Sweet and Low

Chandler is in Crisis! Nana's dead! Ross is in a hole! Is this the worst ever week for our heros or a random 7 days in late fall that will be quickly forgotten?  You'll never guess which unless you listen.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Alright, everybody, welcome back. Hopefully you've got a comfy spot on the couch or your walk and your dog or wherever you are, you're in a good and happy place. If not, well, hopefully you will be in about 25 minutes. Welcome back to Gen Z vs. Friends the podcast, where we take a look back at the classic 90 sitcom to determine if it is actually as bad as uh some people believe today, or if it's just some good old-fashioned classic uh comedy. Um today we are looking today, our episode is called Sweet and Low. The episode that from Friends is called the One Where Nana dies twice, so that should give you a good idea of what we're talking about today. Uh it is episode eight in our series, and episode eight in the world of friends. Um so thank you so much for being here. Thank you for joining us once again, and let's enjoy season eight. Uh season one, episode eight together. Okay, another week and another change to the cold open. What had started to feel nice and predictable and easy about coming to the coffee house in those first few weeks was definitely just the scripted plays of season one, uh coming straight out of the same book, including the opener. This time, we're veering off completely. Uh, what we see is actually Chandler at work in his lunchroom. And I think it's really important that we take a minute to re just revel in, roll around in the unpleasantness of Chandler's corporate existence for a minute. In his, you know, this this windowless break room, fluorescent lighting, reheated ramen or itchy band noodles of some kind. And fun fact, and for those on either side of the border, confused about ramen or itchy band noodles, um in Canada, the more gourmet Japanese noodles that people talk about now, ramen, uh, and which I assume the Japanese have been talking about for much, much longer, um, was completely divided from our kind of rehydrated styrofoam plastic or maybe in a cup package brother of the 80s and 90s, which we actually called Ichiban. And I'm sure not just us, we got from somewhere. So I can't imagine itchy ban noodles were actually made in Canada. Um, but that was their trade name. And then in the States, where it moved when in around 2000, it was actually called Top Ramen, which I'm sure if there's any American listeners out there out there, that'll be what they're more familiar with. And I imagine then the shift to ramen noodles was a little more, was a little cleaner. You knew what people were talking about. You didn't try and call them itchy ban uh the first time that you had them. Um now calling them top ramen seems a little bit untrue and disingenuous. Um, but in any event, I I do actually think in one of those fun parts of um homogenization, uh, that Canada has both varieties thanks to the Costco's Walmarks, Walmarts, and continual free trade, uh, at least for the moment. Um but when I lived in the Midwestern states in the early, very early 2000s, this was a genuine moment of culture shock, um, which is sad, and what can I say? I was easily put out. But there's a reason that this environment in which Chandler is eating his lunch spawned the satire of movies like Office Space and Rebellious Works like the book Fight Club, and to a lesser extent, the movie of Fight Club. Um, it really is like a dystopian nightmare. Not not one so terrifying that everyone feels the need to stop it from happening, but one that definitely you don't want to be part of. Uh in fact, it reminds me a great deal of the movie Cloud Atlas, a great movie and a and uh a great book. Um but in the movie and the book where you're they're spanning different time periods, one of those far futures where people exist in an essentially, almost perpetually underground commercial bubble, almost never stepping outside or being free from the mass consumerism that's being pushed on them. They're served fast food by clones. And once again, I'm not going to go deeper into that. You really gotta go and watch the movie, read the book. Um, but those clones eventually realize the torment of their existence and rise up in revolution. And there's a reason why the colors and textures of that world and that fast food restaurant are identical to Chandler's Break Room. Anyway. Um it's here over his reheated noodles that a coworker tries to set Chandler up with traumatic pause.

unknown 4:35

A man.

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I know, deeply shocking. I mean, who attempts to find romance for a casual work acquaintance you know so little about? Isn't that what apps are for? Well, in the social horror landscape that was the early 90s, this was in fact how you met people. Uh, setups, meetups, single bars, etc. Um, I say it all in theory. I was, of course, much too young for any of that in the early 90s, but it was still around in the early 2000s. Uh, and since these tropes showed up in so many of my favorite sitcoms, I am assuming they must in fact have existed. Not everything could have been lying to us. Um, of course, that's not actually what was offensive. Um, Chandler, it turns out, is is a little bit too bothered by this, uh, though it doesn't upset anyone else in particular. Uh, in fact, almost everyone who cares about him, apparently, um, has at some point believed he was gay. Um, this was very fertile ground in the 90s. It gets plowed by Seinfeld, Fraser, Murphy Brown, um, all the big hitters in the world of uh situation comedies. Every attempt includes lots of, but hey, not that there's anything wrong with that. Seinfeld goes even more subversive by literally just saying, not that there's anything wrong with that, over and over again. Um, but while also at the same time having their main characters desperately fight to prove their heterosexualness. Um Chandler's issue does seem to be, at least ostensibly, that he may have missed out on a lot of great opportunities with women because they thought he was gay. Um mostly because no gay men actually think he was gay when he does a bit of a poll. Um, but this in theory seems to be the root of why so many angry American men's fear of increased gay normalization. If there are more gays in the community, and it's normal, and I am so hot, at least some of the people out there may think that I'm one of them, and then I won't get to bang as many hot chicks because they will think I only want to bang dudes. Therefore, my inherent American right to bang as many hot chicks as possible will be denied to me, not because I'm a disgusting blog of pay blob of pasty, uninteresting, ungroomed man blubber, but because they assume I am all about the dick. Logic totally, totally tracks. I will say this has only happened to me once, like 15 years ago, soon after I got a school. I was working in an environment with a young gay man, this uh about my age anyway. Uh this was in the middle of the meterosexual moment, which I was totally on board with. Um, and I was then and still really am of the opinion that most men could stand to put in some effort. And while I'm not talking runway model, um, I do think it showed that I put in a little bit of effort. Years later we saw him again, um, and he admitted to having believed I was gay, not that it was a admitted under cross-examination. No, he he just uh said he was, and that, you know, this kind of made him happy and uh and he was uh a little excited. Um you know what, and the reality was it made me happy too. Still kind of does. I was flattered, still am. Uh in fact, back when it was still cool and not appropriation to actually go to uh gay bars as a straight man. I went a few times, always had a blast. Um I was and probably still am an exceptional drunk dancer. Um age and you know, creakiness, I would guess, have robbed me of some of my best moves, but you know, who knows until I go and test it. Um sort of the Schrdinger's cat of dancing while drunk, um, and I never really cared who with, and so I don't really think anyone there actually thought I was gay. But if I'm honest, I kind of hope they did. Not because it's, you know, not because I was, but because it was a fun environment. And the people there were way cooler than me, and I wanted them to think I was cool, though. Cool too. Um it's amazing how much fun you can have when you're just confident and not a self-centered chit. Uh, which, speaking of which, uh brings us back to Chandler. So looking back, it's not the show's finest moment. Obviously, the way Chandler really needs to prove he isn't gay is obviously resting on homophobia, and the little verbal cues actually reinforce just how much wrong with it he thinks there actually is. Um, uh for the character, if we zoom out, this is probably indicative of the time and not really, you know, uh an unique failing of the character Chandler Bing. Um he is very much a product of the moment, afraid of his own sexuality, probably because of how late his father came out in life, probably tormented by the question of do I really know myself? You know, theoretically, my my father knew, thought he knew who he was. I think I know who I am, uh, so it causes a question. More importantly, you know, mainstream America still largely treated being gay at best like an amoral disease. Uh it didn't make you a bad person, but you'd still rather not. Uh Chandler was a very honest manifestation of the era. This is the thing about much of the problematic material in Friends, at least so far, and and that when I think of it, um, you know, kind of comes to the surface is that it is unfortunately true to the moment. Um the 90s were not that far away, not that long ago, and yet in a lot of cultural ways, very, very different and very distant from our current moment. Chandler wasn't a throwback at the time. He was the norm. Um, it's just a reminder that, you know, in 1993, uh, for LGBTQ individuals, the norm still sucked. What I find actually funniest in this whole thing is that when they're talking about if anyone has ever assumed the other male leads are gay. And now Joey we get, not because he individually seems to be so anti-gay, but because his sex life is really front and center. And to be honest, the feeling that you kind of get is that, A, if Joey was gay, he'd be, to be quite frank, a leather bar regular. Uh, if we just flash back to the vest that he wore in episode one, and that he'd probably make no apologies for it. Um, but that there's not really much question that, you know, he's he's in it for in it for the ladies, as it were. Um now Ross, on the other hand, everyone kind of scoffs, including Ross, they all just laugh it off. Like, how could we ever imagine it? Like Ross is this like super butch alpha cis male. Um, in my mind, he's actually the most obvious case for a closeted gay man in this fictional version of New York. And yet everyone just laughs at it like he's John Wayne from the 50s. What I also find interesting is that despite its placement up front in the episode, and its really overall cultural impact, this is not actually the main thrust of this episode. Uh, Chandler's debatable sexuality is really just a sideshow to the main discussion. Death. Yeah. Fun stuff. Um the name of the episode, of course, the one where Nana dies twice. So the focus is on the posse, is on the passing of Ross and Monica's maternal grandmother. And the Geller siblings, I was going to call them Geller twins, but the Geller siblings get the call, uh, rush to Nana's hospital room. Uh, Monica's mom is instantly critical to the point of abusive about Monica once again. And then Nana passes away and the titular rebirth occurs while the siblings are in the room, with the nurse apologizing, this hardly ever happens. What apparently does happen uh with disturbing frequency, according to a funeral home director, who I knew from the state of Utah, is that bodies do actually sit up all the time. Um, something about how when rigor kicks in, it's not even, and so if rigor in the abdominals is not at the same time in the back as in the back muscles, it will actually make a body sit up on the table. Uh, the funeral director's family had been running the funeral home in a very small town for multiple generations, uh, and it sat on the same piece of land as his family home. And he said that the first time he actually saw this happen was when he was embalming his own father. He walked out of the room to get something, he walked back in, and his dad was sitting up looking at the door. In his retelling, he jumped a little and just laughed and said, Ah, Dad, what you doing? Um, which I guess if you grew up around a funeral home and you'd trained and you'd been around bodies, that's your response. I never I personally, when I look back, even now, I would have run screaming from the building and burned down the funeral parlor, my house, the block it rested on, and then salted the earth for generations just to make sure nothing happened. That is too weird. One of that's those fun little quirks of human existence. Um, but then again, you know, we all deal with grief a little bit differently. The fact that grandma or nana actually dies twice um is just kind of a throwaway joke, despite the fact it's the name of the episode. Uh the more and more as I go back and look at these, I'm realizing that's quite often the case. Probably they didn't want to give away too much about the episode itself. Um, but quite often the episodes are named for a single hook and not actually really about the overall theme. Uh the this leads to the, of course, the the very memorable scene that lots of people would recognize from the episode where Ross actually has to climb into a blockaded closet to pick out the glothes his the clothes his grandmother's going to be buried in. Um this seemed so absurd at the time, but now having lived in a number of small apartments with a lot of stuff in them, it's actually amazing the lengths that you will go to in order to find a home for all your little knick-knacks and stuff. Um in actual point of fact, it's kind of amazing the privilege it takes not to end up as a hoarder. Um, you have to have both the space to store what you need and the confidence that if you need a thing again in the future, you'll have the available resources to just buy it again. Um I recognize that hoarding is in fact a mental illness, that it's very disruptive to people's lives. Um, but is it an illness that makes us hoard or that lets the fear of the future and the potential unfilled needs cripple us in the present? I feel like that's probably a very simple question for the right person. Um if I knew who that right person was, I'd ask them. I don't have them here to have a wonderful discussion about the hoarding of sweet and low packets. Um but that's not what we're doing today. What of course we we find is that this whole um this whole time, these sweet and low packets that Nan had been stealing from uh, well, pretty much from the whole world, really, against uh hoarding up against a future sweetener sweetener shortage, um, have been sorted in her bedroom cupboard this entire time. Uh upon discovery, they ran down on Ross, like the million different and often perplexing memories that we have of our loved ones. Uh it's sweet and it's lovely, and it very much reflects the perspective on on death that you have in those years of your life in the in your early and mid-twenties, where you have a larger collection of memories about people and places and experiences, um, and you also have the rational knowledge of kind of the end of suffering uh and the circle of life and uh whatever you want to call it, but without perhaps, you know, the confusion that you would have had that was so upsetting as a child, or the fear of mortality that can make things so much more difficult in later years where you realize that you're perhaps not so far from your end yourself. Um, we'll skip over some stuff. The we take a journey to the funeral. It's an outside shot, probably costs some money. It was probably a sign of how much support the network had for the show that they would let them rent a park or a maybe if maybe a cemetery. Eh, maybe. It's probably cheaper. It's one of those weird things about filming is it's probably cheaper to actually just rent a cemetery than to buy a bunch of heads headstones and set them up yourself. Um it's like one of those a uh friend of who works in the movie industry told me once about how, you know, when how much cheaper it is to just like rent a house uh than build a house, which makes total sense. Uh one of the few houses ever really being built. If you if you watch the the really cool documentaries about the the making of home alone, where they basically built the interior of the house in an abandoned school gym to do all the interior filming and that it was all mapped on the on a real house, which of course, if you look it up online, has you know it's it's been the a near pilgrimage for people for many years, but it was only outside outside shots filmed there, and then of course they built uh a house somewhere else. But in actual point of fact, most of the time it's cheaper to just rent it, especially now. Um and the the the most common thing used for bars and uh restaurants and TV and movies is very often the lobbies of large office buildings, at which once you know it, you can kind of see it everywhere that they put one. Um also keeping in mind the fact they're very large, they're space, spacious high ceilings that you can fake being lower, but that let you put in lights and microphones and cameras and all that sort of thing, um, while still looking fancy and chic. So um yeah, the next time you walk through a really fancy lobby, just imagine how great it would be to have lunch there um with a bunch of cameras staring at you. But in any event, we we get to this funeral. Um, some you know, standard sitcom stuff. Uh Joey sneaks in at TV, watches a little football, gets all the men folk together, because of course that's all the men folk really want to do is watch a Jets game, apparently. Um I love football, but you know, even you can take the day off. You'll survive. It's the Jets. It's not like it's even a real team. Um, but uh let's see, they're they're also a cemetery. Ross falls in a hole. It, you know, good for Ross. It's probably where he belongs. Uh Rachel's unprepared for the weather and the circumstances, gets mud on a very expensive pair of shoes from Paolo, uh, which makes Ross both happy and sad at the same time. Uh Ross hurts his back because he fell in a hole, gets high in his mother's painkillers. All good stuff, all funny jokes, also fairly standard sitcom stuff. Uh, so we won't get too much into that. Um what I found most interesting or or what you know ranked true with me, and you know, there's a moment where the Ross and Rachel and Paolo thing and Ross gets high and almost is honest about his feelings, but instead just has a bit of a freak out and collapses um on Rachel's lap um as a result of the drugs. Um, you know, once again, all good stuff, all plot-driven. But the interesting part really um is what happens at the end or towards the end of the reception, the dinner after the funeral, uh, where Monica and her mother are having a moment talking uh and really getting into that question of intergenerational criticism, which has plagued the relationship even in the the few episodes that we've seen. You know, in and in a moment of of actually well delivered, you know, Courtney Cox is is great. We we know that. Like she she was great as Monica. This is one of her best episodes, especially in the early season. Um, and we know she not everything was a hit. I don't know. I didn't watch Cougar Town. Um, we can there's probably a whole other podcast of what friends did after friends, or and if there isn't that feels like a niche that I am set to fill, um, you know, 230 episodes from now. Um, but in a great moment of of non-coded or of of coded verbal conversation, Monica realizes the classic like your grandmother was so much worse logic that her mother is working under. And also Mrs. Geller sees that she has become the parts of her mother that hurt her most when she was young. Um, and without saying it, they both silently uh vow to each other that they will do better. And and in many ways they do. Uh, I mean, we haven't got there yet, and this you know, I may very well be proven wrong. Um, there's lots of friction and lots of uh relationship stuff to come up with still with Monica and her parents uh over the the nine and a half years that are set uh that we will see. Um, but you know, really watching the first few interactions, uh Mrs. Geller was genuinely toxic. Like I said, I say it with some jest, but uh um, you know, critical and critical to critical, aggressively critical to that point of abuse. Um and you can imagine, you know, now this is with Monica having some independence and not being there all the time. But if she grew up this way, um once again we'll we'll revisit potentially what some of the outcomes of that were. Um but it was uh almost disturbing uh in it in its uh level of in just just how aggressive and toxic it was. Um and it does feel like it got better. It feels like they, you know, they fixed that problem fairly early. Uh, somewhere towards the end of the season, we'll talk about some of the themes. And that relationship, you know, between parents and children was very strong in the first first uh season here. Um it definitely, as they have as it does, as the characters grow up, they they grow and they get more distance from their families. And um, but uh but yeah, that's it's definitely a major theme, at least in the first season of the show. Um but uh but they do seem to get better. They you know, this funeral is a it's a a turning point for them and sets them on a less damaging, if still very much imperfect path. So, with all that to the score, how'd they actually do well? This was uh very much a tale of two episodes, and I'm getting the feeling this is gonna happen more and more often. Um, that there's gonna be, you know, every sitcom uh of this era had the the multiple storylines running at the same time. Um and uh yeah, uh what we've seen so far is that there's often one one that's just fine, one that's perfectly acceptable, sitcom fair, and then one that didn't go so well. Uh it's not like it's a Tim Allen vehicle, they're not all terrible. Um, and yes, that's the second time I've made fun of Tim Allen. In in this series, and I will continue to do so because I don't think the man's funny and I do think he's offensive. So buckle up if you're a Tim Allen fan. And um I feel no reason to go soft on him. But so we've got really uh two episodes to judge here, but all wrapped up in one, so you can't spare on the scores. Um, based purely on the stuff with the Gellers. When I look at the first set of categories about the episode being funny and memorable and addressing a topic differently, I'm you know, I I s I think it was a very funny episode, uh, as I said, some good classic sitcom moments, but also some um, yeah, some some genuinely good conversation uh and some funny stuff. Uh it was definitely memorable. Um, you know, definitely the the Ross being in the closet and the sweetenlows falling on him is a visual that uh, you know, that I think resonates um with anyone who was a fan of the show. Um and I I actually gave it a two, not full points, because you know, I don't know how how well it did, but it definitely moved into the positive for addressing the topic of the parent-child relationship, specifically the mother-daughter relationship. Um, and then finding some catharsis there and finding some resolution, you know, it would have been easy to milk that for 10 episodes. A very everybody loves Raymond moment where you know the the relationship just continues to be toxic than it, but it's maintained and you don't really know why. And it becomes a crux of a lot of jokes. Um, but in a lot of ways they work to resolve that and show some growth. Like I said, I I don't remember enough about the relationship to say whether or not it actually totally happens. Um in fact I know it doesn't, but it I will say it became less shocking how bad the relationship between Monica and her mother were from this point on. So there is some some resolution there. However, the reality of it is the channel being mistaken for gay and and how much offense and and how the characters dealt with that. Um, and I'm actually gonna pull seven points back um for the combination of it being uh very much cringeworthy as he attempts to defend uh defend himself. Um, you know, it's an offensive storyline of formula, and it was nothing really new. Um, probably didn't even really need to go there. Um the only reason I didn't give it the max negative of a nine, give it and spared some spared it some points, um, is that it's not that unique for the time, uh, giving a little credit for being a product of the era. Um I don't think it's aged well and it's on an excuse for having made it, but I can even see how they would have thought that this was actually progressive at the time. Um unlike the racism at the Laundromat a couple episodes ago, um, yeah, I I think this was actually an attempt to be progressive. It just looks ugly in today's world. Um as I said, I I I think the racism was racism. Um they knew they would have should have known it then. They just thought it was okay to make fun of. Um, I think there was actually would have been a lot of thought around a table of writers that this was a progressive way to handle these sorts of questions, um, which we know better now. Uh, and so we can't excuse, but at the same time, I've once again would have a hard time condemning any anything for that. Um the the could you question? Should you, bit of a wash. Uh, you could make it today. Um, you still see the same basic jokes being made in on lesser television. It's kind of the arc of these things, right? The the the joke, the progress, the plot points, which were genuinely trying to be progressive in 1993, are now just, you know, hack, conservative nonsense. Um, once again, probably the child on a Tim Allen show, um, questioning being questioned about whether or not he was gay. Um, except now Tim Allen because he his character would be perfectly happy being angry about it. Um you know, at least on home improvement he probably would have had to fake he was mad. Or fake he was accepting. Uh and now he can just be mad like he wants to be about the possibility that he could have a gay child. I'm just guessing. I've never watched anything he's done except home improvement and the Santa Claus. Anyway, uh I'd watch those because yeah, you could make it, but you shouldn't. Uh so a plus one and a minus one. Um, you know, the yeah, like I said, the reality of it is you could, um, but the question becomes uh, should you? And I think the answer is unfortunately no. And so where that leaves us basically in the score, um, is that the episode would get a one. Uh, not as good as the last couple, and not totally terrible. And once again, that's largely because you can tell. And if you were there in the 90s, you knew that this was an attempt to be progressive. Um, the fact that that has not aged well in the 30 years since um is somewhat the fault of the show, which is why I'm only giving it a single point, but it's also the fact the 90s was just not the 2020s. Um, and we can't change that fact, no matter how hard we try. Thank you so much for joining us for episode eight of season one, Gen Z vs. Friends. This is Todd Sullivan. Thank you again for spending a half hour with me talking about uh my favorite show from the 90s, and hopefully yours too. Likely yours too. If you hated it, you're probably not, you know, listening to this all again, let's face it. Um just a reminder, this is an entirely human-made production, and I am so glad you are here uh supporting your fellow soft, squishy humans in a world of unending AI nonsense. Um, yeah, hopefully you'll be here for for episode nine uh and look forward to talking with you then.