So what did everyone think of 614?

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Downright hilarious! Loved every single second! The Phoebe storyline was genious! In each and every second had falling off the couch- it was *that* good. It really conpensated for 613... in which they yanked poor Lisa out halfway throughout the episode. That *really* bothered me. Ross and Rachel storyline... what can I say? Lots! It was wonderful. Once again, Reese yanked off some really cute lines... and although I didn't laugh at every one the "How gay are you?" was so funny I think I passed out. Maybe you have to be young to appreciate it but it gave the most amusing portrait of what a "brat" that Jill sure is! OMG- David's comic timing was brilliant in this episode (AND his closing piece was so sweet. It brightened up my day. Gawd, I miss Ross and Rachel.) I admit his "Dammit kids! If you ring that bell one more time I swear to God-" was incerdibly out of character... I did laugh. Rather a sad chuckle but... it was a good joke, nevertheless. Jennifer... favorite part out of the whole night- is when she was begging Ross to stop seeing her sister and to call her. She was fabulous and her comedic timing was as good as it gets!!! Throughout the entire episode from her peeping beginning to when she rolled up her sleeves was so great it makes me bite my lip and wince when thinking back to how she didn't win that People's Choice Award. :-((Nothing against Calista but please- Jennifer, Lisa, and Courteney surpass them all.) And speaking of Courteney... another VERY different Monica. Her little outburst at Chandler was funny but it was very predictable. I knew it was going to happen- but still I sat there praying "Please, please, please- don't change Monica again! Just let her calm down for once- PLEASE!" I suppose I'm a bit too hopeful. In her other lines, however, Courteney got to pull the regular Monica. With her charming wit and *suttle* neurotic-ness. I suppose her character only had one setback for tonight... the number's decreasing... at least. Chandler... typical Chandler. I must say he pulled off quite a few of really good jokes in this episode- that was somewhat comforting. Anybody remember the puppy line... hehe! :-) The only prob was that Matthew CANNOT pull off that crying thing. Well, I suppose he *could* if it was serious dramatic acting but if they want Matthew to be funny- while CRYING? Let's just leave that to Matt. And speaking of Matt- LOL! Favorite moment of the entire night... when he absolutely REFUSED to give in and watch "Phoebe's" porn film. Ever protective of his ditzy soulmate... that was so cute! And his leap from the chair once he discovered it was Ursula- I CANNOT describe to you how I managed to not die of laughing!

So, in conclusion, maybe not an A+ but a definite A! Long live Friends! :-)

OK... now feel free to attack... hehe!

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I think for once we had three storylines that worked in one episode. You are right; this was won of the best efforts of the season.

Well, the moment I heard that Phoebe was a porn star I knew for sure that it was Ursula. (This should be an interesting issue in her race for Governor of New York.) I found the way that she handled the problem to be clever and entertaining, with some great lines. I really liked Joey's reaction to watching the porn video. Disgust until he realized it was just his ex-girlfriend rather than his great friend ...

I thought this girl was great. She conveyed a pretty substantial characterization in very few lines, and I actually saw a hint of depth in there under the narcissism.

and although I

Well, I'm tutoring middle schoolers right now. I very much recognized the most recent contation.

but it gave

Hmmmpf. Runs in the family. Selfish brats played beautifully by really gifted and pretty women.

OMG-

David did a good job. I have to admit I was awfully relieved to see an episode where Old Ross was at almost full force and the weird pyscho who supplanted him was almost entirely missing.

I admit his "Dammit kids! If you ring that bell one more time

Grin. I'm tutoring middle schoolers at the moment. I can see how a person could get to that point. Btw, it appears to me that a scene got cut here. In the spoiler, at one point Ross tries to catch one of these little turkeys and lets them get away, saying "Sometimes I let them win one." Might have softened this up a bit.

Jennifer Aniston did a great job here. I think she's vastly underrated. I find *Rachel's* behavior in the whole thing to have been bratty, selfish, bossy, neurotic, mean-spirited and unreasonable, but the actress was great and the scenes worked.

I have to agree with you here. Halfway through that scene I was thinking, "Oh, GREAT! They finally wrote a really good Chandler and Monica episode! What a great speech she's giving! How warm and tender it is! Now this is the Monica I used to enjo... oop, never mind. The Controlling Bitch From Hell just surfaced." And yes, I think there is another way they could have ended this scene:

Monica actually means everything she's saying. She begins to talk about her hypothetical death. As it gets more and more melodramatic, she gets teary eyed. Her voice begins to quaver. When she chokes out the part about Chandler reading the note and not reacting, she breaks down in tears. Chandler remains dry-eyed. That's when Monica calls him a robot and leaves in tears. Chandler leaves, frantically trying to fake cry. We do not have a scene where she lies to him about being OK with this the whole time; the implication is that she just got carried away with her own imagination.

The only prob was that

Uh, no. I thought Chandler was making fun of Ross and Rachel when I saw that.

This was precious.

On the It's-just-a-sitcom level, this was a really good episode.

I have only one reservation; Rachel has now destroyed *four* of Ross' dating relationships because she couldn't stand to see him with somebody besides herself. And she still doesn't want him. Even though he wants her, and has ONCE AGAIN made a sacrifice so that she might be in his life. The only consolation I can come up with is that Jill and Rachel are so much alike Jill probably wouldn't have been any better for him than Rachel turned out to be. I mean it. Those sisters are like "night, and later the same night."

I really want to slap this selfish, bullying bitch. This girl needs her commuppance but GOOD.

Claire Abraham wrote:

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I thought it worked well. Again, this is a matter where the spoiler (which was detailed enough that at times I would have thought, had I not known better, that I was watching a repeat) failed to convey how the actors spun the lines. Parts which I'd feared would be unbearable to watch instead created guffaws.

She did a masterly job.

Something of a cliche, of course, but it worked.

Though his explanation for how he happened to go into the video shop porn section was about as lame and painful to watch as anything this season. It was the low point of the episode -- thank goodness.

Even *I* say it now, and I am GAY. But I try not to be a gay sort of gay.

this I agree with; why is Ross such a dork lately.

exactly. Jennifer is super funny. her timing is wonderful; and her selfishness is part of Rachel's charm.

But the CBfrH IS Monica. It doesn't mean she's a bad person, just a difficult and neurotic one. Who else could understand Chandler so well?

Monica DID believe everything she was saying. She wanted to see if Chandler would respond the way she needed. In a way, it was her way of saying what she needed, which she's done very consistently since they got together. Is she demanding, or honest?

She's got her comeuppance. She's alone and lonely. Ross is better off without her or Jill. Actually, I miss both Julie and Emily. It would definitely be interesting to see him date someone who was a real threat to Rachel. Like, a smart, competent, nice person.

Shawn

even though I havn't seen 614, do you all think that the dip in episode quality is finally disappearing?

Owen Shiers wrote:

One point does not a trend make.

Grin. He who lives by the technique of criticizing other people's writing mechanics, dies by the... You seem to be having some capitalization problems in this post, Shawn my friend. Not that it matters. In the slightest. Oh, and that probably should have had a question mark after "lately," too.

See how easy it is to make this kind of mistake? No biggie.

Huh? I don't think she understand Chandler particularly well. She'd be kinder to him if she did. Monica's pretty mean to Chandler.

No, Chandler asks her if the whole speech was a put-on and she says it was. She didn't mean it.

She begins to

Well, that wouldn't be Emily. It could have been Julie *if* she'd been written with any interesting points whatsoever. And you are right, here. I am beginning to hope I see Ross walk off into the sunset with a real winner while Rachel cries instead of hoping for a reunion. If she's the one who walks off into the sunset while *he* moans, I may be sick to my stomach.

get a spell-check. I'm seriously. Also, try periods or even semi-colons.

uhm, they did?

that last sentence is so mangled it's going to have to become a .sig file. I'm taking it and you can't stop me! you owe me, in fact, after all the bad grammar.

I did. I also loved the episode. Phoebe's "Omigod, what am i doing!?" on seeing the porn video was right up there with "my eyes, my eyes!!!"

Shawn
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Matt: "You're not a square peg." Dinah: "It's a metaphor, Matt.

Let's just leave that to Matt.

Yeah, I'd say so.

Shawn...I'm educated, too. I didn't go to Harvard, but I've got a Master's Degree and along the way I learned basic grammar. Please remember that a lot of the people running around on this newsgroup are very young. Some have not finished high school. It's possible there are a few who haven't even finished Jr. High. Have a little tolerance for people who haven't been alive long enough to be as well educated as you are. I think you will find this newsgroup less annoying that way.

Claire Abraham wrote:

Hee Hee. And looking back at this thread I see that I have made my own typos and misspellings. I'm too tired, folks. Good night.

Claire Abraham wrote:

Picking on folks' typos is not generally considered to be cool. It's too easy to hit the "SEND" button when in a hurry without reviewing every jot and tittle one has uttered.

I do recall some kid picking on something I'd written years ago by writing "You point is mute." Always enjoyed that. But it was the general pattern of conduct which was troublesome with that fellow, not his slips and misspellings.

Claire Abraham wrote...

e.g me! I'm in ninth grade and, just so you know, there are a lot of people here whose mother language isn't English (and I'm example myself). Would you say that when you were 14, you handled perfectly well your mother language ? I don't think so, so imagine, a foreign language ! You don't know those people you insult, maybe they've been working real hard for several years to reach an acceptable level of English, and what you said may hurt some people. Now from those few lines I wrote, for how long would you say I've been studying English ? Could you speak ANY foreign language the way you expect everyone here to ? Again I think the answer would be no, so please open your mind like this big and tolerate those tiny tiny mistakes you may encounter in this newsgroup.

Adeline ( yet another froggy on this NG)

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~"Welcome to the world ! It sucks, you're gonna love it !"

leborgne.jl wrote:

actually, the idea of someone not being a native speaker never occured to me in the post I criticized. Usually, I feel like I can tell that problem because the grammatical problems are consistent (ie, Chinese speakers drop articles, Slavic people put the verbs in odd orders, etc.). That post struck me as someone just writing in a style that wasn't clear or even consistent.

Also, I was trying on some level to be funny.

Shawn

"leborgne.jl" wrote:

Ahhh. Another Froggy. I now stand by my mother tongue. I love being a french frog myself, even though I am very fluent in other languages...But then again, I'm a bit older than ninth grade! A bient�t! JRP

Claire Abraham wrote:

I also didn't and don't go to Harvard. So let's let that chip go away right now. I can't help my e-mail acct. identification. I also responded seriously to several of the comments in that post, and even agreed with some of them. But, trying to raise the intellectual level a little here -- hardly a crime.

Shawn
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Q: "Am I still your woman?"

A: "You're the captain's woman...until he says you're not."

Oof! Allow me to apologize. I did not intend to write to hastily, *believe* me. I only had three minutes and I was typing very quickly because I was in a hurry to meet some friends. I would've saved the post for later but I was in such a rush when my friends showed up that the possibility just completely slipped my mind. I'm sorry if I caused anyone a headache. I'll go copy the post and rewrite it because now that I'm looking over it, I'm feeling quite embarrassed. (Hence the blush. And it's difficult for someone with darker than white skin to blush, mind you.) I'm sure a few people who I'm more acquainted with can verify that I don't usually express myself with fourth-grade grammar, (if my grammar in that previous post actually had the privelege to be defined as fourth-grade.) -Alyssa

[email] [email]

Shawn Hill wrote:

"I'm seriously?" Seriously what? Oh, and while you're suggesting to others to try using proper punctuation, why don't you try capitalizing at the beginning of sentences?

Again, capitalization please.

C-a-p-i-t-a-l-i-z-a-t-i-o-n.

See, capitalizing wasn't so hard, was it?

Practice what you preach, oh dear "Haahvaahd" rival.

P.S. Didn't you think that it was an amazingly wonderful Yale-Harvard game this year? Ha.

"I'm seriously" is a South Park reference. Cartman says it a lot. See, humor, funny reference, hahah laughter, etc.

Did you guys notice that the person I criticized didn't get as angry as several other people who read my bitchy words?

I feel abused and mistreated! How dare you all assume I'm a Harvard student, and then treat me like some arrogant asshole stereotype? That's projection, which totally ignores the reality of my situation, or my own ethnicity or social background. You're assuming a lot because of my e-mail address. You're not all Matt Damon, and though I'm in Harvard Square a lot, I don't like them apples at all.

pout!

Shawn
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Dinah: "She slapped me you know." Matt: "Apparently not hard enough."

Shawn Hill wrote:

If it were funny, I wouldn't have failed to laugh. Plus, I don't really watch "South Park" that much.

Speaking for myself, I was neither angry nor bitchy. I was just pointing out what you should have known before you posted: "Pot. Kettle. Black."

Did I ever state that I thought you were a Harvard student? No. In addition, I don't believe that if someone assumed that you were a Harvard student that it makes any reference whatsoever to your ethnicity or social background.

By the way, do the people at the Harvard Library know that you post messages on the Internet when you should be working? Heh.

***Friends Fanatic***

"I'm seriously."?? Maybe someone should get a grammar check and stop worrying about other people's spelling!

"I laugh in the face of danger - then hide until it goes away" ~~Xander~~

Hellooooo!!! After getting drunk in Vegas, AlyssaPhoebs doodled cat whiskers on his/her face and miaowed this little lot at a statue...

<chomp>

Something that occured to me while talking about the episode with someone else... this isn't meant to make Rachel sound bad, but is it possible that a possible explanation for doing what she does is that rather than not loving or not wanting to love Ross, she does it because she's *afraid* to love him? I actually think she's possibly afraid to love anyone, but is most afraid to love Ross because of their past. I think that's why she does what she does - I think she probably realises the effect it has on others, but obviously something's going wrong because she's going around in circles and keeps doing it. I'm hoping this is the last time, because the circle finally seems to have been broken a little, but now they're both stuck in a kind of limbo between acknowledging that they like the idea of a chance for something to happen down the line and the thing actually happening. I think now, though, that they're both going to be playing some kind of waiting game, where they're both basically sitting around waiting for something to happen but not making it happen. I think (I hope) this is a set-up for the rest of the season.

Also, while I'm here, does anyone else think that Ross would have gone about things differently in the final scene had Chandler and Monica not been there?

Tina

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I'd like to think so, but i'm satisfied with what we got. To my recollection, this is the first scene we get with both of them acknowledging to each other that there might still be something there. I think perhaps the writers used that scene to start something but not to take it anywhere yet because they're not sure where the entire series is heading after this year.

Adriana

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       JJ  OOOO EEEEE  YYYYY  -"1999, the year of Joey"
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I'm going to have to go back and watch the tape again. I've disliked shows in the past and then watched them a second time and found them to be very enjoyable (TOW the Apothecary Table is an example.) But I thought this one was a little weak. Rachel's little sister came across as a cliche. Chandler can't cry. Who cares? Phoebes' and Ursula I did like, but nothing was side-splitting. Next week's fantasy episode looks like it'll be interesting, but I wish they'd be able to use their creative forces for something beyond flashback or fantasy episodes. Concocting a video of young, fat Monica and big-nosed Rachel getting ready for their prom and inserting that into an episode that finally brought Ross and Rachel together was brilliant writing and brilliant television. Too often the brilliance isn't there anymore. I still love "Friends," but miracle of miracle occured two weeks ago when for the first time in history I actually decided against watching "Friends" (albeit a rerun) to watch "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." Until now I'd never have thought that possible. It does look telling, though, because most of the rest of the country did the same thing. The hot show of the 1999 season cremated the hot show of the 1994 season.