spoiler
For crying out loud, in a dreary reminiscence of TOW Phoebe's Dad (209), Rachel is so spoiled she believes that her petty little problem (then a broke knob on a radiator, now having to settle for semi-private room) can be solved by slipping some dough to someone, but instead of doing it herself, she asks Ross to do it (which will obviously lead to Ross looking stupid while Rachel can look cool), and Ross agrees.
Man, I was SO disappointed to see that old gimmick resurrected yet again.
Wow, sympathetic contractions.
C'mon Phoebe, do the lobster thing. That should explain it to Ross ;-)
Hey, it's Debi Mazar (I think that's right) from Civil Wars and the last season of LA Law.
Why is it that Chandler seems the mature one of the two? Have Chandler and Monica switched minds or something, sort of like Kirk and Janice Lester in "Turnabout Intruder" (Star Trek original series)?
Although it's really not that ridiculuous that Monica "I'll never feel fulfilled until I have a baby" Bing is now feeling differently about it. Sometimes it is easier to handle the dream than the realization of the dream.
I think whenever the Friends are in a hospital, Phoebe should be singing. It should be a rule.
Gee, all the private rooms are unavailable, yet Monica and Chandler can find several somehow.
If you liked Janice, you'll love her with labor pains ;-)
The delivery was both funny and very touching at the end. It does lend credibility to the idea that Rachel's bitchiness these days is mostly stress related. When the stress is removed, she changes her tune and in a very nice way this time. She has also tended to recognize her own bitchiness later and at least admit it publicly. The thing is, lots of people handle stress a lot better than this. Of course, with Monica being the mental Geller in this episode and Phoebe enlisting a fictional character to screen her candidate boyfriend, that just makes Rachel no worse than any of the other women in the group.
Okay, now that was cruel! Unless there is some really deep Gatsby-esque symbolism going on here, all I can think is that Joey's final look is one of horror at Rachel's misunderstanding. And of course, Ross is going to come down the corridor, see Joey on bended knee, not recognize that the ring is the one his mom gave him, and think the worst of Joey, turn around, throw down the flowers in disgust and stomp out. And hey, since Rachel once went and found Paolo to drown her miseries in, I suppose he's entitled to his Chloe, but gadzooks, I really hope they don't go there yet again. Do something original for a change.
Of course, we're just assuming that Rachel's "okay" means "yes, Joey, I'll marry you." Joey "looks" like he took it that way, but does that mean that's how she meant it? Then again, what else could she have meant?
That's what happened when words are replaced by looks. We are left to twist in the wind of our own frenzied imagination. Just as the characters themselves might be.
Billy Joes was right: "You got to tell her about it" - emphasis on the word "tell". I understand that words fail us sometimes, but we pay a price for those wordless looks which fill the other person's head with all kinds of speculation. Words only fail us out loud. In our heads, words abound, and from our thoughts, our succeeding actions ensue.
Oh what a tangled web we weave....
By the way, the ER season finale blew the doors off the competition. Heck, the last 3 episodes are keepers in my video library. --- James Squire - http://members.aol.com/jamess1889 IDF Soldiers' Combatant Letter 2002 - http://seruv.nethost.co.il/defaulteng.asp Personal Testimony of an Israeli Refusenik - http://www.shalomctr.org/html/peace84.html