NBC Saving Money on the Power Bill

In this weeks episode our friends are confronted with the most evil foe of all, the network gimmick.  Would they overcome the odds and make something funny in this world of crass consumerism or would they crash and burn into the pits of obscurity.  Whose to know?

Find out right here.

Transcript

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Okay, folks, welcome back to Gen Z vs. Friends. I'm your host, Todd Sullivan, here once again to help us answer the question: Is Friends really uh as bad, as problematic as some people think? Or is it just some the quality television that we remember from the early 90s? Uh today we have got still in season one, episode seven, the one with the blackout. Um so excited to get back into this one with you. Uh start into the second quarter of uh of season one. Um get to see a little bit more of the development of these characters uh and some of the big plot points that we all remember and how they how they unfolded uh when we re-watch it. So sit back, grab a popcorn, grab a cup of coffee, grab whatever you need. Um, and yeah, let's enjoy the next 30 minutes together. Okay, so this episode starts with a very different cold open. We've been talking about how uh, you know, the through the first five, it was always kind of the same thing. The friends in the coffee shop, and then uh we had Joey in the the play in the last episode. Um, but this one is a little bit sneaky, it's a little bit different. Uh, we are back in Central Park and we're waiting for what is probably kind of from the introduction, uh Phoebe's very first musical performance at Central Park. Maybe her first time ever from the way that we eventually know that she rolls. Um but her her very or the very first time we're gonna see her play at Central Park or so, we think. And just as she's about to play her very first chord, boom, the power goes out. Uh, and apparently across a large chunk of Manhattan. So this is the blackout episode. Uh, it was a very strange episode of artificial appointment viewing from the early 90s. 30 years before, we had Chicago Fire, PD, Mad World, Crossovers, um, or even the kind of multiverse that was and then wasn't, and now I think is again the world of law and order. Uh, we had NBC attempting to establish a solid 90 to 120 minutes of crossover entertainment. Um, that they would have viewers waiting to find out what happened to all their favorite characters in this suddenly interconnected world. And for a very long time, by which I mean up until I really rewatched it this time, actually, uh, just showing how long ignorance can last, I actually thought that this was a nod to some real catastrophic blackout that New York City had suffered in the immediate lead up to the 93 season. Um, this is actually, in my mind, at least, a great example of the little tidbits of information that persisted in a world before the internet had an answer to everything. So, yes, the the world has become a more accurate place, or at least a more accurate place for everybody except those who would actually be valuable if they were telling the truth, like politicians, police officers, you know, though those little minor positions in the world. But for the rest of us, the joy of the unknown, or at least of being uh unknown or not knowing everything, has sort of been sapped away over the years. Um actually, just an example of this. When I was in high school, so back in kind of a few years after this episode came out in the late 90s, uh, there was an Alazar Shrine Temple not far from my school, a Shriner Temple. Um, and we discovered the Shriners, their horses, their tiny little air planes, their little tin Lizzie cars, uh were actually Masons. And actually quite senior Masons of that. Talking about Masons and Shriners is really for a whole other kind of podcast. But for weeks at the lunchroom table, we discussed what the name of naming of the meeting place, a temple must mean, and all the different things that could be in there, and talked about conspiracies and put together all the stuff that that uh you know we could kind of muster up at the time. Uh, and we can concocted this elaborate plan to like stake out the location on one of their meeting nights and attempt to see what was inside, kind of pierced the veil of everything that was going on. And then as part of kind of an early reconnaissance, one of the guys went poking around uh one random afternoon, and a caretaker saw him, and after a little brief friendly exchange, the caretaker, who happened to be a shriner and a mason himself, offered to show him around and explain the whole building. When he came back, we never even asked what he saw, because that wasn't the point. We didn't really care what happened. It was just in the not knowing and how we were going to find out. So sometimes the internet is kind of like your friendly neighborhood Masonic caretaker, ruining everyone's fun through knowledge you didn't actually want, but you just wanted to think about getting. But that's uh I digress and potentially reveal why we should all just go outside instead of listening to podcasts, but I don't want to dig too far into that either. Let's just scratch the surface and move right on. Uh but this series is more about opinion than facts, so I choose not to see my own hypocrisy. Anyway, so there was no one blackout event that this uh crossover episode was trying to recreate. Um, however, it should be noted that due to overpopulation and aging and complicated infrastructure, and just kind of random luck, the island of Manhattan has actually been subject to a lot of serious power outages over the years. And it's actually only relatively recently that better equipment monitoring infrastructure seems to have largely actually alleviated the problem. So it wasn't an exact replica of an exact event, uh, but it was kind of based in a bit of fact, uh, and something which, I guess, was relatively common, uh, the same way like a super snowstorm in Canada is common. They don't actually happen every day, but it's definitely not something that anyone worries about when it does happen. So the crossover itself, though, um, was interesting in how contrived it was. I do still remember it being advertised as a big deal, and it did involve three out of four of the must-see TV properties uh at the time, uh, which is actually in and of itself interesting, because in addition to Friends, it was Mad About You. And then a forgotten show called Mad Men of the People. Those were the three that were involved. So, a couple of things out of that. First, when you reflect on it, it's actually amazing how heavy the like New York-ness of network TV was. Literally, the entire two-hour run of the most popular night on television was based in New York. The only real difference at the time on NBC was on on Thursday night, there was also ER, which was set Chicago, but that wasn't aspirational. He didn't want to be at uh at the ER uh from that show. Um, so it wasn't quite the same thing. Um you know, if there was if one was a sociologist and had the means to do a larger survey uh about the subject, there's probably something to be said here about how about this, how this was a self-perpetuating system where the art tells the artist where to be, and so they keep flocking to New York. But then also on the flip side of that, something that's very telling that the dis about the distance between art and reality and business, and that all of these shows telling you how great New York were was, um, were actually all being filmed in LA on sound stages. So yeah. Um the second thing about it, it's it's actually a weird chance to think of this show Mad Men of the People, which I totally I didn't realize it existed. It wasn't a thing that had ever popped up. It actually was a show that started the same year as Friends. Uh it was about a newspaperman, not not important to get into. I just Googled it and wickied it and looked up a couple things, I'm sure you can too, if you really, really want to know about the half season that was Madman of the People. Uh it actually weirdly had good numbers and positive reviews, but it was when it was compared to Friends and Seinfeld and Matt, how about you and ER, it was just considered to be a weak link and a disappointment and a ratings liability, so it got cut. Eventually, you know, Frasier uh got slipped into that final spot. Um, so it worked out well for NBC. But yeah, it it was a show that would probably have been a success on any other network and any other time, but they burned it out in four months uh just because it didn't have that same level of success, didn't have that same cachet. Um cash, cash, cache? It's like niche. Which way around is that? I I say that, but my I I know people, my wife would absolutely correct me and know exactly how that was pronounced, be very disappoint be disappointed in the fact that I've spent a whole minute talking about it. Um but yeah, um just didn't have the same same word of mouth, same power, same emphasis, and and so it didn't get to stay. Um then on the flip side we've got the third issue, which is Seinfeld. Um ratings juggernaut by this point. It had preceded all those other shows. And it was the only New York-based show in this group not to have joined in the blackout shenanigans, uh, as it were. And uh by all accounts in people retelling the stories later, it's basically just because they didn't want to and they had the weight to throw around to do it. Um, you can kind of almost hear Larry David sitting in a meeting with uh a network exec being told what everyone else was gonna do and and just be like, nah, yeah, yeah, I don't think so. Yeah. Um that was a terrible Larry David impression. Um but I enjoy it. Once again, that's why I'm here. Um so why is this important in the context of this weird little project? Well, I do think it is important to remember um that Friends was a long way from making secure artistic choices. It wasn't really that much bigger than Badman of the People yet. Uh, it was nowhere near Seinfeld, nowhere near ER, nowhere near what it was going to be. So when we talk about some of the characters that had to be mainstreamed or plots that were less bold than they than we would hope they would be if they were done today in kind of prestige television, it's important to remember that if they ever wanted to do anything different, uh first they were really going to have to prove that as a production team, as writers, as directors, and as actors, they could kind of do what was asked, and that was get ratings in their in their prime Thursday night time slot. Um yeah, whether whether or not they did anything positive with the power which they would eventually have, well, that remains to be seen. And uh, you know, that's kind of the point of what we're doing. Uh, but it's hard to blame them in this first season um for needing to to feel like they needed to carve out a piece of the pie before before they could go ahead and eat it too. Um but anyway, so kind of out of the meta, out of some of those uh production value issues, the the point is to get in with our six little friends. And let's start with Chandler because his story is actually kind of self-contained. Um course he gets trapped in the ATM vestibule. So for the if you're not familiar with these, if you've never actually had to use one, uh hopefully never have been trapped in one, um, they did used to be a bigger thing in the 90s. And I would assume in somewhere like New York, they were probably pretty common. Um ATMs had been around since the 60s or 70s. They had actually been around for a weirdly long time when I looked into this. And you know, I my first bank account in the 80s, you still had to get a little book and they stamped it at the desk. And I guess you could, they were talking about the fact you could stick the book in the machine, and but no one really did it. You still went to the bank to take out cash if you needed it. Um and actually, weirdly, Canada has always been kind of ahead. We have a smaller population, but a lot of the same technology. So um in the the very early 2000s, um, I lived in the States for a couple years, and it was very strange. They gave us what they called a checking card, what everyone now calls a debt debit card. Um, and it you couldn't use it in most places. Uh you could use it as a credit card, um, or you could use it to pull out cash, but there was no such thing as debit, which was a little strange since at that point it had been very commonplace in Canada for nearly 10 years. Um, but anyway, once again, so at the time in the early 90s, ATMs were mace, they were just an extension of the bank. They were a 24-hour extension of the bank. So they were just stuck onto the front, which meant, you know, people didn't, or bank manager, management, bank ownership didn't want to have a liability of an open entrance, sitting there 24 hours a day. So they had these secure vestibules, and what you actually had to do was swipe your debit card to get into them uh to prove that you were a bank customer. Um this seems unnecessary to us now, but you know, once again, New York was a slightly different place, though nowhere near as dangerous as as uh kind of rumor would have you believe. Um but uh you know the reality of this is, you know, I it wouldn't have been done out of the goodness of anyone's heart. Banks just didn't want to be liable. And it was a heck of a lot easier to have a system where you swiped your bank card and then they could claim that if anyone got in and hassled you or made you feel unsafe, uh, that was entirely on you for not having followed the safety procedures properly. So while all that is actually perfectly realistic, um what isn't is that if the power went out, the doors would seal themselves shut. No fire department on earth uh would actually allow that to be the case. Um at the very least, there'd be crash bars on the inside. Uh so of course, you know, once again, stretching reality a little bit, maybe they were just broken, whatever. Um, but uh it it is much more likely that the loss of power in that one building would be due to a fire that you wouldn't want to trap people in the lobby of the building for um than that there'd be a wacky island-wide fire, which would make this just a mild inconvenience for a couple people for a couple hours. So you know, why is that important? Why do I bother talking to you about it? Well, you know, these kind of anachronisms are fascinating, at least to me, because in television today, um, the internet and kind of fanboy culture has largely managed to bleach them out of out of existence. Um now I can't say in modern television, because that would imply that friends and my youth are now classic. Um, and I it's been a long week and I just can't deal with that right now, even if it is true. I also acknowledge that I don't consume sitcoms like I did in the 90s, and so it's actually entirely possible that whatever the Tim Allen vehicle of the day is, and I'm just refusing to name it, shame on you for enabling his nonsense cat denning, it is still unconcerned with any degree of real world accuracy. Um but these days, unless something is explicitly fantasy, um, our society doesn't really allow for this kind of degree of truth stretching. Everything has to be grounded in reality, everything has to be picked apart, or else, you know, you instead of just re-analyzing it 30 years later, yeah, we uh re-analyze it in the moment, and the show doesn't go anywhere. It ends up being madmanned. Um But in the end, really who did it hurt. Um didn't didn't bother anybody, didn't mess up anyone's life to throw Chandra Chandler in a grill glass-sided vault for no reason. The point is the story, and the point is to laugh. Um, but too often now we just kind of find quote unquote flaws, even though they were they're only a flaw if you if you did it by accident. Um we just can't let ourselves have nice things for the sake of having right things, perfectly right things. Um But back in 1993, the world was friendlier and more capable of being joyful, and so Chandler is trapped in a bank alone with a beautiful woman. In this case, it's also not just any woman. She happens to be a Victoria's Secret model, Jill Goodacre to be specific. Um this this is not an actor, or at least that's she's not pretending to be a woman named Jill Jill Goodacre. This is really her of the name. She was, in fact, a Victoria's Secret model, and at the time she was a celebrity in her own right. Um now this likely meant something to young men in their twenties at this point, meant nothing to me when I was 12, um, or in fact after that, because she stepped out of the spotlight soon after this to have children with her still husband, uh Harry Connick Jr. I didn't realize she was the same person, or she was a real person until uh just researching and doing some background for this episode. Um was not that familiar in at 12 years old with Victoria's Secret models. Um they, you know, that whole thing didn't really hit uh kind of common um common knowledge for a few years. Um there was a brilliant moment in the mid-90s when Victoria's Secret just started mailing out free catalogs to everyone. Like you you didn't have no one had to order them, your parents weren't looking for them and stealing them away. Um they just showed up at your house. It was a good day to be 14. Um But anyway, this would have been a huge guest spot, if you think about it at the time, right? Victoria's Secret model that was a thing, even if it hadn't quite reached the kind of zeitgeist uh level that it it it would a few years later. Um it also really does, more importantly for the story, it supports that whole New York City mythos of ri anyone can meet anyone anytime on the streets of New York. Um, going back to George Stephanopoulos from a couple episodes before. Um now I've only been to New York once. I did not see anyone famous. Uh, in fact, I've seen far more celebrities in my hometown, as we do have a lot of movies filmed in the area. Um, but I assume it is an effective time, and had I stayed 12 more hours in New York, I too could have done some banking with a person famous for how they wear their underwear. Chandler, of course, uh he mostly squanders this opportunity. You know, it's a low-stakes damsel in distress scenario where the the dragon for him to slay is basically just boredom. Uh, and even that seems largely beyond his capacity for for most of the time together. Um, you know, it's really it's uh both the fantasy and the fear of of many men that if you just had the undivided attention of someone this famous and this attractive, you could put your best self on display, convince them that you that you are in fact awesome. Um but also the reality and the fear part is that most people are gonna come off uh, well, chandlery and most likely just be awkward and annoying at best, uh, boring at most. This will probably, even if you're not trying to, you know, meet up with that person romantically, it's not gonna be your gateway into the world of the rich and famous. Uh he does recover enough to the point where the encounter ends positively and even healthily. They are their friends, there's nothing else going on, um, but it is, of course, comedically touch and go for a while. Leaving Mr. Bing and the rest of the friends who are sheltering in place up at Monica's apartment, um, this is one of the few moments really where living in a walk-up would be beneficial. Not great, but no worse during a blackout than any other day. Um they crack open some wine, they light some candles, they start talking about the strangest places they've ever had sex, because of course, why wouldn't you? Um I have to say, Ross and Carol are shocking, uh, shockingly bold, anyway. Uh, maybe because Carol was looking for something missing from her sexuality, but having sex on a broken down, small world after all ride is impressive. Been to Disneyland, not a big ride, and none of those rides are that big, even the modern ones. So I I do feel like this would potentially have been on the news. Uh, maybe even got you some kind of registry appointment. Um, especially since they do get caught. It's not like they did this and got away with it. Um, you know, there's no real distance between the cars and those rides. Little kids definitely saw Ross and Carol have sex at Disneyland when they were just there for corndogs and goofy. Um I wonder which one was corndogs and which one was goofy. Different question for a different time. Um we so we could potentially add in decent exposure to the assault that's already on the list of things that Ross is comfortable exposing children to. See a couple episodes back, and that's still in a hockey buck. Um what this game all or what this game that they're playing also does is display that Rachel's Rachel's relative innocence, which inspires Ross, that this is when he needs to step in and ask her out. Um the fact her innocence energizes him is um, well, problematic. Let's all admit that. Um, especially when considering the small world incident. Um, but she is also literally asking for some passion and excitement in her life. So in many ways, he is just answering the call. Is Ross a hero? Well, he led Carol to discover her true self. Um, and he was apparently willing to shake a similar bullet for Rachel. So Ross Keller, feminist hero for our times. Maybe not. Anyway, he starts by giving her some pretty good advice, uh, right up until it becomes self-serving game. Um and then he gets attacked by a cat. Because why wouldn't he? Because that is how a sitcom rolls. So close and yet so stupidly far away. Um on first blush, you you do sort of wonder how a cat could have actually got up that quite quite that high on a balcony. But I will say a few years ago, very good friends uh had a rooftop patio, and while they were very responsible cat parents who never let their cats wander away, they did get to know several of their neighbors on less than stellar terms when their cats wandered over the walls into my friend's patio, and they were then compelled to return them. So it's not so weird that there was a cat, or that the people who stumbled across it were actually more concerned with it than its owner. I do find cat people can, there's two different varieties, but one of those varieties, well, there's probably many different varieties, I will try not to put unfair stereotypes on cat lovers. Um, but there's at least two, and one of those two believes their cats are basically invincible, some kind of superhero, and it would in fact be wrong of them to stand in the way of their explorations. Well, the owner, of course, of this cat turns out to be the very sexy Italian Paolo, designed, is destined to be Rachel's real sexual discovery partner, not Ross. Uh, and we'll get more into him in some future episodes. But the one thing for this episode is that him letting his cat run around is very on brand for Roman stream. Stray cats are actually a fairly ubiquitous part of uh touring old Rome today. And there's actually like whole ancient temple areas that haven't been touched in centuries that are still just dedicated to the stray cats of Rome. Um, so the fact he would just let his cat wander around is not surprising. What is upsetting from an SPCA perspective is that he eventually is shown to spend long stretches back in Rome, then the welfare of his caref of his poor little fuzzy friend is never mentioned. Uh, whether he's flying back and forth to Rome, or whether he is staying alone in a New York apartment, or being allowed to wander the rooftops of New York apartment buildings, um, he's not in an ideal situation. And I'm pretty sure that's the worst thing that Powell's gonna do. Right? Guys? Anyway. So this little blackout uh could Seem like kind of a throwaway, a bit of a gimmick, but it becomes weirdly pivotal in introducing a bunch of characters and concepts that will be played out over the next few seasons, let alone the entire series. This is the first time we see Phoebe playing uh guitar uh publicly. Uh and from the intro, it might actually be her first time in universe that she's playing at the coffee shop. Uh something, of course, that you know kind of becomes a backbone for years to come. Um this is actually, it's also the first time we hear of ugly naked guy. We won't we didn't get too much into that. He'll pop up more, but it's the first time he pumps up as they see that ugly naked guy is out um with candles and he has a bit of a singing incident. Um, so uh a little worrying there. Um I also remember uh uh, you know, one of those funny things about when you're young and and old TV where you didn't see reruns out away. I did always wonder how this person, as we've said, George Stephanopoulos, who I didn't realize who he was, had let himself go so quickly that just a few weeks before everyone was drooling over him. And now he was literally referred to as ugly naked guy. I kind of think I I might have even thought that they got in trouble for naming him by name, but whatever. Um, but yeah, ugly naked guy pops up. We see Mr. Heckles pops up while they're looking for the cat. Um, so you know he'll be he'll be resolved uh episodes down the road. Um, but this is the first time we see him. And it does, of course, introduce Paolo, uh, who's gonna pop in and out for a little while. Um, but it's really kind of a big and pivotal moment in in Rachel's growth, in her breaking out of her suburban shell, um, and in playing uh back into the story uh further down the road. It's also interestingly the first time that they coin a phrase on the show. Wouldn't be the last, and we'll talk about them when they come up. Um, but thanks to the seller research of others, uh, which I should be should really start putting into the show notes some of the great books uh and uh and other uh materials out there about the history of friends. Um but this was the first time uh that the term that they coined made it into the common vernacular. In this case, it's actually the friend zone. Joey warning Ross about if he waits too long, he's gonna slip into the friend zone with Rachel. It really does show how much impact the show had. Uh, and that I bet if you hadn't heard that, um probably never questioned it. Um it was also a such a well-crafted term, well-crafted lingo, in that no one has ever had to question what being in the friend zone meant. Um, even though it, you know, it kind of sounds friendly. Everybody who hears it knows you don't want it. You don't want to be in the friend zone. Not a good thing. Um, that is universally understood. Um yeah. Um, so that was the first time as well. Um also there was a throwaway line about a background local newsman who just totally blipped out of existence in the dark. But anyway, uh that that was just sort of out there. So when we get into it, how did this episode actually score in our grand project here? Well, is it funny? Yes, uh, it has its moments in. It's got some really great ones. Uh Chandler choking on his gum, uh, watching Ross flip out while being attacked by a cat through a window. Um a little cliched though, so you know I'm just gonna give it a two. I don't think there's anything like, you know, rocking anybody's world here, redefining comedy, but it was pretty funny in a lot of the things that you remember. Um this is just a topic in a no-way, no. No, it's there was nothing really new, I don't think. Um, just straightforward sitcom stuff. Memorable, yes. Um, brought in because of the new characters, uh, because of the setting. Um Ross does take a s a big swing, uh, so all those things are memorable, and so I gave it a three. And the negative side, you know, I wouldn't say this is a particular form, particularly formulaic or cringy, so I wouldn't talk any points for those. Um there is some standard sitcom fair stuff, but but high quality sitcom. Um I did pull a um pulled a point for formulaic, um, but just for just for just a minus one. Um now, is there you know, on the balance is could you make this today? Well, yeah, no reason why not, so I'll give it a one. You know, no reason why you should though, so I'd leave that at a zero. Um, all in all, uh the they score, the episode scores five points. Um, and uh, I do actually think that's fairly impressive um for an episode that really could have been a throwaway gimmick. Um, but I think it's important to note that you know, the producers and the writers, everyone was still very invested in making this show work. And so even when kind of shoehorned into a bit of a gimmick, uh shoehorned into doing something that I'm gonna guess most producers, most writers, you know, were not thrilled about from the network. They were still able to make a really funny episode, uh, and one that actually, you know, they didn't have to lose any plot time. Uh, it still drove the important uh pieces ahead. In the end, that might be why shows like Friends succeed. Um, because you've got staff, crew, directors, producers who are committed to making it work no matter what. Um, not just when things work out perfectly for them. That's probably judging a lot of, let's face it, mad men of the people or madman of the people. Um, but it does seem like a lot of effort was put into really not just making this episode work, but knowing that it was being promoted to make the most of it and make sure that the audience went away happy. Okay, folks, thank you so much once again for joining us on what I am absolutely sure at this point, if you're still here, is your favorite podcast about the television show Friends? And is it as problematic as people think it is, or is it still quality television? I know there's a lot of competition in this market, and I am glad that you are here with me to answer those questions today. Once again, uh, as always, I'd like to close off by reminding you this is an entirely human-made, human-run podcast. Um, no AI, uh, nothing artificial. So just thank you so much for being here with us, uh, for making this fun, making this work. I am always so excited uh to do these. So excited for anyone out there to to hear them. Um and yeah, can't wait to talk to you again.