Its Filler Time!

The first time we see this comedy just be a comedy.  Is it funny or just painful.  Plus why were banks in 90's TV so incompetent in favour of the consumer? 

Transcript

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Hello, everybody. Uh welcome back. Hopefully, welcome back. Because some of you hopefully have tried the first couple episodes and have found that it is not too terrible. At least good enough to listen to and relax and get a little bit of time and maybe have a laugh. That's all we're really hoping for. This is Gen Z vs. Friends, and I am your host, voice, writer. Um all things about this podcast because all things about this podcast are human, so uh congratulations. Congratulations on supporting your fellow humans against the encroaching wave of AI slot. Um yeah, this is episode three of season one, which still means we are on episode three of season one of Friends as well. As we have so far, and as I believe we will continue to do, uh, we're gonna go through the episode. Uh I will be having recently re-watched it, uh, as specifically with an I2 is uh Friends a worthy uh component of our social fabric. Does it fall short? Where does it fall short? And what lessons can still potentially be learned from a show that was so central to uh my early life, the early life of so many in my age group, uh, and potentially so many in years the in the years that followed. Uh so glad you're here. Sit down, relax, grab a cup of coffee, and let's talk a little bit about season one, episode three of Friends. Okay, welcome back, season one, episode three, the one with the thumb. So this is the first filler episode. Um, something that we kind of forget existed back in the world of 24 episode seasons. Not every episode drove the story, the the larger story forward in big ways. Um other series at the time, you know, uh it's where you get the monster of the week versus the the conspiracy trope for series like X Files. Um sometimes it was just about jokes, sometimes it was a comedy, uh, and that's in a lot of ways what this episode was. Um I guess since it is a comedy, it's not really filler, right? This is actually arguably what it was here for. Uh it's the point. Um it is that is it's what it was here for. It's this is the point. Um it's it is a reflection of a culture where everything is a hustle and every interest has to be monetized.

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Like a podcast.

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Uh that even our entertainment now leaves us with a feeling that every single episode of our favorite show has to drive the story forward. But in the early 90s, that just it wasn't the case. Uh the point of the series was just to be funny, it was to entertain you for half an hour. Um, everything else, you know, that was how they kept you watching, arguably. Um, but our primary point was spend 20 minutes of funny with some commercials that could sell you some stuff. Um so someone known no one needed to die, no one needed to be born, uh, no one needed to break up a marriage, no one needed to do anything big. You just had to get some laughs, uh, make some space for some commercials and and have 30 minutes of distraction before you went to bed. Um what silly stuff did they do to distract us in episode three? Uh well, like we've talked about, it follows the standard format. Um three three plot lines, three things, uh 10 minutes worth each approximately. Uh so first, the namesake of the episode, the thumb. Uh, you know, the walk to the thumb is actually longer and more convoluted than I remember. Starting with Phoebe getting some extra money from her bank. Um, because of her very deep-seated morals, Phoebe can't just keep the money and be at peace. Uh, even as her friends, including most of the viewers, are really probably just cheering for her to keep it. Um, and I'll say this, no idea how Phoebe actually makes enough money at this point in her life to live in Manhattan or at any point as a massage therapist. I'm guessing they mostly have to live off the island, but she always seems to make it work. Um now we do get a little insight here in that she does live with her grandmother, that covering probably most of her, if not all, of her rent costs. Um we get this once again through the intro uh and the fact that her grandmother is having loud, reassuring sex in the room next to her. Um this does, you know, really the only way that this particular generation of New Yorkers is able to live in Manhattan is to live in a property that was rent stabilized um by their parents uh or their grandparents, as in apparently all cases. Um yeah, coming back to Phoebe, um, even though everyone agrees she could definitely use it, she just can't handle the idea of having money that she didn't actually earn. So she calls her bank and tries to return it, and they'll make the same few mistake a few more times until she ends up with an extra $5,000 in hand. Um this is we know this is almost identical to a storyline uh used by Fraser a few years later, except uh there it was Martin and he wants to keep it, but another character comes in and says, you know, you can't possibly keep it, that wouldn't be right. Um and it's interesting because really in a lot of ways Daphne and Phoebe have very similar, kind of sweet, um little slightly granola hippie-ish vibe. Um and it's not unbelievable to think that you know Daphne might have even seen episodes of Friends. You know, the interesting thing is we do know that Friends and Mad About You and Seinfeld all exist in the same New York universe. If you haven't ever seen it, um early episodes of all of these things, so Kramer is renting Paul's old apartment uh in for Mad About You. So at some point, Paul from Mad About You was Jerry Seinfeld's neighbor. Well, I guess that wasn't true because I think they show at some point that Jerry moved in and Kramer was already there, but they all live in that same universe. And then of course we know that Ursula crosses over as you friend and Jamie from Mad About You and Friends in a Friend's Cold Open down the road, not to get ahead of ourselves. Um if you don't know who I'm talking about, well, to be quite frank, go watch those series. You're missing out. Genuinely, I wouldn't be here if I didn't think 90s sitcoms were touchstones for culture, maybe the last real touchstones that we had before everything was uh splintered by streaming. Um but yeah, so we know those those three are all together in the same world. Frasier and Cheers do seem to be in a very different space, a different universe, um, if for no other reason than you know that Boston Seattle access. So although we never actually see it happen, it is totally possible to argue that even though they don't know each other like they do for the other shows, um, they could actually be influencing each other in their internal pop culture ideas. So maybe Daphne saw this episode years ago, she sympathized with Phoebe um and is trying to give Martin some of those same great morals. Who knows? But it is totally possible. And uh, if you're a bit of a geek, it's fun to think about. Okay. Anyway, seriously, uh back to Phoebe. So eventually, in an effort to clear a karma, she gives away the money to an unhoused person she's friendly with. At this point, it's only been a couple episodes, so we don't actually know the depth that we actually that we'll get to um about Phoebe's experience and her time living uh as an unhoused person, but we can imagine that she's friendly, she's non-judgmental, and so she might have many uh unhoused people that she's friendly with, but she finds this particular person, uh, this woman she and she just hands her a stack of bills in exchange. Um, this also happens to be a very nice person, and so once again, she finds herself in conflict with the other characters, and I'll admit myself, and doesn't immediately feel good about keeping it, where they work out of trade. She buys Phoebe a soda. And there, after this long walk, when she opens that soda, there's a thumb floating behind the pull tab. For this, she's granted a quick $7,000 from the soda company, which she keeps because it seems apparent the universe wants her to have a little extra walking around money. And to be quite fair, she's put in enough work at this point. We'll come back to that. The second story is actually one of the uh kind of primary stories, first primary stories for Chandler. Um, and the first that we see him actually relapse into smoking. At this point, more than anything else, it just sets us up for jokes over the years about Chandler's love of smoking and and when he goes back and forth and uses it as a coping mechanism. But we hear here we really see that Chandler isn't just an addict, he's a smoking enthusiast. Funnily enough, just cigarettes, even though cigars were starting to come on as a new thing in the 90s, not a new thing, obviously, but as a trendy thing again in the 90s. Um, but for him, it's just cigarettes and how much he loves them. He loves everything about it, regrets ever giving it up, like I think a lot of um smokers, especially in the 90s, before it was quite so faux pas, whatever you want to call it, quite such a big deal uh to smoke in public. Um but he so he covertly starts smoking in his office in the coffee shop, and no one notices. This is once again not as weird then as it is now. Um if you weren't around in the early 90s, uh late 80s, even right through till the millennium, smoking was still very prevalent. The smell of cigarette smoke was everywhere. And although it wasn't legal in most places, smoking sections in restaurants and bars were still very much a thing. My hometown had actually just created the first smoking bylaw, which limited smoking in public places. Um, but wider spread Canadian legisl legislation was actually still 15 years away. So you you could never hide that distinctive smell now. But in the 90s, 100%, he could have been smoking. And while we are like, oh my god, I'd know that, that's so ridiculous, 1993 totally could have hidden that. Um he might have burned his cubicle down uh and definitely left like ash marks all over the coffee shop, but the smoke wouldn't have been what did it. In fact, it's almost weirder looking back on it that nobody in the group smoked in the early 90s. Uh, the last storyline, we get back to Monica's love life. We get into the standard sitcom idea that the friends never really like each other's dates and partners. Uh, and Monica's, as a result, is refusing to bring her newest guy around to meet the crew on the basis that they have a tendency to make fun of them and cut them down and tear them to shreds. Um, to be quite frank, somebody should. She has terrible taste. It was literally bad from the very first episode of the show. But in this case, though, they actually love him and he's their new favorite, and they quickly go to him for advice, want to include him in everything. This actually um happens a lot where Monica's boyfriends are the father figures in the group, and as soon as there's someone there, they're all running to him, want to treat him like dad. But I'm sure we'll get back into that in seasons. Oh my god, there's so many seasons, uh, seasons to come. Um, but he's a new favorite, they're going to firm advice. They even bring him along as like a ringer at a softball game that somehow they were already entered into. Um, what softball league this is is never clear. Was it work-related? It kind of seems to be, because there's some hints that this is actually the central perk team. Um, but Rachel Rachel's actually the only employee on the team, and she's only worked there two months at most. So how she came to be the star of the team, uh, who knows? But the new guy Simon plays, and apparently he's amazing. And in the end, they love him, but you know, really Monica doesn't. And it turns out that he doesn't like them all that much either, which is kind of the big joke of the episode. Um, so they, you know, they're they're good, they're solid, they're comic little plot lines, um, they're fun and they're funny. Um, but kind of rethinking these three, they're not they're not as benign or they're not as far from the major plot as they seem on the surface, or when you first watch it. First of all, the the thumb, silly as it is, and uh not totally out of keeping with uh other plots from from other sitcoms and other shows of the time, um, it really does start to lay the groundwork for Phoebe as becoming the moral center of the entire group. She won't take the money voluntarily. Um, and even, you know, coming from the background that she does, it might be an honor code thing. It might just be, you know, hating to see the rich people of New York constantly taking and taking from people in the service industry, uh, whoever. I mean, uh, as I said, I'm not condemning everybody else. I sympathize with them. I would have kept the money from the in the first instance. But it's also interesting uh and moralistic in that it shows that being honest eventually has its own reward, right? We get back into that old sitcom idea of the family, despite the fact that you know, this particular sitcom talks about sex and relationships and all these sorts of things. It's not as famously as Seinfeld, it's not quite that self-centered, and and it's still trying to show that message that, like, hey, if you're just honest about it, it works out in the end. Um, is that realistic? Of course not. It wasn't realistic in 1993 and in 2026, of course it isn't. Um, generally being honest, seems to get you shortchanged in someone with a heck of a lot less morals. Uh, we won't name any names here. Um, there's other podcasts for that. Um, we'll end up taking that from you. But in this particular case, in this lovely little universe, uh universe of Greenwich Village in the early 90s, uh, by trying to give it back, Phoebe ends up actually making exponentially more money. And along the way, also gets to help uh someone else in a friend in need. So that's great, and that really actually shows us a lot about Phoebe's character that continues throughout. We also kind of start to see some of the damage that underneath Chandler's skin. You know, even in the early 90s, everybody knew that if you started smoking that young, something about your childhood was probably a little bit broken. Um, when he I think he admits smoking it like at the age of 12. There's very little to go on here at this point. We haven't heard a lot about all the trouble that uh that Chandler was in. Um, but we can see the early foundation of kind of that mess that lurks uh just under the skin and is going on inside Chandler's head. And, you know, we'll talk about it more as we get see more and deal more with the characters, but obviously a a great deal of what was going on inside Matthew Perry's head and in his life um was starting to what made this easy character acting or easy method acting for for him in this particular case. And once again we get back and we we see Monica. Uh, once again, her dating life sucks. Um, but this is the kind of relationship that would have been easy to stay in because everyone else liked him so much. It also demonstrates how desperately the group is looking for positive parental figures, as I mentioned. Anyone who's mature, anybody who's grown up, you know, there, and there's something very um, you know, something very honest about that. I remember uh a number of years ago, I I was finishing my education and I went in and I met with um some of my girlfriends, now wife's uh friends. We were all about the same age. I was maybe a couple of years older, but I was finishing uh maybe a more serious professional program. And, you know, once again, that was a group, not not my wife. She was not looking for a parental figure in any way, shape, or form. In fact, probably the opposite. Um, but you know, you could see that with their friends and and and it's really flattering. It's kind of funny, and and it would have been super easy for this character to just be like, oh, here's this group of you know, younger people they kind of look up to me. That feels good. It feels good to it feels good to be a role model. Um, and so it would have been easy in a real world situation for them both to stay in what was potentially an unhealthy relationship for a long time to come. And in this particular case, I mean, we met met the gellers last week. Why wouldn't someone try and replace them uh with a younger, less unpleasant person to give you advice and and help to show you what's what in the world um someone they could look up to. And to be fair, all we really know about Rachel's parents at this point is that her dad seems to call her every other day to yell into the phone at her or try and bribe her into coming back uh to their nice suburban life. So once again, not a lot of healthy families. In fact, in the end, you know, probably Joey's actually got one of the healthier families. We don't know anything about them at this point, but um, realistically that's probably true, despite their own flaws and and issues that will come up. Um, but it it really does cement that right from episode three, Monica was gonna be the mom figure. She was gonna be the the maternal one in the group, and whoever she was with uh was gonna take on that role of of a parent as well. Um we know who that's gonna be event eventually, and oddly he doesn't really take on that parental role um in in the the chemistry of the group, but you know, uh just kind of a funny direction that we see so early. Um having watched it again, like I said, uh I'm kind of dismissive as soon as you see the episode, you know what it is, and like, ah, this is just one of those. It doesn't really mean anything. Um, but I like it more and more in thinking about it and having rewatched it, not just because it's you know, sitcoms are meant to be funny. Um years since they've that is not necessarily a given. The idea of that that dark comedic sitcom has come up more and more. Um, but this one really just was, this episode was just funny. It wasn't really, although the you know the writing was honest and true to the characters, it it wasn't trying to be anything more than just funny and just a half hour of diversion on a Thursday night, as I said before. Um, but it does manage to move the plot and and it keeps some character development going forward in a perhaps more subtle way than some of the other episodes or some other series that you might see. So, with that all my all in mind, uh how does this how do we score this one that doesn't take any make any major comments or commitments? Well, um, was it funny? Yes. So I think this one actually had some good comedic writing. Um one of my favorite moments when Simon, uh Monica's boyfriend, uses the the voice and cadence of another character that's only been hinted at to introduce himself to the group. Um really, really funny moment. So yeah, I'd give it a full three points there. No new topic, so you can't really say it approached anything new or in a novel way, so that's gotta be a zero. Um was it memorable? Yeah. Just because it was funny. Um you know, there was no big scary side stories or anything like that, but um just just some good jokes and and some jokes that you remember. So I'd, you know, probably go with a two. The flip side, don't think it was cringy. There was nothing, it wasn't pushing any boundaries, so there was nothing too negative about it here. Um, and actually, if anything, you know, the the representation of the unhouse person um wasn't the best, uh, since that comes with an automatic insinue insinuation that she was mentally ill, uh, with some foam foil hats and all that kind of good stuff. Um but she was also appreciative and she was kind. Um and she was, you know, not even as weird as Phoebe. Um so I'd probably leave that at a negative one. But it was a formulaeic and sit calm, me definitely hinted at there. Um a lot of that, once again, just because uh out of the genre don't watch these as much as as I used to, and you kind of remember why. Um so it's yeah, probably a little bit formulaic. Um but once again, they set the modern formula. Um, so we can't blame them too too much there. Um, but we'll go with a minus one just for the the the aluminum hat, just because it's such a hack joke. Um could you make it today? Well, yeah, there's no reason you couldn't. It's just a comedy. Um so I'd give it a one. Should you? You know, I'm gonna leave it as a zero because it doesn't really matter. Um it's not that it's bad, it's not that it's good, it just doesn't, you know, let's face it, doesn't move a lot forward on the on the grander scale. Um, so should is a big question, and this at the worst is a zero. In the end, it comes out as a four, a good solid comedic episode for a comedy. Um and it still had smart and it still worked on its characters. And so, really, in the end, what else can you ask for? And what's not to like. Well, as I sat around and disgust, um, and hopefully you chatted to, talked back. Hopefully it caused an embarrassing moment at the gym or on the bus as you yelled uh something at me about how I was totally getting our good friend Phoebe wrong um in this particular episode. But hopefully it filled something for you, filled a bit of a void, scratch a bit of an itch because it does for me. And I look forward to sitting around and talking with you again uh in the next episode of Gen Z vs. Friends. Remind you once again this is an entirely human made podcast, no AI, no slop. Um yeah, glad you're here. Let's talk again soon.