Friends Thru A Lens: The Holidays with Ella Risbridger

0:05Hello and welcome to Friends Through a Lens, the podcast where I talk to my real life friends about the show Friends through a lens of their choosing. My name is Caroline and this year I'm spending Christmas in Tulsa. And my favourite part was when Superman flew the Jews out of Egypt. It's Ella Rizbridger. Hi, best friend. There you are. Hi, best friend. Here I am in Tulsa, which is an anagram for Dublin this year. I tell you what, dude, to let everybody behind the scenes on some movie magic of how I make this podcast, almost every episode of the podcast that you've heard of Friends Through a Lens so far was recorded in October and November when I was preparing to leave to go live in Dublin to make The Rachel Incident, the TV show for Channel 4.

0:51Look it up. It's going to be great. It's going to be so good. And this episode we're recording from, I'm recording it from like a new build, completely empty apartment in Dublin. I'm living by myself for the first time ever and like I'm understanding not just the sort of like artistic need for friends in a person's life but the social need for friends in a person's life because it's the first time I've ever lived alone and now I just have friends on all the time so I don't feel lonely it's a friends is a friend friends is a friend friends friends is a friend friends is a friend friends is a friend friends This is the lens.

1:36The lens of friends is they are our friends. No, the lens of friends through which we will be looking at friends today is, I guess, Christmas and the holidays, which will be a nice lens because we were initially going to do the feasts of friends. But I don't know. I couldn't quite be bothered. I could, you know, the feasts are all at Christmas. Apart from that one time they make the lasagna and Monica's nail goes off in it. I don't know. I just very, very tired. I wanted to talk about like the twinkly bits. and you know when they're all together or not all together because sometimes Chandler has to go to Tulsa and Caroline has to go to Dublin and let me tell you I am as bereft as Monica we're all as bereft as Monica it's really weird like like to to be absolutely clear I'm having a wonderful time here in Tulsa Oklahoma e.g Dublin Ireland and like I'm getting to do something that I've spent my whole life dreaming of doing which is making a tv show and um out of like a book that I wrote, which is a huge privilege.

2:33But like, the fact remains is that it is Christmas. And I live in a new build with nothing on the walls. And I have no tree and nothing. And the other day, I went with some friends to go see a Muppets Christmas Carol, which I do every year in the cinema, if I can manage it. And I remember feeling in the cinema, I was like, huh, kind of weird that we're watching this, right? Because it's a Christmas movie. It was like, like, it completely escaped me totally that it's Christmas this year, because there's nothing in my life that indicates Christmas. Oh no. You're just like not being cued by the things around you.

3:05Whereas I feel like I've

3:10dragged Christmas kicking and screaming into my life. I don't do every year. I don't, I'm not a huge fan of December, but I am a huge fan of magic. I hate force fun, but I love twinkly lights. So, you know, I, I have to kind of balance that at Christmas. Whereas I feel bad because I'm sitting here with my Christmas tree, which by the way, new thing I've done this year, get a short fat Christmas tree instead of a tall thin one new look radical new look for 2025 radical new look a chode Christmas tree I'm I'm loving it and you know what I'm loving most I'm going to be able to put it in the bin at the end of Christmas I'm going to be able to carry it to the place where it goes in the bin it's going to be amazing it's the first Christmas in my life I'm not thinking about dragging it away every single year when it's time to get rid of that tree it's like, I have amnesia.

3:54I'm like, how did we do this last year? Did the council pick it up? Did a man come? Did I pay somebody else? Did they pay me? Is it recyclable? What happens? It's something of like, if you drag it to the park before a date, the council will turn into sodas. But I never drag it to the park before that day. And it just sits in my garden, rotting. Anyway, the point is, I'm dragging Christmas in, kicking and screaming. And I think perhaps it's funny and nice to tell the listeners that this is in fact our second go at recording the Christmas special because the first time we were both so unfestive and shit then we just called it oh my god it's so funny so for people who don't realize is um if they're just new to the series this year um every year for the last I think five or maybe six years we have recorded a Christmas special of this podcast it's something we look forward to it's something a lot of the listeners look forward to and they're great episodes go look them up and this year we were like well of course it's the Friends mini series so we're gonna record the festive friends or whatever and then you came over to my house the day before I moved and and we spent an hour trying to be anything that wasn't just like two incredibly stressed out women I had flu which was not ideal I just kept sneezing and sort of just like you know that stage of flu where you're like crying softly a lot of the time and when people are like what's wrong you're like nothing I'm just weeping for my lost humanity and so I had that and you had moving to Dublin and having not packed and so we're counting the plots of these friends episodes to each other in this incredibly like both fake academic and totally joyless way and of course at Christmas the friends gather together and they are often joined by Jack Geller the father of several of the other characters monica and of course her brother ross he has a child of course in another sense uh jack geller is actually the father of all of the friends in some senses because of course many of the friends have celebrated previous holidays together it was awful and eventually after an hour of us trying to wring some charisma out of it we were like we to stop this.

6:06We got to stop. I think it's important when you do any kind of performing or entertaining for a living to just know when you're not entertaining anyone. We weren't entertaining ourselves and we certainly weren't entertaining the listeners. So listen, this is take two. And let me tell you, it's a lot more promising for these reasons. We are on Zoom, which I wanted to avoid because we haven't recorded on Zoom since the deep days of the pandemic when we did our best books we've ever read, which is such a funny idea for a mini series. Just books we like, I guess. Yeah, no theme, just we like them.

6:37So the reason here, I will enunciate the reasons that this podcast is better than the last one. One, I have some very nice champagne that my dad brought to our house. So excellent. I have a fancy little mince pie from the bakery near Caroline's house in London. And sorry to say this card is really delicious. My Christmas tree is up and covered in velvet. And I've just posted 60 Christmas cards some of them with airmail stickers on. And let me tell you, there is nothing more festive than sticking a little blue airmail sticker on a card. You know, cards are winging their way across Europe to New York.

7:14I felt so continental and festive. And obviously it's not snowing, but in my heart, it's snowing. And so those are the reasons that I feel 10 times more charismatic and 10 times more ready to take on Friends, the TV series, Friends, brackets, you and me, our long friendship, Christmas Oh Friends Christmas in real life and I guess whatever else comes up because of course this is the last sentimental garbage for a long long time For a long long time boys and girls because yeah this is the this is the other bit of news really because this is this is the last episode of the year but I'm also I'm going on a hiatus after this really I mean the reason that I wanted to cap out sentimental garbage with incredibly long episodes about friends is that I wanted to really feed people before I fasted them.

8:01I think it's kind of lovely that you've made this last series of like, let me talk to all my friends about friends, this TV show that everybody knows and loves. It feels like the perfect pause. You know what? It really is. And I'm so glad that you brought that up because the act of watching all these episodes and discussing them with people who I'm like really, really quite close with and people who I also know I'm not going to see for a long time because I'm going to be coming back to London for weekends here and there but for the most part like I'm gonna be you know head down in a new life where it was almost like like recording with Kate recording with Dolly recording with um with Ryan like it all if yes we were talking about this tv show that everyone knows and loves but it's almost like talking about friends to millennials is almost like talking about like you know the stations of the cross or like it like very important biblical stories that everybody knows everybody knows it so well and all of these like archetypes of these pretend people are so recognizable whether you're talking about like you know like Monica and her relationship with her mother or Ross's relationship with Phoebe or Joey's relationship with Phoebe or whatever there is such well-worn ideas because everyone has seen it like one million times that like what I found with doing this series is that very soon I wasn't talking to Ryan about Phoebe or to Dolly about fucking Mrs.

9:24Geller or whatever I was talking to some of my best friends about how they feel about the deepest human relationships in their life and like how they feel at this point in their life where they are with their relationships and like I just feel like they offer this really interesting archetype of like how we talk about our relationships in general like like the last episode I did I ended up like realizing some of feelings I had about being in a family that I never would have realized if I weren't talking about it through the guardrails of friends. Do you know what I mean? It's like a safe thing to hold on to while you navigate some like kind of interesting psychological territory for yourself.

10:00I think it's really interesting. It's something that I thought a lot about when I was writing In Love With Love, my most recent book, which is a history of romantic fiction that you can probably still buy as a very late Christmas present. There's probably somewhere doing next say delivery and you should it's great but about how fiction kind of allows us to practice how we feel about the world and it gives us a framework to think about how we think about things and I was writing specifically about romantic fiction but I do think that all art is supposed to be a way to reimagine and re-establish your own relationship with your own life and I think that's what friends is for you know there's something about its ubiquity in the culture that makes it like a touchstone that you can come back to over and over again to be like, it's like that bit in Friends.

10:44It's like, it really is helping me to think of you having us Christmas in Tulsa. And that's ridiculous. It's really helping me. It really is. I guess because this is the first Christmas where we've not spent substantial Christmas time together, like making little ornaments of sylph with her head in a cone or just like doing a little craft project or watching the Muppets. And it's like, oh no, sometimes Chandler got to go to Tulsa. And of course Chandler comes back from Tulsa because Selma Blair makes a pass at him in a very sexy way that, you know, it shows real restraint that Chandler, a dork, does not plunge straight into an affair with Selma Blair.

11:19Well, you know what? How many women have hit on Chandler? Not that many. Ross is always punching above his weight, but Chandler, I don't think he's getting hit on that much. And so for Chandler to get hit on by Selma Blair and to be like, I love and respect my wife, that's a real sacrifice. much more than it would be for Ross, who is always getting hit on by women out of his league. Always, constantly. But yeah, I've got some very strong theories on Ross's sexuality, which I believe to be strong and magnetic. But I kind of want to sit on Chandler for a while because he's also, this being the last episode of Friends Through a Lens, he's kind of the friend we've spoken about the least.

11:53And I actually think Christmas belongs to Chandler in a way because I think one of the most satisfying arcs of the show is Christmas and Chandler, you know? So one thing that, so I'm actually amazed that nobody has talked that much about Chandler and thrilled because I love to talk about Chandler he's such a complex and rich scene for me because you must admit that although it's obviously Rachel's show Chandler is the other person who has a complete up Chandler goes from being the boy who hates Thanksgiving because he has no family to the man with his children and his wife and his friends moving out to live a life of like domestic bliss and he's not going to have an affair with the pool boy he's not going to repeat the patterns of his parents it's about learning to be your own man oh my god of course because the whole thing with Chandler's whole story is he hates Thanksgiving the Gellers hate him because he hates Thanksgiving and because he got Ross high and he's Ross and the boy who hates Thanksgiving and they're like yeah and every year it's all throughout the series it's like oh and I guess Chandler is going to be like Eeyore about Thanksgiving again and say something snappy about Thanksgiving again.

13:01And then when it gets to the point, and of course, like that root trauma is in the fact that his father was having an affair and it was revealed to him on Thanksgiving. And then it's like Chandler is given the opportunity to have an affair on Thanksgiving and doesn't take it and comes home to his wife. And it's like also and it's a clip show episode. And it's like one of the only arguments for like, oh, wow, it's an artistically substantive clip show episode. It's never happened anywhere else in culture before. but because the whole arc is about him leaving behind this childhood trauma of like I am you know I hate Thanksgiving because of who I was age zero to 20 and actually people was like oh I love Thanksgiving because of who I became age 20 to 35.

13:43Crucially who is around me you know yeah there's obviously a lot of chat about friends as found family but I think that Monica and Ross don't really need found family Phoebe does but she kind of finds it in Mike she's always a little bit separate from the group you know she's always trying to prize joy away to be just two of them yeah but also she finds it she finds it in frank as well and she gives it to frank with the babies you know yeah and the person who needs that to belong to that family like chandler gloms on to ross and he never lets go yeah like yeah yeah yeah he's his college roommate and then he's like and i will marry your sister and i will be at every christmas and every thanksgiving for the rest of your life Ross Geller they like each other yeah like Ross is lucky that he likes Chandler because Chandler's like oh I see a normal family like your mum's neurotic your dad's kind of like bumbling I want to be in there you know the Gellers have this new nuclear family which no one else in the show does Ross so many marriages children by different women Monica and Chandler actually do kind of replicate the nuclear family, even though they adopt.

14:56Like they have a boy and a girl, which I think is very important for the show that Monica and Chandler end up with the replication of the Geller family legacy. Yeah, yeah. And like - As does Ross. As - A boy and a girl. Yeah, but he's also got lesbian co-parent wives. Ross has three wives. One of my favorite parts of this series is when you and Kate were having a really good time thinking about Ross and Rachel's wedding. And you know what? Oh yeah. I love to think about Ross and Rachel's future life with Ben and Emma and the kids they have after that. You know, I always think about with that, I always think about when Monica announces that she's moving to Westchester and Rachel, and she's like, I don't want to raise kids in the city.

15:35And Rachel goes, I'm doing it. Sarah Jessica Parker is doing it. And I'm like, yeah, Rachel, you're going to raise kids in the city forever. You're going to have like a snotty little teenager who goes to like insane private schools in New York that bankrupts you both. And she's going to be friends with all the kids in Gossip Girl. No, the Gellers will pay for that. The Gellers will pay for that. Oh, the Gellers. Sorry, of course the Gellers will pay for that. The Gellers and the Greens will pay for that. Her dad. Her dad is so wealthy. So true. You think her dad, a girl dad of three girls who is a successful doctor in New York, will see his granddaughter go to a normal school?

16:12No, come on. Oh my God. Dr. Green will step in. I found something about Dr. Green the other day that really made me very happy and this is going to mean very little to you because you're not a Gilmore Girls fan but the actor who you oh right I've gotten into it now I feel like you've like you've sort of like walked up to it and run away from it a lot over the years so I can never tell where you're at with the Gilmore Girls listen this is a diversion Gilmore Girls for me it's almost like it's just too much for me like it's too like directly calibrated for me I get it I totally get it that's how I feel about I'm just a bit like yes exactly like that whereas I could watch Fleabag because I'm like oh there's nothing this is nothing like my life I mean I mean my life isn't like Fleabags either I just know that it's for me in some way that it's not for you like it was made for me in some way that wasn't made specifically for you I don't know I don't know exactly how to calibrate that but it's just true but Gilmore Girls was made for yes it was made for hobbyist brunette women who like crafts I mean like right now I am loving being on this podcast but every so often I like glimpse down at like I'm sewing a stocking for my family secret Santa and I keep looking at my little embroidery where I'm going to embroider my secret Santa's name and then I'm going to put all the presents in the stocking.

17:21Like literally Stars Hollow was created so you you specifically could dream of living there. Exactly and actually I would hate living in Stars Hollow I would feel so trapped and imprisoned and so I feel very misunderstood by Gilmore Girls even though it's asking nothing of me. They did not check with me when they made it, but I do, I'm looking at it and it's snowing and it's so perfect. And I know that I would fit in so well and I would be on 100 community rotors. But the important thing about Gilmore Girls vis-a-vis what I wanted to say was that Kelly Bishop, who plays Emily Gilmore, was in a long, long relationship with the guy who plays Rachel's dad, whose name I forget.

17:52And there's so many pictures of them being cute together. I invite you all to look at them. I want to look at them right now, but if I click off the zoom i'll never find it again um oh my god of course and you know what if emily and richard ever got divorced that would be the perfect relationship for emily gilmore oh girl richard dies richard dies no i'm sorry to say no one will ever die in friends no one does as in gilmore gilmore girls richard dies yeah but come on no one should die in the television yeah that's so true you can always rewind you can go back to the beginning and start again no one has to die in tv beautifully said does anyone who dies in friends um ugly naked no his grandma phoebe's grandma ugly naked guy was not dead he was just asleep um and mr heckles dies and actually um that's a big point for chandler as well because chandler thinks he's going to die alone like mr heckles and uh long long before they're together it's monica who comforts him and said that she's not going to because he's gonna die with monica

18:56hopefully on the same day in the same train accident oh that's the dream that's the dream i want to return to chandler right because i think we don't talk enough about how freakish chandler's early life must have been like his mother nora tyler bing a fantastic nora tyler bing one of the best-selling novelists of all time she is the best-selling novelist of all time i think i can't remember exactly is it like a hundred million copies it can't be that sounds ridiculous but she says it when she's on the tv yeah a hundred million copies very triggering for us nora tyler thing is the most famous novelist of all time she has the most successful novel she's she is a celebrity novelist which is a concept we don't really have anymore yeah not not in the same way we have it in the sense she's sold more books than danielle steel she's sold more books Jilly Cooper.

19:46She is on every, she can be on a late night TV show and everybody instantly recognizes her. She is the kind of novelist that your friends who don't read have read every book. Rachel has read every one of her books. Rachel is a huge fan of Chandler's mum, which we don't talk enough about. How weird that must be for him. They just don't, they don't do enough with Chandler's mum. They are too focused on the Chandler's dad of it all. They need to, they needed to put more into Chandler's mum. You know what? I actually, I understand that the Chandler's dad storyline is problematic in many ways but in other ways you do have that very moving scene when they go to tell him about the engagement yes we're just talking about that yeah yeah you know i don't know if chandler's dad is trans or is a drag queen or what the show is not specific i guess because it was the 90s and there was not like a clear distinction in what pronouns people were going to use but nonetheless there is a deep resolution for me in the storyline of chandler and his father and that they go to the drag show they meet Chandler's father on her own terms they see her as she is they don't like meet her afterwards when she's like out of drag they meet Helena Handbasket and that's the only name we have for Chandler's dad I think is Helena yeah me and Dolly had a long time talking about this of that thing of like it's strange because so much of casting Kathleen Turner in that role which is problematic for so many different reasons and was also quite misogynist for so many different reasons because it was also a direct reference to Kathleen Turner being an actress who had health issues and sort of lost her kind of like what people knew as like to be a kind of a bombshell physique because she had health issues and some of her face changed because she had health issues.

21:27And their kind of way of sort of winding up that joke with her was like, what if she was a transsexual? You know, like it's like such a strange, cruel, weird, misogynist move. but then she plays it with such incredible aplomb and it's so moving and she's so funny. And Grace also, that moment where it's, where like, I think a lot about that Vegas moment where at the Vegas drag show and they're just making eye contact and Helena realizes and Chandler knows and Monica knows and they're all just like being like, we're having this very intimate family moment that we can't have in any other way because this is the only way that you, Helena, can ever be yourself.

22:06oh because i don't know if helena is trans but i do know that helena handbasket is a person who is happiest as a drag artist yeah and is her true self as helena handbasket and they managed to make this beautiful moment of connection because okay so i don't want to lose track of the christmas thing because what i do think is that chandler's childhood thanksgiving you know more turkey mr chandler it's shot in this very okay don't write in to correct me if i'm wrong in my memory that scene of Chandler's childhood it is so overripe that scene in the Thanksgiving I it feels like it was shot in like a greenhouse I don't know why it's so clammy and sweltering is that because I'm thinking about the fact that the pool boy is somehow serving the turkey also why get more stuff you're a millionaire but also like there's a clamminess to it a kind of like well honestly why is the pool boy even there the pool boy should be cleaning the pool unless they're eating at the pool and it's like unless it's and his parents have engineered this situation so i'm sure everyone is familiar with the storyline but essentially his father has been having an affair with the pool boy and for some reason they decide to tell chandler this at thanksgiving dinner while the pool boy is serving him turkey which is an insane parenting choice but to be honest helena handbasket nor kyle being they're not people who are thinking about their child no but it's shot in this way that feels almost lynchian it's so bizarre to have the help in inverted commas in like an all white like servant's outfit proffering a platter saying more turkey mr chandler in a kind of like an accent i'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to be like yeah sort of sounds like a horrible fake indian accent but why would that be the case i don't know so it's all very strange it feels dreamlike and you don't see either of the heads of the parents yes it's very cow and chicken it's just a little boy immaculately dressed sitting at a table groaning with food in my memory surrounded by like pot plants and flowers in a hugely luxurious house while a quite small servant says to him in a sort of mystery accent more turkey mr chandler and from that we understand that that is the moment that Chandler understood that his father was in a sexual relationship with this servant.

24:26There's a lot going on there. And do you know what? I think the way it's shot, it's so weird because it's, I mean, it's pretty fucking ambitious for a sitcom filmmaking, right? I can't think of anything else in Friends where it dips into that kind of texture. Yeah, right. Friends has these bursts of artistic achievement, like when Emma's born, or is it then? I can't remember. and they're all like oh it's Ben when Ben's born and the closing credits are all shot from the perspective of Ben it's like he's opening his eyes again and then it goes like and you see them all over the crib it's like oh look he's closing his eyes and then it goes black and so Friends does have these little like flourishes of being like what if this was art I could do it I could make it up right because you're so you're you're really limited when you're making sitcom and you're just you're just there with sets right you have the same stationary sets that you're using over and over again.

25:17So those little flourishes and all your New York scenes are just you on a back lot that looked like the set of Annie. And they're like, yeah, those opportunities I imagine are fairly rare. And also I imagine you train yourself out of even thinking of them because you're using sets all the time. And so then using that Chandler's Thanksgiving set, it feels like it's intentionally the memory of a child who's remembering it a bit wrong. Yes, you're so right, because that's why there's no adults present. They don't have his parents there having a fight. Like, it's not like a classic divorce sequence.

25:53It's like a dream. It's like a bad dream. And that bad dream has haunted Chandler his whole life. Do you know what it reminds me of? Go. It's those chapters in, this is such a crazy reference, those chapters in the secret garden when everyone's dying of cholera and she's wandering around the mansion alone with a snake drinking wine. Yes, you're so right. Which explains why I love that scene so much because I love The Secret Garden. Please buy my book, The Secret Detectives. It's based on that one scene. You'll love it. Thank you. What a great opportunity to plug two of my books. You're so right, though.

26:24It's about The Secret Garden. It feels like The Secret Garden in that it's like a child who has everything and nothing, a child who is surrounded by luxury but totally deprived of love. Oh, my God. This is so... This is the kind of insights you come to the Christmas special for. It's like, imagine The Secret Garden, like the classic version starring Maggie Smith, but it's Chandler. but that's what happens could you be any more friends with that crow but monica is not dickin and ross but is ross dickin no ross is not dickin anyway the analogy falls down there but bb is dickin ross is colin obviously no joey is dickin ross is colin joey is dickin ross oh my god monica is martha sure okay yes but it has that texture of loneliness to it if chandra is a very lonely character and i think that perhaps the reason that christmas feels like chandler's time is because christmas is a time where if you're lonely you get double lonely where it feels like everybody else has a million invitations and a million plans and it feels like you know i don't think it's a coincidence that the last christmas episode is that one where he's in tulsa where it's like chandler could be alone for christmas something he's kind of professed to want this entire time he's very much like leave me out of christmas i leave me out of thanksgiving i don't want to be involved.

27:41If I eat a turkey, I'll be sick. I want to eat mac and cheese by myself. And he's on his own in a room with no Christmas. And he's so sad. He's so sad. And he wants to get back to his family. Yeah. And he realizes that his relationship to the holidays is no longer what it was when he was a child, but what it is as an adult because of what he's made it with the people he loves and like the family he's made. And then crucially, he ends the episode quitting his job because and he literally says like why should I be the only person who doesn't get to do what they love and it's like this real thing of being like oh you have like been two feet into this like job that you hate that no one understands for your entire adult life your entire life was so unstable that you clung to the first stable thing you ever had which was this horrible tech job you've broken the cycle and now you're like and you know what I've decided that I love Christmas I love my family um I'm gonna get a new job that I like it's literally it's a wonderful life but here's something fascinating consider this yeah the last ever holiday episode of friends is the thanksgiving episode in series 10 where hanta and monica decide not to host thanksgiving yes yeah yeah the first thanksgiving is them being like oh all our parents have like fucked off on us i'm so very nice there's something really wonderful about recording this christmas episode with you and i hope that our listeners will forgive some sentimental because it is after all sentimental garbage but also you're my friend and you're far away and we have been doing this Christmas special for many years but we've been friends for even longer and I'm glad we're talking about friends now in our 30s which is when friends ends right is when they get to their mid-30s rather than when we started talking about friends just sort of casually in our early 20s you know the idea of your parents saying I'm away for Christmas was so it felt so devastating and destabilizing and in some ways I think you know my parents were abroad your parents were obviously in Ireland when we first met and I think part of our friendship was being like okay let's cling together let's cling together and make a festive and the number of Christmas things we have and the Christmas traditions we've had and like beautiful Christmas dinners and just Christmas crafts and we've done so many Christmas projects because I think when we were in our early 20s the same age the friends are when they begin friends was about trying to forge tradition in the absence of our families because we were in London trying to forge new lives for ourselves and I remember the first time I cooked Christmas dinner for us and our friends and I truly did not realize this until I re-watched all the Christmas episodes in prep for this episode everybody kept asking me for different kinds of potato and that happens to Monica literally exact same thing and we well when we did that we had no idea that we were referencing friends we just we didn't make this is what we have in my house remember our friend Harry friend of the pod Harry Harris composer of the pod Harry Harris just being like well is there going to be Dauphin one and me being like yes there will certainly be dauphinoise like googling like what dauphinoise how make dauphinoise help please dauphinoise and just mashed potato for you because that was in your years when you were sad just being like I've got some microwave mashed potato and I'm gonna eat it cold you know and roast potatoes obviously and just re-watching that episode where Monica is trying so hard it made me feel a great deal of tenderness to because I would describe myself as I was a Phoebe who was like Monica is the way to be.

30:54I was a Phoebe child. Really? Yeah. I really identified with Monica's need for things to be perfect. I never identified with Rachel, obviously. But Phoebe, I identified very strongly with her scattiness. And then in my early 20s, I was just like, if I can just keep a tight enough handle on absolutely everything, everything will be perfect. And I tried really hard to have like a perfect house and to make it all nice and to, you know, always be baking something, even though I was 21 and could have been in a club. I could have had my top off the whole time. If you're 21 and listening to this, just take your top off.

31:26Yeah. I mean, like you, you, you've released a cookbook at 25. That's a thing that most people don't do until they're like 40. Certainly. And I think it's very telling that every single article about that cookbook was like, she's incredibly young. I know you thought she was 40, but she's not, she's 25. And guess what? Widowed. Crazy, hey? But it is funny, isn't it? You and I talk a lot when things are, things are hard, but when things are harder, when things are significant about oh I guess this must be a season finale yes it is our major coping mechanism for getting through love I think it's because we the early years of our friendship and the friendship of our kind of like immediate group were so tumultuous um because my friend your boyfriend was diagnosed with cancer when we were we were all very young and he was all very young and let's just say it his parents were not around to help him with that and no they were not and and it we just became the unit that formed around him and around each other and like I wouldn't wish that on any friend group because it's a it's a devastating thing to go through but what it does for you is that it it brings you closer on a level that you you only really get with close family members um so when you say found family about those kinds of people people who you've stared down cancer and death with um it it doesn't mean found family as in I love her like a sister it means she is my sister.

32:44It gives you a real sense of narrative purpose because like, like me and Gav, we're talking so much about like trying to manage our relationship now that we're in a long distance marriage effectively. And I keep being like, and this is just the time when we do this. And this is just our, you know, whatever, our act one break or whatever. And he was like, you can't just think of everything in terms of stories. And I was like, well, you're going to anyway. Like every single person, they look back on their life and they see it in terms of like oh that was the tough time before the good time happened and that was the like this the the lonely time before I met this person like you we all think of our lives in terms of stories lives are divided into chapters you know you just yeah I think it's also the reason why I have two things to say but the first thing is that like the reason it's helpful to think about season filales and seasons is because it's there are no endings right there's just where you choose to stop telling the story.

33:38You know, we both know this, you write a lot of fiction, I write a little bit of fiction, but even with a memoir, you know, you choose when to stop telling the story. And I think part of thinking about your life in terms of a season such as a season of Friends, and I do think we're thinking of Friends when we talk about it, because Friends ran for so long, and those characters grew so much and had so much happen to them, is it's helpful sometimes to think, ah, this big dramatic event, that's probably just a pause, and we'll pick up again tomorrow. exactly the same we'll pick up tomorrow pick up again tomorrow and the cameras will keep rolling and we'll begin again i think the other thing i was thinking of was you know that christina olsen poem eating kit kats after the last hurricane we decided to split up i mean i love it but i own the listeners will have heard well they the listeners should google it the the narrator is sitting there with her partner or their partner and they're eating kit kats and the narrator says this is probably over her and the partner says please don't make this into some fucking story and the narrator says I only meant the storm and I think about that as the two kinds of ways people approach life which is you can try not to make it into a fucking story but it is already a fucking story and although the narrator of that poem says I only meant the storm nonetheless less there she is making it into a perfect crystalline poem about that moment where you decide something is never coming back and I think a lot about please don't make this into some fucking story because as a memoirist I'm always making things into some fucking story I'm trying really hard to get us to stop writing memoir but it seems absolutely impossible I don't know if I'm self-obsessed or what but it just dogs me I can't stop it's like every day I'm just like well what if I wrote a little bit more about what was happening about my life, my feelings?

35:28You know, I'm like, oh, I'll write a Christmas gift guide. It's like, no, it's actually time to write a sort of think piece about December and my feelings and my sort of what I'm doing. Exactly. Talk about my short, fat Christmas dream. And I think part of that narrativisation, the ongoing, does come for me directly from friends, because 10 series is a lot to watch characters learn and grow and become somebody different. Chandler I think for me is the real change obviously they all simmer down a bit Monica I would say she simmers down the least Monica and Ross Monica gets way crazier I would say like people people talk a lot about like how um how Joey gets dumber but I think is even Joey's dumbness I find very easy on the ear and the eye but I find the fact that like Monica's erratic gets more kind of neurotic and more competitive and more shrill.

36:20I find it so hard. It's why I actually watch the later seasons far less because I'm just like, I can't be dealing with Monica. I just can't be dealing with her. Monica gets very little character development. Ross, I think, also gets very little character development. He just wants the girl and he gets the girl. It's like, will they, won't they, will they, won't they, will they, won't they, yes, they will. Okay, fine. Phoebe, I don't think she changes that much. I think Phoebe simply is like, I will remain true to myself and Phoebe is a perfect Christmas spirit person and the reason I think the festive episodes don't tend to be about Phoebe even when she's jingling a you know jingling a bell for charity oh I think they are sometimes but we'll get back to that in a second sometimes about Phoebe but Phoebe doesn't need the holidays the way that Chandler does Phoebe already is looking for sparks of joy Phoebe's already thinking what's the wonder in this day You know, Phoebe's someone who, when she sees a beautiful doll's house, is like, it's out of a box.

37:14I've got a bubble machine. I've got a dog. It's built on a burial ground. Phoebe's someone whose life is full of magic and wonder. And this is why her wedding is my favorite of the friend's weddings. Obviously, Ross and Emily's is very beautiful. But Phoebe's wedding is for me because it feels the most true to Phoebe in that she finds exquisite beauty in the coffeehouse and the street and the fairy lights. and it's all just the way it always is and it's like that's Phoebe's Phoebe's secret is being able to look at the every day as if it's kind of been touched by gold and you know you see this even when you get a reference to Phoebe living on the street you know the fact that when she mugged Ross she just wanted to read his comic over and over again like she's a little marvel also the fact that she never forgets any of her friends from the street she never forgets any of her friends she has a huge circle of people who love her from all walks of life Phoebe is the embodiment of the spirit of Christmas she is so generous and she is so thoughtful and she is full of traditions you know her traditions are her own but they're very specific I'm thinking particularly of I can't remember what he does but when she's like oh that's Lyle when they're talking about a homeless guy who threatens people she's like yeah he always does that isn't that nice he's still doing it he's still working he's still alive how great Phoebe doesn't need Christmas because Phoebe is Christmas with all the bittersweetness that implies you know it's really hard for her that you know that Christmas where she's trying to find her dad because her grandma's she's stuck in the car she's stuck in the car because she doesn't know where to go she doesn't know whether she wants to go in and she gets and the boys are just sitting there being like that was better you got as far as the post box I love that scene someone when they just her little fingers through the or their fingers through the kind of the pay slot in the cab is just so lovely another thing about that episode that I really love as well is like, I don't know why this is so dear to me, you know, in the closing credits where I think the whole plan was that they were going to hit up an outlet mall on the way back from seeing Phoebe's dad upstate and they were going to do all their Christmas shopping, but they were in the car too long and they couldn't do it.

39:18So they just like bought everyone gifts from the gas station and it's like car air fresheners and condoms and stuff. And there's something about that 45 seconds of like the credits playing over that while they give everyone their shitty presents that is just like that is both my brothers that is just like that is my this that is my brothers at Christmas just like for years of our lives just like my brother Shane pretending like he bought me a gift and then he left it in the car and he parked his car somewhere else side note for the first year of my life I I never used to understand why people left their Christmas shopping for the last week before Christmas and this year I'm like oh it's nearly Christmas and I got to do some Christmas shopping.

39:59And that's adulthood, I guess, is realizing that people just genuinely run out of time. Anyway, I love that episode because, again, I think it's just so brave of Phoebe to go. It's so brave of her to try. And the grandma is so funny and bad. Because here's graduation. Another graduation. Another graduation. Just round and round my head. another graduation. What there is also is such love in that life as well. Because Phoebe is a person who lived on the street, but actually turns out to have a great deal of family. She has her birth mother and she has, I can't. Her birth mother, Phoebe Abbott, having done quite a lot of research on Friends this year, she has her birth mother, Phoebe Abbott, who was a teenage mom who was very close and also in a throuple with Lily and Frank Buffet.

40:51And then, so they had, she had the twins and she gave them to Frank and Lily. Frank and Lily then got married and they split up some years later. And then Lily killed herself. Yes. And then Phoebe's on the street and then she finds her grandma again? Question mark. Yes. But we don't know why that happens. And we don't know why Phoebe and Ursula went the separate ways either. Except that they hate each other. I actually do understand that. Because if you go through something traumatic with someone, I think it either makes you the closest you can be, or it makes you be like, and I'll never talk to you again because every time I look at you, it reminds me of agonising pain.

41:26And I think it's much easier for, like Phoebe's, this is why she's the spirit of Christmas. She's this like cracked open thing to the world. She's just so like, I have a pure gold heart. You want to see it? You can take it right out of my chest. And Ursula has gone the other way, which is to be like, nothing and nobody matters to me. Nothing can ever touch me or hurt me. And in a way, Phoebe and Ursula, they're like two halves of a whole the happy medium would be to be like guarded sometimes and open sometimes but instead Phoebe is always open and that's why she has so many friends even from the street because it seems like she will shower when Tibet is free and that's at their wedding isn't it?

42:07yeah when they don't want her friend playing the steel drums because she smells and Phoebe's like she will shower when Tibet is free at this point Phoebe has been living a medium bougie life for like at least eight years she's now marrying this wasp and they have tons of money and it's all 18 bathrooms in this house and I threw up in the coat closet but she still is like no my friend will be playing the steel drums and she will not be washing because Tibet is still not free something I do care about and I'm glad that my friend is taking a stance I feel that she is the spirit of Christmas I feel that Christmas with Phoebe is just like oh more of same like you don't the Christmas kind of illuminates Phoebe but it doesn't it's sort of like they're the same it's just like oh two different kinds of fairy lights they're both kind of slightly bittersweet they're both kind of this thing of being like I guess you help people wherever you can and you try your best all the time which is Phoebe's real thing right she's always trying so hard whereas Chandler is transformed by Christmas and Chandler's relationship to Christmas is transformative Christmas and Thanksgiving I understand to Americans that these are two very distinct occasions.

43:13To me, a person who doesn't understand what Thanksgiving is, they seem exactly the same, just long. Right, right. It's so funny. The whole, the thing of like, I still can't get over that Americans care about Thanksgiving more than they care about Christmas. It feels satanic to me. It's wild. I don't understand it. It's wild. To have two turkeys so close together? I guess they were abundant in America. Whereas, why are we eating turkey when they're not that abundant? Hi, I'm not a huge turkey fan. But I'd like us to talk about the Thanksgiving episodes, actually, because Thanksgiving is the center of the trauma for Chandler.

43:47But also, I do think some of the finest work. And if you want to talk about like these sort of artistic flexes of friends, I do think those flashback episodes are some of the finest work in all of sitcom. So if we can agree that Thanksgiving is primarily a lens through which to view the changing selves of Chandler Bing, it is phenomenal that we get to go back in the past and see him with various hairstyles in various guises. And it's like little little blue suit suit. I don't know. And it's like a little quiff. and Monica when she's trying to be sexy and she like has the carrots between all her fingers and she's like like dragging a tea towel going like it's rough on my skin oh it's so smooth and you really see her desire to to practice and become better to be as good as Rachel and I just think a it's lovely when Courtney Cox gets to do something funny because so often she's just truly funny yes exactly and to see her with the carrots threaded through her fingers to be like is this sexy is this what chandler will like i think it's lovely and it's lovely that she's been trying to impress chandler her whole life her whole life her whole career is because chandler says you should be a chef and she goes genuinely in the end do you think she genuinely loves being a chef that is more question for you actually considering you are closer to the chef profession than I am.

45:14No, because I would hate being a chef. I actually think Monica would be a very good recipe developer. I think she has the right personality for it, yeah. I don't know whether she loves being a chef. We certainly never see her enjoying her work very much. She's always unhappy at her job. I guess the aiming for perfection kind of feel very chef-y. But I also think she's a very vulnerable soft person because she was brought up by an abusive feeder. Let's call Judy what she is. She is not abnormally abusive, but she is, you know, she's got some weird attitudes to food and most people with mothers can recognize that to some degree but there's that part where you know she's got those pies and she tries to offer them to monica and monica's decided to get thin so that she can seduce chandler next year and her mom is like oh you should eat two full pies now after dinners and it's like this is how long have you been doing this to her how long have you been saying to her eat more if you loved me you'd eat more and then laughing at her because she does what you say and wants to please you and I this is the interesting thing I think that the the Judy and Monica relationship is one of the most interesting and durable in terms of the relationships many women all around the world have with their mothers which is that often motherhood exists on this very interesting fault line between your mother wanting to groom you into being the most um delicious thing a man can have so that you'll be okay for the rest of your life.

46:41Wow, that was in the attic. Right, right, exactly. That you can be like the most, yeah, fit thing for men to have around. And therefore, Mrs. Bennett. So you won't ever go hungry. Yeah, exactly. It's the Mrs. Bennett thing. But it's also that what runs along that fault line is a dual thing of like your mother, from the moment she first met you, fed you with her body in many cases. and she wants you to be fed all the time and she wants you to be nourished all the time and she demonstrates how much she's able to love you by how much she feeds you. And that's why I know so many women who like their moms are commenting on their weight in one breath and then they're saying, you know, have some more mac and cheese in the next breath.

47:22Do you know what I mean? And like they, like I've had so many conversations with women about that and like it's not that their moms hate them. It's just that they have these two like parallel motherhood instincts that just get confused. Yeah, and I think it's not quite right to say, maybe I was harsh on Judy a second ago. And Judy's trying her best and Monica's trying her best, but it doesn't make it easy. It doesn't make it easy for her. And I worry that that relationship would be hard for her to pass in a restaurant setting. I find it hard to think of Monica achieving true fulfilment in a restaurant setting.

48:01Like, I don't know what she'll do when they move to Westchester? You know? Maybe she'll find a way. Oh yeah, there's no conversation about that. I could see her setting up like a neighbourhood bakery and taking real pride in that. Of baking. Because she seems to love baking. She doesn't love cooking. Yes, she loves baking. She loves making candy. I would say we don't really see her cook anything that seems delicious at all. Like, there's an episode, and I can't remember what it is, where the food is so disgusting. I had to like stop and Google to see if other people were also repulsed by Monica's cooking.

48:35It's like a grey soup in a glass bowl and it's the most horrible thing I think I've ever seen in my entire life. I don't think Monica... Is Monica a great cook? She gets terrible reviews. She got at least one terrible review for sure. Yeah, is she a great cook or is she simply the friend who cooks? Well, that's it, isn't it? And you know, it's easy to confuse the two. Like, have I based an entire career on simply being the friend who can cook? Maybe. it's like I'm certainly the best cook in my uh friendship group of 23 year olds who don't know what a kitchen is so I guess I'll write a cookbook and that's my life and now yeah there was there was no other 22 year old who was panfying pigeon breasts in her in her like kitchen come living dining space um so it had to be you I'm afraid and I guess that is one reason I feel a great kinship with Monica is the sense of like being a host and that's why I think the arc from the first Thanksgiving episode to the last is so important and interesting because the first one Monica's like dare I host dare I be mother dare I cook all these foods for people and then the last Thanksgiving episode is I think it's very fascinating and very sad about your early 30s is Monica and Chandler jointly decide they cannot host Thanksgiving anymore that they can't do it they're too busy the work stuff is too stressful and they need to take a break from tradition and the other friends go absolutely fucking nuts and they're like no that's our tradition traditions have to change I get fed a lot of like content for parenting toddlers on Instagram for some reason like which is crazy considering you do not have any toddlers no but I do a lot of craft zero toddlers and I saw some woman on Instagram just being like one of the best things you can do for yourself when you have kids is uh reading like redefine tradition as something we like to do some years.

50:21Oh, that's nice. Isn't it nice? And this is why I don't like delete the parenting content because often I'm like, that's actually useful intel for me as a human being parenting my own self. I'm a person who can get really stuck on like, but if we don't do it every year, it won't be special. And like this year, lots of my stuff is in storage. Like I'm having a very exciting, but quite strange year. And it's like, oh, I just, maybe we will not unpack everything. Maybe we will not go to the attic and get stuff out of storage. Maybe we'll just be like here with the things we have and we'll do the Christmas special on Zoom because here's the thing Monica is persuaded to make a Thanksgiving dinner and she tries really hard and Chandler helps her he only makes the cranberry sauce but god bless him he really is like I'll be there I'll be there cooking and that's what she trusts him with and everybody's late because everybody's got different preoccupations there's different stuff going on they want to take Emma to a beauty pageant by the way a story that would never be Phoebe's line they obviously wanted to give it to monica but you couldn't have phoebe doing the christmas the thanksgiving cooking so fine but joey is like i got tickets for a game because joey at this point i can't remember what joey's career is but he's a guy who can get tickets to games they're always getting he's back on days of our lives at this point yeah joey's an actor who's like oh yeah it would be great to see my friends but also i got given these free tickets for this thing and i don't see why we shouldn't go and it's a far cry from the beginning where it's like we have nothing and nobody else we have nothing to do and nobody else to see and we just are going to be in this one room clinging together like life rafts and I I think a lot about that episode and I've been thinking a lot about it in terms of that like thanks that parenting influencer saying a thing we like to do sometimes because I think one reason I am very glad that Friends ended when it did is that it allows a graceful way for things to change like there are some real moments of like change in Friends that this is not a festive episode but you know when Monica moves in with when Chandler moves in with Monica and she's like and I have to live with her boy and I love to see that their friendship remains the same and as solid and I believe that their friendships will all remain the same and as solid as they ever were in different ways and in different shapes and different forms as they have kids or don't have kids and you know maybe there's a future where Ben and Carol and Susan and Ross and Rachel and Emma all move to Paris or like not to rehash the ross apologist episode which was very important as a ross apologist but you know they have got a very unusual and very powerful relationship those guys he walks her down the aisle he walks his wife down the aisle to the person she had an affair with because that's how much he loves her and his son and you know carol is trying to like raise a child who she has no legal right to and ross is making that happen and i feel very tender about them yeah me too but then again there you have a perfect example of we start the show with ross being like i am getting a divorce because my wife is having an affair and actually he does get a divorce because his wife's having an affair but what happens is they become friends and co-parents who raise like not an attractive child but nonetheless a child i'm really i'm a real i'm a ross apologist but a ben hater I'm such a Ben hater I am a real Ben hater I find Ben to be very unpleasant as a child The thing is it's not nice to call children ugly but that child is an adult man now so it's fine When Ben has that very pale bowl cut for his toddler years I find him horrifying to look at Monica Bang I hate Monica Bang as an entire thing I hate the Ben storylines I hate looking at Ben when Ben is like a kid with short hair who like has lines and stuff I'm like fine with him then holiday armadillo I'm so down with holiday armadillo that is the only Ben storyline I really fuck with I'm glad you brought up holiday armadillo because I love love that episode because again and you you and I watched that episode recently and we realized it was one of the few episodes that is directed by David Schwimmer that's really meaningful because yeah it's the episode that's a is it the only episode about Judaism I think it is they're not a big faith based show there's not a lot of Christ in there either there's certainly nobody of any other any other faith what's really what's really interesting about faith in friends and obviously neither of us are Jewish so it's you know it's very much finger in the air observations from two Gentiles but like the the show even though Rachel's Jewish Monica's Jewish and Ross is Jewish the show rarely feels like it is Jewish unless the older people are involved like unless it's Rachel's parents who are involved or the Geller parents who are involved they they bring so much of that culture with them you know and like the the way the way they deliver jokes the jokes that they're delivering the way they talk about like doctors the way they're sort of like kind of they just they make it feel like a more like rounded Jewish show in a way that like it they it doesn't feel that way when it's just the six friends together except for the holiday armadillo episode which is directed by schwimmer and also like it literally opens on you see the kind of the the flat decorated for christmas but you also see a hanukkah blanket and like it's like oh we've never seen that before yes it's fascinating isn't it to have the hanukkah blanket right there where it doesn't appear most of the items in friends appear routinely you know we're all familiar with all the posters of friends and all the horrible lamps of friends and you know that horrible lamps of friends wow carol i've changed my mind i want my lens to be horrible lamps of friends oh my god when monica starts giving rachel shit for bringing home that nude girly lamp like yes is it a silly dumb ugly lamp of course but is it i don't see it as being any worse than any of the lamps already in that house no monica has no leg to stand on vis-a-vis ugly day lamps i do one thing I love very deeply about Friends is is the decor and I again another great candidate for my lens decor of Friends interior decor of Friends but I hope that we can talk about it a lot we can talk about it here too because of course there's so much in there so much texture it's like when you look at an old photo of like your childhood and you're like you you'll get this feeling you're like you and your siblings are looking at old photos and you're not really interested in what you look like or what each other looks like but you're like looking back and you're like being like oh look I remember that like I remember that zebra used to chew its ears or like I remember that dress it was awful like I always wanted to like rip it and then one day I buried it in the garden but you know what I mean and you're looking at also being like oh wow did the kitchen look like that was it that small why is that there and you're like looking at all the like tiny artifacts I don't know I sometimes feel like Friends has that same quality to me particularly Monica's apartment that same doll's house quality as a Nora Ephron movie you know I think we talked about this in our Nora Ephron episode but you know the um you've got male apartment yeah I always want to like make it into a book like a paper book that opens up where you can see like oh there's her daisies there's her computer oh like turn it pull this flap it really grows blue and that's how I feel about Monica's apartment too and I think it's particularly true at Christmas when you start discovering all new locations like when you discover that the bench by the window can lift up oh man oh my god that's such picture book stuff and then when you find monica's messy closet and the fact that it even the fact that it's not messy in that episode i find very like charming to be like time changes i love do you know what something that i find really charming when when uh that we're talking about decor you know how like obviously there are flashback episodes when it goes back to when they were teenagers but the flashback episodes that are kind of like oh three years ago or five years ago when it'll be like Chandler will have a goatee or something where it's like they'll have the couch in a different place and they'll just kind of slightly rearrange the furniture in the way that people really do but also it's just like for the set decorators they're like yeah that we're trying to give it like a sense of a sense of that this set even though it is completely static is somehow always in flux because real people live here I want to talk about the way that Monica's perfectionism and the holidays I want to talk about when she's making candy for all the neighbors.

58:33And I want to talk about when she's making cookies as tips because they don't have any money. Monica's holiday arc is this. She cares so much about getting it right. She cooks everybody their favorite kind of potato. She makes the cookies and people are returning them crushed. And she is crushed. Then it turns out, no, Traeger liked them. He loved them. He thought they were thoughtful and treasured. And she's like, oh, oh, you really like my thing. Then she makes the candy and everyone is so crazy for the candy. and she wants to stay up all night because they're like, people are saying they're like little drops of heaven.

59:02And she loves that. She loves that so much. She loves how much praise she's getting. I think you can also factor in here Dick Clark's rocking New Year's Eve where she's so - The routine, of course. Where she's so desperate to be perfect that she's like, I'm doing my routine. This is my routine. And it's dreadful, obviously. Shout out to Ross, who is really, as discussed on this show, a nice little mover. This is something you and I have become obsessed with on this rewatch, which is that, because Ross is like the, the awkward geeky character but actually and as everyone always talks about like his physical comedy is sort of just over and above anything that should be like possible in this century without having grown up on vaudeville first but like it's incredible um but also you can't be a great physical comedian without also being kind of a sexy person because like it's all about oh my god there is a correlation you're so there is a correlation because it's all about like an awareness of where your body is and isn't you know it's just all about like the face the space you're filling the spaces you're not filling and how to like negotiate that air together it's like it's physical comedy and dance like they're they're it's all motion it's all expression right and so when you watch um obviously the routine in friends is is like supposed to be this ridiculous thing that him and monica share and it's like hilarious and we love watching it but you watch Courtney Cox perform and she looks like someone doing a bad dance routine you watch David Schwimmer perform it and he looks like somebody who's doing an incredible like like a bad routine but with incredible fluidity like he clearly has some kind of dance background and then there's this other scene I was fighting with Monica Heisey about this I asked her to rank all of the friends in terms of how good at sex that she thought that they were and then she put Ross at the bottom and I was like Monica get real I was like Monica get real just because you're not physically attracted to the character yourself because he's dweeby and annoying which I guess that's fine you can't say he's bad at sex clearly he's good at sex everyone wants to have sex with him all the time he has the most beautiful girlfriends in New York City and there's this never short of women never and there's this bit it's one of my favorite episodes it's where uh Richard and Monica are still going out and he stays over and also Ross stays over and it's quite awkward because obviously Ross has known Richard his entire life and now he's having sex in a joining room to him it's that whole thing with like uh Rachel and Monica having fights about condoms and stuff and there's this bit where Rachel they're talking about uh her old relationship with Pablo and she says a very like a very relatable gaffe from a woman who is thinks she's saying something nice but isn't saying something nice at all which is um oh you know what you and i have is so intimate and so special and with me and pablo it was just meaningless animal sex and he's so it's so real that you would say that to your boyfriend and think it was a compliment and he would have it as the biggest insult to his masculinity ever the worst day of his life to be sure worst day of his life and then eventually they get to the end she's sort of like is standing on the bed and she like takes her his face in her hands and she's she's like kissing him and she's like you know what we have is amazing and then uh and he says she's with you it's the best it's ever been and then he says until now and he grabs her ankles and he flips her on the bed and it's so fish it's so sexy it's so sexy monica i think you've made an error there because you personally don't fancy ross look i don't really fancy ross of a day-to-day either but i cannot say he's not good at sex do you want to be definitely good at sex he's good at sex and also like he's good enough at sex that rachel wants to have sex with him in the museum which how carried away do you have to be to be like we're gonna wake up in the display tomorrow they don't even start off in the display he's so good at sex that a woman who's pretty certain that she's attracted to women stays with him for a long time good dick is a prison caroline good dick is a prison i think that's probably why it took carol so long to realize that she's exclusively attracted to women because she is having pretty good sex with ross oh my god and She's like, it's not my favorite, but it's not bad.

1:03:14Because importantly, obviously, the notion of bisexuality is too advanced for friends. But like, Carol never says she's bi. She says she's a lesbian. Yeah, I think that's canon. Look, Ross is good at sex. That's one of the things we've all established now is that Ross must be good at sex because all these gorgeous women want to sleep with him. Okay, here's what I think. Can I give you my rundown of how I think the friends are at sex? I'm not going to rank them because I think that, I also think it's babyish for us to live in binaries of people either being good or bad in sex. It's all a dance and we're all looking for our best partner.

1:03:45But Ross is good at sex. Joey is good at sex. Phoebe is good at sex. Canonically, Phoebe is good at sex. Rachel, I think, is a pillow queen. I don't think Rachel does a lot in bed. Rachel certainly gets by on being the hottest cheerleader. Yeah, absolutely. She gets by on that. Totally. Also, Monica is good at sex. Chandler is not good at sex, but Monica makes him good at sex. Well, we know that because she makes him the map. Yes, of course. Monica must be good at sex for this reason. She knows her own body well enough, generally women's bodies well enough, to be able to draw a map of like, okay, you want to be better at sex.

1:04:20Here's how you do it. Because Monica lost her virginity so late, but she was set, like when we meet Monica when she's Fat Monica, Fat Monica is like a delicious person. She's so like bubbly and full of like weird, like private girl passion. You're like, oh, that's a girl who's been masturbating for a long time. and reading a long time. Reading a lot of erotic fiction from the library. What I will say is, Fat Monica read Flowers in the Attic over and over again. Absolutely. Obsessively. Fat Monica read Shirley Conrad's Lace. Certainly. I mean, remember when she gets a kink for Santa? She wants...

1:04:57Oh, yeah. That's in The Holiday Armadillo where she's just like, you think you could wear this later? And Chandler reasonably says to his Jewish girlfriend about her Jewish dad, did your dad ever dress up like Santa? And she says no. And he says then that's okay.

1:05:15It's the only thing to be like and now she has a king for Santa and she's just going to lean into that so she must, she knows herself which is the key to good sex right is to know yourself. The way I've been like I don't know this sort of metaphor came to me not too long ago and it's been playing on my mind ever since. Sometimes I think of the place of sex in our lives is like if you think of like Like think of a map of London and you think of all these little, not royal parks, but like nature preserves that you see in these London neighborhoods. They're like, and here is our stag beetle loggery.

1:05:46And here is where we must preserve so the blackbirds can build their nests or whatever. It's like the role of sex in the human life is that this is in this kind of lives that we lead that is swilling with information and small devices and blinking red lights. and like things that things and tasks that like primates and chimps are not supposed to do. Like sex is the one part of our lives where things get to be sort of natural. And we're like, this is what a chimp would do. And I honestly think that people who over academicize their life when it comes to sex are headed down a path of mostly misery, misery and open relationships, organized bio Excel spreadsheets.

1:06:29And I think just like, let it be what it wants to be. And I think when you get a character like Monica, who is so uptight in every part of her life, but she has this one layer of life that is her nature preserve, I think she's really good at it. Yes. And I also, yeah, I think she spent a lot of time thinking about her own body in a way that is not always conducive to being good at sex, but certainly she knows what feels good. Much like Adrienne says on the yoga videos, find what feels good, Monica. Yeah, because it's like the one part of her life where she experienced joy with her body that has nothing to do with food oh my god it's the one part of her life here you go it's the one part of her life where she's always been able to experience joy there you go like without complicated shame we have it without thinking about like this is you know thinking to monica's early forays into masturbation and not where i thought this christmas episode was going but nonetheless i believe she's you know reading flowers in the attic and reaching for a pillow

1:07:32I'm so glad that we've really clarified for everyone in the last podcast of the year and probably for another six months just sort of like Monica's relationship to masturbation I also think it's important because she has to have some pleasures that aren't just being neurotic Monica's good at sex we've agreed yeah okay so glad that we got there say something

1:07:54and people like going home with him but they don't go home with him that much like they go home with him one time and they're like what a fantastic time maybe and i understand that some of that's because he doesn't call them back but if you're as good looking and as charming and as like forthcoming as joey do you need to be good at sex in the way that ross has had to evolve to be fantastic at sex i think what joey is is as you say good looking and handsome and large um and And what he is is very biddable and very trainable. Which, should Joey ever end up in a long-term relationship, will really be good for his partner.

1:08:27Yeah. Like, obviously, I discount the sitcom Joey because it's nothing to me and I never saw it and I don't care about it. Do you think Joey would end up in a relationship or do you think that that's just not in Joey's nature? I know we're just speculating wildly as to the future of our friends because, of course, our friends will live forever in their youth. No, the thing is, I do think he will end up in a relationship. I think he will probably get tricked into a relationship by someone who maybe has evil intentions. But I also think he will have children and I think he will have closer relationships with the children than he will with his wife or ex-wife.

1:09:03Oh, a very good point. The only, I was going to say, what if he ended up in a relationship with someone like Estelle? His old agent. An older woman. An older starlet for Joey. Oh, I would love that. And they're living in their big house. It's like her big house, but it's all like mad and exquisite. And he like gets to be a toy boy even when he's like 50. You know what really struck me re-watching all these episodes? Estelle is young. Estelle is young. Her actress is young. I don't know how old she is, but they put her in a mental wig with a crazy manicure and a big cigarette. But if you actually look at Estelle's face, that lady is our age.

1:09:40Wow. Well, that explains why they're all sort of shocked at her death. Precisely, yeah. Poor Estelle. one of the few characters in Friends permitted to speak who is not one of the key friends. And you know, given how expensive it is to have someone speak in a TV show, they must have really liked it. So this is a layer of Friends I've only come to understand since I started making a TV show, which is that like you write these scripts and you then have to, when you eventually go through many, many drafts of them, you have to make them producible at a certain point where you have to start looking at them, not as an artist, but as somebody who is trying to make the cheapest possible show.

1:10:15not a show but a show that comes under budget and at one point your lovely producer will say to you listen you have like four you have all these characters who only have one line uh you have like amy in episode one who says this you have beth who says this in episode two you have meg who says this in episode i'm just i'm just picking the little women so i don't give spoilers away from my own show um uh and they say listen it costs like two thousand euros just to get anybody to speak on screen. That is the minimum that we have to pay a special extra. Can these people just not be compiled into one person and then they can be the person that delivers all the kind of extra bits of like colour and little bits of story and little bits of dialogue?

1:10:59The Gunthers, if you will. Every show, whether it's like Succession or Friends or whatever, has like its like subcast of Gunthers like who aren't that important, who don't really have their own storylines, but they're adding sort of colour and they're adding information. And like, what's weird about that is I was like, oh, that's why in all these episodes of Friends, you have like these parties where no one speaks. Like literally these people do not speak. These like, because it's like expensive to have someone speak on screen. But then it's like something to go back to what you and I said at the beginning of the episode, which is like when you think of your life in terms of seasons of a TV show, like there's a friend that you and I have that like, we didn't see him for years, but he came back into our lives recently just because like, just because he just did.

1:11:44We just saw him at a couple of parties and me and Gav started going for drinks with him. And now he's back in our lives again. And the thing that you keep saying is like, wow, he's back for season eight. He left to do movies, but now he's come back. And I was like, yeah, he left to do movies and now he's come back. And the thing about that is it's like, oh, like if I were making a TV show of my life, I'd be like, let's bring back that character because we've cast him already and the audience know who he is. And we'll just like get him in there to say some stuff and to pick up a new storyline. so it's like that weird thing of like tv art art and live and live and live and art well you know I think like you know I must consider that I am in a relationship with I am marrying someone who made a movie with you when you were both what like 21 22 yeah yeah yeah yeah like we wrote a movie together when we were 21 and that movie was made and we went to a film festival in Wales together to promote it and then we mostly lost touch and then years later you met him on a dating app and now he's the man you're marrying something about putting together like guest lists for a wedding spoiler I'm getting married I've not actually said that anymore oh yeah Ella's engaged by the way yeah that's a nice Christmas tree people and it's like oh I'm pulling together all these people and it's like oh they're all re-emerging in the plot you know not to keep quoting poetry there's a roddy lumsden line i have always liked which is just people rise and fall in the plot and it makes me very happy to think about people who maybe i haven't seen lately who will come back and who will rise and fall and what it makes like the thing about tradition being something you do sometimes and not all the time it's just one of those things where you can be like oh friends the friends are friends they'll come back they'll rise again gunther will get another go.

1:13:30Janice will be back again. And you know, there are friends who don't, there are friends who don't come back in our viewing, but who maybe come back later on in the friend's lives. You don't know. We only get 10 years with these people and that's nothing in the grand scheme. I know there's a point I was in the middle of making earlier and we got sidetracked, which is about how Monica's first Thanksgiving, you know, she does her first Thanksgiving when she's so uptight, then there's the cookies, then there's the candy. And then her last Thanksgiving, she is so capable by then of making a perfect dinner and everything is so perfect.

1:13:56And Chanda is helping and everything is so perfect and she didn't want to do it but she can by this point she's 10 years into hosting thanksgiving she can make a thanksgiving dinner in her sleep basically and phoebe and rachel go off to the baby show so that emma can win a prize and joey and ross are at the ice hockey and they come back and everybody's late and they have to put their heads through the door yeah i love the heads to the door the floating heads are great and the dinner is so perfect and then they all burst through the door and it all gets ruined and at that moment of ruined monica is taking a call from the adoption agency to say that they will get their baby and she doesn't care she doesn't care everything is ruined and monica doesn't care and that's her arc is to look at like the chaos and just be delighted that her friends are there with her for this moment that will change her life forever this moment she's been longing for since she was a little girl and that she thought she would never have because monica's great fear is that she's unlovable monica and don't say that yeah monica's great two broken toys the two broken toys and they both feel that they're unlovable and then they get to experience this moment of oh we're gonna be parents surrounded by the people who helped them realize that they could love each other and be loved and there's food everywhere and it's all disgusting chaos and monica can't even see it because she's so happy i'm crying that's where we're at oh that's monica's arc chanda's arc is to care about Thanksgiving and Christmas and Monica's arc is not to care Monica's arc is to think they balance each other out they they've come to this place where Monica can deal with things being ruined because something so much more important is happening which is love and Chandler can care because he's checked his job he's just free and he's trying something new and that's really hard in your mid-30s is to try something new and I'm doing it right now baby I know and like this year's had loads of bits of like job that I never thought I would be able to do and I'm doing it and it's great and like it's hard man it's hard to be like what if things what if I had more dreams and I find it very moving you know I'm aware we haven't talked about Rachel at Christmas and that's because I haven't got anything to say about Rachel at Christmas no she has no I don't think I don't think there's much there for Rachel at Christmas there's nothing there but she's also present but Rachel's big storyline at Christmas is that she likes to return gifts and that's it funny because she doesn't change and that is interesting to me is it's just like yeah you know that one friend who does that annoying thing and they all just kind of accept it they all accept she's gonna return stuff because you just sometimes people change for the better sometimes people change for worse and sometimes people don't change and you just have to be okay with all of those things if you want to form relationships with humans in an ongoing capacity i don't know i feel very moved when i think about i think about monica not caring about that mess because her life's gonna get a lot messier monica with twins she'll have to stop being trill because the one thing you know they explicitly say they don't want a parent like the gellers and they explicitly say they don't want a parent like Chandra's parents.

1:17:03They want to raise kids who are happy and well adjusted and I don't know that they'll do it. But I know they'll try. And that's half the battle. I love them. And that's festive. And that's festive. It's festive to try your best. I just keep thinking about the last five minutes of It's a Wonderful Life where George Bailey like runs through his town being like Merry Christmas you all savings and loans and Merry Christmas this and he goes home to his family and wraps his arms around them and like every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings he's like oh that's Chandler coming back from Tulsa it's Chandler coming back from Tulsa I hadn't realized that it actually is such a classic Christmas story of like um a man learning the value of it's a Christmas carol it's the wonderful life oh my god the difference is but the difference is it's like we've been on this journey with him on a drip feed for 10 years.

1:18:03Imagine watching those first episodes, not knowing that Chandler's going to love Christmas so much he has to leave his job to do it. It's actually such a good, of all the payoffs, it's one of the best. It really is. To leave your career that you've been in for so long and that was worth it to you to move state for, which like America's huge. That's like moving country anywhere normal. You don't have to get a passport you still have to fly a long way i get i think no tulsa and new york are very far apart you have to fly so long exactly and he does it though he the thing is like he's so scared and he's putting his all into that job and he's put his all in that job for so long even though everyone hates it and he hates it and he's just doing it because that's what everyone hates him in it everyone hates who he becomes when he's there and he's still just like no but that's my job though that's what i've got to do and then he's like no there are actually there are actually things i care about a lot more than this such as my wife and my best friends he doesn't even have kids at that point he's just like such as my wife and my home and our best friends and I want to have Christmas like that and I find it very nice find it very important I'm so glad that in this Christmas episode that Chandler has finally gotten his due yeah I feel a great tenderness for Chandler because his story is one of learning to love and be loved and that is a very universal Christmas tale and a very and in many ways the story of friends and the lens through which i would most like to see friends is like people learning to open up their poor bruised little hearts and let people in and happy christmas to you all happy i think i think we should leave it there quite frankly i've got to eat my dinner you've got us finish up sewing your stocking yeah um happy new year and happy christmas to all the sentimental garbage heads out there i've never really come up with a name for you people.

1:19:46I don't think it's my place to do so. Garbage men? The garbage men out there. But I think what we should do is play out Friends Through a Lens with a Christmas song from our friend. Our friend Harry Harris has released a Christmas song this year under his artist name Oyster Catcher and it's called Merry Christmas I Love You I'm Falling Apart which is pretty much exactly how I feel this year and a song he wrote kind of about the fact that we as a gang started making Christmas traditions ourselves. And I've been listening to it a lot this week and I would really like it. And I would feel very connected to the Sentimental Garbage listeners if they listened to it as well.

1:20:22I love you. I love Harry. You and Harry were there with me in the darkest times and now you're with me in a time that is, you know, nice and stranger. And I love my friends. I love my family. I'm very happy to be here in this weird Christmas where everything is changing. And I know that I could have said that at any time in the last 10 years, this weird, beautiful Christmas where everything is changing because that's life happy christmas guys happy christmas guys i love you all bye bye it's not christmas till the markets set up stores till they hang the lights up in the shopping mall till sofa practice start their pantalons They got a Mitchell brother playing the dame of the town gate theater basildon.

1:21:21And ooh, this year's gone all wrong. Ooh, so we make it up as we go along. We build our own traditions. Now seems the time to start. Merry Christmas I love you I'm falling apart

1:21:59It's not Christmas Till the offices get out

1:22:08Curse the boss and drive the bar the drought Consider drinking cinnamon and wine Whatever you've got, man, serve it up with Sticking round till closing time Ooh, this is gone all wrong Ooh, shall we make it up As we go along We build our own tradition Now seems the time to start Merry Christmas I love you, I'm falling apart It's not Christmas but it's not all fine When the drinks they click like jingle bells In the boredom of your plastic bag We spent December wrapping up against the weather Call these clothes our armour Yeah, we'll get through this together And it's not Christmas like it was when we were small When we didn't know How far we could fall It's not Christmas We're not family Oh, but we say our friends We wrap our gifts We decorate the tree Ooh, all this year's gone on

1:24:01Oh, so we make it up as we go along. We build our own traditions. Now seems the time to start. Merry Christmas. I love you. Merry Christmas. Oh, I love you. Merry Christmas. I love you. Falling apart. Oh, oh, oh, falling apart Oh, oh, oh, la-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da