Friends Reunion Review
First off I just want to say that they all look pretty good during the initial introductions. At least with their clothing/fashion choices. They’re all dressed pretty conservatively and well. People seem to be shocked by how they’ve aged but this is only because they’ve been frozen in time and then repeatedly broadcast on our televisions in their frozen forms for almost two decades. Like everyone saw Jennifer Aniston at 25-35 (the age she was during Friends) way more in 2016, say, than they would have seen Jennifer Aniston at 40-something in 2016 (her actual age at the time).
Courtney Cox is the only one who looks slightly unhinged, with her cat-woman cheeks and unbuttoned top showing off her boobs. I think Matt Le Blanc looks the best. First off, he looks exactly like how Joey would look: a bit fat Italian dad. Lisa Kudrow also looks realistically how Phoebe would look because we’ve always harnessed a theory that Phoebe is a secret square and would just get a job as an estate agent or become a stay-at-home mum but a really boring one.
The other four look like washed up Hollywood actors, which is what they are! There should be no surprises here. This is also nicely ironic because out of the characters on the show Joey was the one who went to make it and failed.
Perry’s entrance brings a sombre atmosphere. David Schwimmer does weird close hugs. Scratch all that about them looking okay, Matt Perry's teeth are insane! (Again ironic because teeth whitening is a famous Friends punchline)
Now we’re onto the couch interview. God, I hate James Corden. He's illuminati, an Oprah stooge, for sure. Imagine Norton doing this instead. He’d have Perry knocking back the hooch and rediscovering that sharpness of delivery in no time. I think Matthew Perry is drunk but not in a good way. Caips are delicious. Imagining he had a couple caips before the shoot. Talita can’t believe that the guy interviewing the cast of Friends is the fat kid from that Mike Leigh movie we once watched (her only previous Corden exposure).
Men get fat huh. Even slim jims. Chandler and joey were slim jims back in the day, before the crack and smoked briskets.
Reese Witherspoon hasn't changed. But then I accidentally paused it at a bad moment and she definitely has. Looks like Hillary Clinton. Why did the celebrity cameos get good lighting and static camera while the friends cast had to move around and make facial expressions? Feeling sorry for the cast of Friends. A sorry bunch trotted out to celebrate a victory that in many ways ruined their lives.
They go to a table read but intercut it with original footage and it’s so haunting because the voices are so similar. Mat Perry is a mess. Ross has somehow had an extra third added to his face.
There’s some backstory now. Schwimmer gave up on sitcoms and went back to do theatre before he got persuaded to make Friends. The photos of him as a theatre actor being serious and bearded are really funny and perfect.
Mat Perry somehow channeling both Joe (mumbling) and Hunter (spruced-up wreck) Biden. His backstory is incredible. He was on another sitcom where he essentially played Chandler in space. Really cool.
Jennifer Aniston looks like a hologram. (Ten minutes into the reunion Talita put a moratorium on me mentioning Jennifer Aniston's face – just for the record it looks like a deep fake made with perhaps only two photos of Jennifer Aniston, not enough angles or data to convince the human eye - only for Talita to say every quarter hour or so "okay, Jennifer Aniston looks really weird.")
I’m enjoying imagining Mat Perry doing a Charles Bukowski and threatening to stab James Corden backstage.
Fun how they keep talking about how close they are but don't seem that close and haven't met up in almost two decades.
Funny how no-one cares about the actors' lives, it's all centred around the Friends. The more this show trundles on the sadder it gets. It’s like these three producers came in, mined these people for their quirks and personalities, put them through a writers' room and had them convinced they were super-cool and talented playing enhanced versions of themselves, only to leave them as these kinds of husks. Everyone looks lost and unable to really explain anything. All the messages we’re given are so plainly false about this group of people. It’s wild and quite haunting.
It’s so strange how obviously we’re being fed this lie that Friends was a really successful show with no flaws and had a super positive inclusive message and everyone who worked on it had a great time. And Corden is the perfect embodiment of a Friends fan with his shouty, bullying positivity.
Back to the fun. Bring on the Corden/Oprah army: David Beckham discussing how he used to smile to the point of crying at a very mediocre Friends episode is quite the moment. Talita says David Beckham was the original Q (as in LGBTQ not Q-Anon).
The table reads are so wild. Gaga is illuminati. Has anyone ever met a Gaga fan? No. Gaga is the superstar the powers that be want us to love. Nobody loves her. She looks like she knows this. She does a Smelly Cat skit with Phoebe and it’s obvious Phoebe should criticize her wanky Presidential inauguration interpretation of Smelly Cat because that’s what Phoebe would do, but the liberal agenda won't allow it. “Thanks for being the Friend who was most authentically herself.” says Gaga. This is straying into ArcheWell territory.
Perry reveals himself to being a laugh addict. One dangerous addiction. We’ve all met a couple. Unquenchable thirst for the laughs. Fuck Ross Geller getting all the head. Fuck James Corden with his fake-ass British accent tailored to an American audience – he sounds like he has problems with his synapses and genuflects like the British butler all Americans so want us to be.
Janice comes on realistically looking great. Talita is a big Janice fan and it’s so true that they belittle and mock her because she is genuinely powerful and different in a way that none of them, save early Nietzschean Rachel and Chandler, could ever hope to be. Monica is way louder and more annoying than Janice, and now she looks like that guy from SAW.
MP blows Janice a kiss, funny how alcoholism gives a face so much unwarranted poignancy.
Bieber doing the fashion parade as Spudnik is amazing. The crowd go wild. Bieber is a genuine superstar. Gaga never gets that response.
This has led to us watching Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry talking us through the windows 95 training video. It was a long time ago, guys! People need to learn to deal better with the passing of time.