Thoughts on why the finale ran long...

I haven't seen this brought up so I guess I'll table it. TV Guide and all other sources showed the finale to be 60 minutes and not 65 and I think there is a clever reason. For the people watching the episode on TV, this extra 5 minutes really gave a twist to the episode. Some of us watch the clock when an episode is on TV. The 60th minute coincided with Ross sitting in his apartment and Rachel leaving the voicemail so if you were watching on TV and knew the ep was only 60 minutes you would think its over and there was no way they would finish the story. The last time I saw something similar was with the ending of season 6 with the proposal. Joey tells Chandler that Monica is gone and you look at the clock and see they have just a few minutes left in the timeslot. I believe the longer ep was done by design to throw us off. Of course this loses its effect when you watch the episode outside the slotted time on TV. The side effect of this was some lost the last few minutes when recording the show....maybe that's in part why the DVD hit the stores days later?

Am I giving the writers to much credit or was this a twist by design?

<< believe the longer ep was done by design to throw us off. >><BR><BR>

Not likely. It was 65 minutes because it was 65 minutes. That's about it. I doubt many viewers were sitting there switching their attention back and forth from the TV to their clock.

I think most TV viewers these days are quite used to shows not running exactly to the hour or half-hour anymore. Many shows run over the start of the hour, or even start several minutes before the hour. It's all done by the networks to keep you from switching over to the start of another show.