This was the death of entertainment.The Friends: The Reunion trailer is here. Justin Bieber, who has no connection to Friends, tangible or otherwise, took up time on a Friends reunion show by dressing up as a big potato, talking up and down for a bit and pulling a funny face. Justin Bieber dressed up as a big potato. However, did you wait for over 90 minutes to see Paul Rudd turn up, and then realise that he wasn’t going to appear, and then wonder what on earth happened between him and the cast of Friends? Yes. Did you know that Kit Harington sees himself as a Monica? Did you know that David Beckham also sees himself as a Monica? Did you know that the actor who played Mr Heckles was going to cameo, but not before suffering the indignation of realising that the entire primary cast of Friends had forgotten the name of his character? Did you want to see Elliott Gould – Elliott Gould, for crying out loud! – relegated to a seat in the audience? Did you want to see Gunther appear on Zoom, in a Central Perk hat, saying nothing of interest at all? Did you want to see the members of BTS say “We love Friends” in unison? Or several members of the public wildly overstate their enjoyment of Friends? Or Malala being described by her best friend as “100% Joey with a hint of Phoebe”, while simultaneously giving off the impression that she doesn’t actually like Friends very much? Of course you didn’t, but here it was anyway. Lots to unpack here, and all of it dismal. This was less an interview and more an extended platitude contest, with one question – “Who had the loudest laugh?” – causing me to groan in actual agony. Even though he was outnumbered six to one, Corden still managed to out-talk everyone else on stage without ever really saying anything.
Little did we know, however, that he was going to be so prominent. The Friends reunion was a piece of entertainment made in 2021, so it goes without saying that James Corden was going to shoehorn himself in there one way or another.
#FRIENDS REUNION TRAILER TV#
If you aren’t, and just wanted to watch people you recognise from TV crying at each other, then probably less so. If you’re interested in television, this was the most valuable segment.
Parts of the reunion redressed the balance, with David Crane and Marta Kauffman appearing in little talking head segments to explain how the show came together, as well as the challenges of casting and producing it. It’s weird, given that Friends was such a global phenomenon, that so much attention was paid to the cast, rather than the people who actually made it. The Ross/Rachel storyline was done to death on Friends, and inspired a wealth of imitators, so it’s lovely to know that it was rooted in something approximating truth. Their bashful reminiscences, accompanied by behind-the-scenes footage of them flirting like actual mad with each other, were unbearably sweet. In what at times felt like a punishingly long recap of things everybody already knew, the revelation – apparently unearthed here for the first time – that David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston battled with debilitating yet unconsummated crushes on each other felt like actual news. Photograph: NBC/NBCUniversal/Getty Images
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