adds a dimension to this plot twist.

Consider that Jennifer Aniston is getting better and better movie deals and received a great deal of critical praise for "The Good Girl". I suspect that she will say no to another season if it comes up again, and unless the network can really sweeten things for her, she will be the veto that will finally end the show for good. The other actors don't really have such good film careers. Matthew Perry has done the most film work of the other 5 actors, but his roles aren't really catapulting him to anything significantly better than "Friends". I think he may have a middling movie career and eventually limp back to TV.

Lisa Kudrow has done some film; so has David Schwimmer. I get the feeling he'll become Mr. Mini-Series. Courteney Cox's main film career has been in the "Scream" series (although she was also in the first "Ace Ventura", and has, I believe, been in the business longer than all of them). I get the feeling she'll eventually be offered a series, but it won't be associated with "Friends".

Then there's Matt LeBlanc. He really only did the "Lost in Space" film, and it was a flop. So he's most likely to do a spin-off, plus his actor character has the most likely scenario to build a new sitcom around. Will his spin-off find sitcom Nirvana, like "Frasier", or will it sink into obscurity, like the Mary Tyler Moore second spin-off, "Phyllis"? Helfino. Stay tuned.

Since Aniston has a real film career going on, she won't follow him to any spin-offs. The other cast members will do cameos and possibly one or two of them will even join the spin-off cast (the only one I can think of who may be credible in this is Kudrow, as the audience will associate Cox and Perry with one another, and Schwimmer will probably be the odd man out). Hence, the romance will end, and the ultimate ending will be to bring Ross and Rachel finally back together, for good.

I predict next season will contain the following:
* Monica and Chandler adopt a child but she finds out she's pregnant right around then.
* Phoebe and Mike either get married or have some sort of committment ceremony. They depart to hippie-like glory somewhere outside New York.
* Joey gets a movie deal and moves to LA (hence the premise for the sitcom).
* Ross and Rachel realize everyone else is moving on and they should give it another shot. Instant ending.

PS Yeah, isn't their parenting really suspect? Plus, we've never seen either of her parents, or his father, or his son, with Emma. What's up with that?

The 'art' of television.....Because I'm a fan, I'm hoping that the network writers will put Rachel and Ross together in the end.....

Joey is just so darn cute though!

jespah ~ WOW!

I have too much time on my hands. What can I say?

Yeah, I agree with almost all of that. It does seem like in previous seasons it was less sitcommy and more character-driven. This episode was all about the plot contrivances and double takes. (Which, admittedly, LeBlanc does really well. His double [triple, quintiple] take when he finally figured out that Monica and Chandler were together is one of the classics of TV.)

I agree about Phoebe/David. Mean.

I think you guys are being waay too hard on Phoebe. After all, David's the one who decided he'd rather spend his time in a lab in Minsk than in New York with Phoebe, and then thought he could waltz back into her life several years later and pick up where they left off. And does anyone honestly think Phoebe and David could have a future together? She'd be bored silly with him inside of six months (assuming he stayed in town that long). But maybe I'm inclined to cut Phoebe a lot of slack because she delivered the funniest line uttered on a sitcom in the past ten years (when Rachel wondered why she hadn't tasted Phoebe's fabulous oatmeal cookies before, and Phoebe explained that she didn't make them often "because it isn't fair to the other cookies".)

I totally agree about Ross's and Rachel's deficiencies as parents, which became obvious a few episodes ago, when Joey gave the cast party on the roof of the building, and Ross and Rachel were there but Emma wasn't. It would have been easy enough for the writers to come up with some funny business, with the soap opera actors saying inane things about the baby, or even to write a throwaway line about how Emma was asleep next to the guacamole (which is pretty much how the Murphy Brown writers used to explain where Avery was), but they didn't bother. And the absence of any grandparental involvement, except for Ross's mother, is so inexplicable that I wonder if it's just a case of Elliott Gould, Marlo Thomas, and Ron Liebman not having been available to do an episode (except that that's kind of hard to believe).

Oh, and by the way, Ron Liebman as Rachel's father -- is that perfect casting, or what? If there's ever a spinoff from Friends, I hope it's called Dr. Green.

Oh, Phoebe and David never would've worked out - I just think the break-up could've been kinder.

Yeah, the poor parenting - the writers toss in children as plot devices, to make us all go "ooh and aah", and to convince middle America that these self-absorbed thirtysomethings are really family-friendly, so please watch our show and boost the ratings.

Sorry, that was really cynical of me.

Anyway, what harm would it've done (and how much time would it've taken) to have Ross or Rachel say, "I'll be right there, just gonna call Mom and check on Emma."?