Going Through the Motions

Originally Posted 3-26-09

I feel that the tone of this project has shifted. It was originally to point out things like:



Ross is allowed to bring outside food into Central Perk.



Or Chandler & Monica have the same Bose sound system that Elaine Benes has and that they listen to Q104.3, New York's Classic Rock station. It was probably my number 1 preset whenever I drove to New York at this point. By this time, 102.7 WNEW had gone from "where rock lives" to a station that played Nickelback several times a day to a "Hot Talk" station. That pretty much means that Opie and Anthony would be on every afternoon with guests that would get naked in the studio. I'm all for nudity, but naked women on radio doesn't really have the draw as, say, naked women I could see. They would post the photos of the naked chicks, but if I'm going to the trouble of getting onto a Web site to see pictures of naked women, I might as well just go look up porn.

But I digress. My point is that I had originally wanted to keep from concentrating on the storylines of the show, and just point out the other stuff. It just seems that there was a profound shift in the show at the beginning with the season. I don't know if these sitcommy episodes were just better cloaked, or if I'm just getting sick of the show.



Joey asks Monica to the keys to her Porsche. Her husband doesn't have a job, but she's keeping her Porsche that she barely mentions in a city where having a car is completely unnecessary. Joey wants to leave the state to get Powerball tickets.



The jackpot is huge, and they decide to pool their money and share their winnings. This is an interesting episode, because I think it's the first episode where all six characters are involved in one storyline. That's actually probably not right, but it doesn't happen very often.



They throw all of the tickets in a bowl. I hope nothing happens to that bowl. Of course, they're so into what they're going to do with their share of the winnings that they start fighting until Phoebe can't take it anymore.



She doesn't like how the tickets are tearing her friends apart, and if they can't stop their arguing, she will dump the tickets over the ledge. I sure hope they don't resolve their issues only to have Phoebe keep the bowl over the ledge for some reason long enough for something to come by to cause her to drop the bowl.



She gets dive-bombed by a pigeon, because pigeons do that, and she drops the bowl. No one on the crowded street below is hurt by the glass bowl that falls down I don't know how many stories onto the crowded sidewalk. That's lucky. Not only did the bowl not fall on anyone, but the shattered glass didn't slice anyone standing near where the bowl had impact.



Elsewhere, Phoebe sets Rachel up on a blind date with someone she knows that will show her a terrible time. It turns out to be someone played by Jon Lovitz. My first reaction is to point out that Lovitz was already on. He played a pretty memorable role, too. He was the restaurant owner that got stoned while Monica was cooking for him to try to get a job at his place. It turns out, he is playing the same character. At least it seems that way. It's never clearly established. His name is Steve, like the stoned guy, and Rachel mentions that he had owned a restaurant, so maybe it is the same guy. It's not like Giovanni Ribisi playing the guy who puts a condom in Phoebe's guitar case, and then six months later, he also happens to be Phoebe's half-brother.

Now, what I don't understand is that Phoebe set this date up, not Monica. How does Phoebe know this guy? As far as we know, she doesn't. And as far as we know, Rachel does know Steve, because she served as Monica's waitress the night that Monica cooked for Steve. You would think she would remember that night and not go on with the date.



Meanwhile, Ross is told to go on a blind date, but the there is no date, so he thinks he's being stood up. The waiter looks familiar. It turns out, he played a waiter in a previous episode. I guess I have less of a problem with that. Maybe in a big place like Manhattan, these people all go to the same restaurant.

The guy who played this waiter was also in Arrested Development. He plays the repeat client of Wayne Jarvis who is always suing because a superior at his workplace made a homophobic comment.

"It's going to be a long time before Sgt. Wendall Baker calls someone 'Private Homo' again."

Speaking of homophobic...



Once again, I find the homophobic jokes a little upsetting considering how recent this was. Was this NBC's way of making up for the fact that it was airing Will & Grace on the same night?

Here's what's going on. Ross was updating his profile for his and Chandler's alumni page. They, at no point, ever mention the name of the school where they met. I don't mean in this episode, I mean in the entire series. Anyway, Chandler posts on Ross's profile that he likes to have sex with dinosaurs. Ross retaliates by creating a profile for Chandler saying he's gay. That's strange for Ross. I never pegged him for the type to insult someone by saying they're gay. Of course I never pegged him for a USA Today reader either.



Shows what I know.

Maybe Ross spreads the rumor that Chandler is gay because he knows how much it will irk him. I would think that Ross wouldn't do anything to egg on Chandler's homophobia. To heighten the situation, Ross Photoshops Chandler's head on gay porn to post on the alumni page. Is that really appropriate? I think alumni pages became obsolete with the advent of social networking sites, so I really don't know. Did people normally post pictures of themselves, regardless of orientation, having sex on alumni pages? That doesn't really sound like something that would go over well with the alumni of whatever school this is.

I think after that, Chandler wouldn't be known as "the gay guy," he'd be known as "the guy who posted pictures of him having sex." The homosexuality kind of takes a back seat—no pun intended—to the inappropriateness.

Chandler gets back at Ross—for the gay thing, not the sex picture thing—by saying that Ross died. Ross then has Chandler host a memorial service just to see who shows up. Yeah, really. That's the course that the episode takes. Fake memorial service.



I totally recognized this guy who shows up to the service, but I realized that I might just recognize him from Two of a Kind, the late-'90s show starring the Olsen twins. Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing that I was able to recognize someone from that show, but it could be worse. It's not like I'm able to identify recurring actors from So Little Time.



Hey, look. Phoebe still has her '2000' bookends, and she is still displaying them well into 2003. They're not displayed proudly on her mantle like they were three years earlier. They've been put on the bottom shelf of a small table. They're not even being used as bookends. This is a sad existence for these bookends. It's like people who get chicks for Easter (I don't mean chicks as in babes, I mean baby chickens). It seems like a cute idea. Who doesn't like chicks? Awww. Well then a few months later you have a chicken on your hands, and what are you going to do with a chicken, besides slaughter it?

Let this be a lesson. Never buy something that can be used indefinitely that has the current year on it. I don't care how "cute" or interesting the year is. You're going to be stuck with these stupid things for a while.



Phoebe and Mike agree to move in together. The audience, finally giving Phoebe's happiness its due, gives a polite smattering of applause. I guess it's better than nothing.



Joey decides to get his eyebrows waxed for his latest set of head shots. It apparently didn't go well, because he goes to Chandler & Monica's apartment with an InStyle magazine. That must be bad.

Why does Joey even have a copy of InStyle? Is it on the off-chance Rachel moves in in the very near future? He happened to be right, I think she was moved in within two episodes, but that seems to be a pretty big "if" to start carrying around certain magazines.



His problem is that it hurt so much that he could only sit through one brow, and now he looks uneven. That's his problem. How about the fact that the person doing the waxing doesn't know how to do eyebrows for men. I'm not saying I would know how to eyebrows for men, I'm saying that wouldn't be the way I would do it.



See, even when Chandler evens them out you can see that this is not a normal look for men. That person should be fired, or at the very least, not tipped well.



Much like Ross's broken thumb, this won't last beyond the next episode.



Now that Rachel and Emma are living in Joey's apartment, and Emma is crawling, Rachel decides to babyproof the apartment. I'm not a father, so I don't know what having a child is like. Obviously, if I ever had a kid, I realize it would be in my best interest to keep that child healthy and safe. I'm under the impression and I hope that the instant I have a child of my own, my parental instincts will kick in and I will suddenly envision all of these previously unseen dangers.

However, to me, childproofing the freezer seems a bit overboard. Really, if Emma ever figures out a way to reach the handle to open the freezer, I say let her have all of the ice cream she wants. Consider the makeshift ladder she needs to construct and successfully climb to even get up there. If she can do that, she would have figured out how to get through the childproofing.



Normally when we see the gang walking around outside, it's all within a half of a block away from Central Perk. If Central Perk isn't within sight, then certainly either Dot's or the music store across the street from Central Perk is. Bad things happen when Ross and Phoebe stray from the comfort zone. They get mugged by Kyle Gass from Tenacious D. Let that be a lesson.



Meanwhile, Joey has an audition for Jeff Goldblum. It's not really Jeff Goldblum, but it's Jeff Goldblum playing someone quite Goldblum-esqe with a different name. I think Joey does really well with the audition. I even think he gets the job, but I don't remember if we see him with the job.

Oh wait, I just remembered, Joey pees on him, so it's safe to assume that he probably didn't get that job. We never see the resolution of that. I understand that he doesn't get the job after that, but there should be some series of repercussions, no?

See, I'm not into the show nearly as much anymore. How will I get through Season Ten?