"The One with Actual Cannibalism"

So after last week’s placenta discussion, I’ve found out my boss HAS EATEN SOME.

And not even her own! Turns out her Godmother went for it when she gave birth, and when my boss was offered a taste she, naturally, did the right thing and tried some.

I feel I should also mention at this point, and I have to be very careful how I phrase this, that my boss and I used to be lovers. (“Lovers” pfft, perhaps I should have been a bit more careful how I phrased it...)

Please understand I’m not trying to be boastful, it’s just relevant as this week several of the Friends™ accidentally seeing each other naked!

Despite our previous “engagements” there’s a surprising lack of awkwardness between me and my boss, as well as with her current partner (who’s my other boss – them being partners in both senses of the word). I suppose it's down to it being a long time ago (we’ve all known each other since university). Plus our state of inebriation at the time has blocked many of the more sordid details from our memories.

In an amusing coincidence, boss number 2 recently saw me in a state of undress too when I forgot to lock the toilet door at work. And I'm regularly treated to glimpses of his rear-end due to his preference for ill fitting trousers.

We’ve lost track of who’s seen who naked in my Real Live Friend group. It rivals the Friends™ for complexity. Several of us had close encounters of the blurred kind, before ending up where we are now. Social gatherings are periodically punctuated by exclamations of “oh yerh! I forgot you two got together that time!” Almost all of them have seen me undressed at some point – but this is mostly thanks to an unfortunate towel slip on holiday.

It really is remarkable how easy it is to act normally around each other even though we’ve all seen each other’s bits.

Speaking of jobs (not that kind...) I had an interview this week.

It was at the top of a very tall building overlooking London. It was brilliant gazing across the cityscape (with markedly less skyscrapers than New York) as I waited for my interviewer to arrive. As they were late I decided it would make a good impression if I stood looking out the window then turned to greet them. like I was some sort of mob boss. Maybe I’ve been watching too much Netflix™.

But it really was fantastic looking across the city, with the discovery of gravitational waves playing on telly, and feeling an impending sense of positive change both within my life and beyond!

Before I was cut back down to size during the interview. They asked why, despite being young, bright and well-educated, I’d been stuck in “starter jobs” for the last three years. All I could answer was “I’ve often asked myself that question.”

The job would mark a bit of a change for me. It’s in an area I’ve previously avoided, despite a natural aptitude. Mostly due to a wish to not just follow in my father’s footsteps but rather strike my own path.

We all want to inherit the best parts of our parents and leave the negative behind. I’ve already touched on this and have shared Joey’s fears of reliving his father’s infidelity too in the past. But as much as I don’t want to turn into a carbon copy of my father, I’ve recently decided emulating his successful career would be no bad thing.

Aside from the A-plot of Joey’s dad’s affair we have Phoebe’s new boyfriend psychoanalysing the Friends™.

This being London, and not New York, me and my Real Live Friends have much less reliance on shrinks (as far as I'm aware) though we are no less neurotic. My Chandler Number 2 spent a fair amount of time psychoanalysing Joey Number 1 in the pub last night. Although they had to take a short break when Joey No. 1 lived up to his namesake and had to move seats because he was distracted by a nearby woman’s cleavage.

I’ve never met Joey No. 1s parents and appropriately enough this episode is the only appearance of Joey’s parents. This is a bit of a shame as I enjoyed Not Danny Devito’s turn as Joey Snr. and thought the mother’s ballsey entrance was great! It’s oft said that Joey was the least developed character in the show. Perhaps featuring his parents more might have helped?

I certainly found it interesting, the way Joey’s relationship with his father switched from that of a son and father, to a more even footed adult-to-adult interaction once he discovers the affair. This was a neat distillation of the shift in our relationship with our parents in early adulthood, before going a step further for comic affect as the roles reverse and Joey acts like the parent – offering up Chandler’s bedroom to keep his dad from committing further infidelity (with an odd lack of protest from Chandler).

But perhaps Joey’s already (surprisingly) mature relationship with his parents hints at why they were featured less? After all there is less comedic mileage in a balanced parent-child relationship than with overbearing parents (such as the Gellars) or the embarrassment caused by a parent acting younger than their age (Chandlers mum).

Finally, it’s a great stroke to have Joey’s mother glad about the affair because it actually improved their marriage. I like to think the Tribbiani's are still out there now... happily married and still cheating on each other.

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

Well I think the blog has got big enough for our own celebrity cameo now, so let’s all imagine a 90s Neve Campbell popping up as my old Canadian music teacher. Back in school my partner and I sat together in her lessons. My partner now teaches music herself and one of her students goes to our old school.

The child’s mother told us of a recent parents evening where she asked Neve Campbell if she remembered us. The teacher replied “oh yes they were in my first ever class!” At which point the mother asked “did you know they’re together now?” and the teacher burst into tears.

So there you have it. Not many people can say their relationship has made one of their old teachers cry! I can only hope it was the sentimental joy of us ending up together and not something like her husband just leaving her.

Ah Valentine’s Day, a yearly reminder of the sexism deep at the heart of our consumer culture.

I usually remain blissfully unaware of this, due to a complete lack of interest in high-street shops. I pretend this lack of interest is because of the environmental impact of such large scale disposable materialism. But of course it’s actually due to a lack of money.

By ignoring the strain put on us (and our relationships) by the genderisation of shop products for marketing purposes; I can focus fully on more tangible feminist issues. Like our Prime Minister vetoing improving sex education in schools despite it being recommended by a huge array of experts and the women in his own cabinet.

Admittedly though, most of the strain “the genderisation of shop products for marketing purposes” puts on my relationship is because of me using phrases like “the genderisation of shop products for marketing purposes”.

Anyway, thankfully this episode doesn’t actually cover Valentine’s Day. So I can press on without its shadow hanging over us.

“The One Where I Try Not to Talk About Valentine’s Day”

Seeing as this seems to be the “feminist issue” of RLF I'm gonna start with the “feminist issue” covered in this episode (at least according to Joey and Ross): Phoebe having to tell Rachel the "wonderful" Paulo assaulted her on the massage table. Thankfully for the viewer this makes Paulo such a horrendous arsehole we excuse Ross’s own dubious attempt to show Rachel what a “nice guy” he is - by jumping her whilst she's vulnerable.

The writers manage to subvert this well though as Rachel swears off men altogether.

(As an aside there's another example of concurrent fashion trends between the 90s and now here, as Rachel spends most of the episode in what looks like a onesie).

I did wonder (again) if this was written by the female writing staff. In many ways it’s a female focused counterpart to the previous episode. Both feature one the Friends™ crossing an inappropriate sexual line with someone important to one of the others. But this handles the issue with more sensitivity as it delves into Rachel’s heartbreak, and the laughs are derived largely from Ross acting out.

I looked it up and, to my surprise; this episode was written by all men. I suppose ultimately this is positive, the male writing staff too were capable of portraying M, P and R as complex female characters.

It's helped by the first appearance of Monica’s competitive streak, brought about by the introduction of another staple quirk of the series – the Foosball table! Before this we get the joy of Chandler and Joey struggling to agree on furniture to buy, which I can very much relate to. We received several gift cards in lieu of Christmas presents this year.

Whilst it's a funny scene, a lot of the humour relies on two heterosexual male flatmates acting in a stereotypically coupley fashion. This links nicely with the classic scene at the start of the episode (of the Friends™ spontaneously singing the theme to ‘The Odd Couple’) but I can’t shake the realisation I’m essentially laughing because they’re “being a bit gay”. This is made worse by the reappearance of the “blunt gay joke” at the expense of Carol and Susan.

Ross’s further dick-holery is also apparent when he willingly lets a vegetarian Susan eat a lasagne with meat in it.

Talking of things you shouldn’t eat, this episode briefly touches on people eating placenta. My partner had a good laugh at this as apparently I go on about it “all the time”. Ridiculous, all because I happen to have mentioned once or twice how good for you it’s supposed to be and that a lot of animals do it naturally...

Also though why would any self respecting meat eater pass up on their only opportunity to legally and morally eat human meat? And my partner’s a vegetarian, so it would be her ONLY opportunity to eat ANY meat.

There’s been an odd trend in recent years of companies offering services to prepare the placenta into smoothies or dried pill form, but I say fry it with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

(NB I emphatically do not actually say that. I am merely open to the possibility of trying it.)

The miracles of childbirth (culinary and otherwise) are further explored in this episode as Ross deliberates on whether he wants to know the sex of his child.

I’m not sure where I fall in this camp. I like the idea of it being a surprise. (And certainly wouldn’t want to buy any clothing or decor based on preconceived notions of the child’s gender.) But, on the other hand, I suspect finding out would make me feel more involved and excited about the pregnancy. We'll have to cross that road when it comes to it.

To bring this decidedly un-valentine’s day special to a close: I’ve just realised if Ross had gone all the way with Chandler’s mother last time, she would have become the second person he’d slept with!

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

This week’s RLSM comes from my Real Live David the Science Guy. He shared the following story with us in the pub last weekend:

Apparently one of his uncles has both a predilection for sleeping in the nude and an unfortunate habit of not putting his spectacles on to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

As a result, whilst on holiday, David and his partner were awoken in the middle of the night by the drunken uncle first exclaiming “what are you doing in my room?!” before, upon realising his error, hurriedly adding “for heaven’s sake don’t turn on the light.”