Much like the Friends™ I haven’t managed to get round to a skiing trip.

Going skiing with my Real Live Friends seems to be one of those things we’ve been talking about since we left university but never made happen.

Somewhere out there there’s a poor, lonely, camping trip waiting for all of us.

“The One Where I Start to Wonder”

The world has gone wedding mad. Ours is now less than four months away, Prince Harry is getting married, and now Phoebe’s brother is too.

The news seems to hit Monica pretty hard and, just like Meghan Markle, she jumps at the first millionaire she has a chance with.

Oh hey, it’s Jon Favreau, later responsible for kick-starting the most successful movie franchise of all time. It seems I’m not the only one letting Friends™ influence their life, as there’s a touch of Iron Man™ about his character. Only if, instead of fighting international terrorism, Iron Man™ abused his power to get women.

Not sure I’d be impressed if I thought I was going for dinner, but was forced to take an eight hour flight from New York to Rome instead. Monica even calls him out on his earlier behaviour, but it seems she’s falling for him by the end.

It’s not the only part of the show that’s a little problematic.

We get more gay jokes about Chandler’s dad, and the bulk of his quest to stop smoking (after only two weeks, the wuss…) revolves around a hypnosis tape that accidentally makes him think he’s a “Strong Independent Woman”. Other commentators have suggested this is Chandler showing latent transexual tendencies and that it’s mockery of him, and his camp-ness here, is part of the shows wider trans/homo-phobia.

I’m usually quick to criticise the show for it’s over reliance on “Gay Jokes” but I’m not sure I agree with this.

Apart from the line about Chandlers’ dad I don’t think this episode is being homophobic. It’s neither criticising Chandlers’ behaviour nor suggesting there is anything inherently funny about camp-ness, or femininity in men. We know his actions are the result of the tape and the humour is from seeing a, usually non-camp, straight, character acting in this way. It’s the juxtaposition and the other characters reactions that is amusing, along with Matthew Perry’s hilarious, over-the-top performance.

I find the shows attitude to Frank Jnr much more troubling. And not just because of my own latent emotions regarding the topic.

I wonder, is my secret half-brother single? Married? Engaged to a much older woman? Should I have invited him to our wedding?! It’s too much to take in.

With this storyline the shows doing the opposite of the Chandler plot. We’re still laughing at the incongruity of it all, but the end result of what it says about our culture is much worse.

All the characters are put out by how inappropriate it is for Frank Jnr’s teacher to marry him at eighteen, especially an over-protective Phoebe (considering she’s only met him twice…). But wait, in the end they all come to accept the happy couples love!

Is Friends™ condoning an older woman taking advantage of a vulnerable young adult just because she wants babies? A young adult who’s recovering from one of his lungs collapsing, amongst other things?! And Friends™ is saying this is fine?

Yes, yes it is.

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

We went to our wedding venue the other day, and I was relieved to see it’s as nice as we remember.

Less nice was the food. We were there to taste a few of the options available to us on the big day, only to be served a truly disgusting starter.

When my fiancée questioned whether it was actually what we were supposed to be served, it turned out that, no, it was not. They hadn’t bothered to get in the correct ingredients for us. Even though they’d already put it back by two weeks to GET the right ingredients.

We were left wondering why they'd even bothered to get us there.

Hrrm, “The One Without”… That's new. It's always been "The One With" until now.

Perhaps it's some clever summation of the sense of loss permeating the episode...

Am I starting to over-analyse this thing???

 “The One With the Ill-advised Haircut”

Who gets to keep who when the s**t hits the fan?

It’s a thought that occasionally crosses my mind as I sit with my fiancée and our cats. How would we split them if we were ever to break up? One each? She’d get both? Down the middle?

And friends too. Years ago when friendships were new it was easy to split them, in hypothetical convos over what to do if couples broke up. You instinctively knew, like making a wedding guest list. But as you get older, there’s more history, relationships spanning years, friendships crossing one half of a relationship to the other. And things get a lot harder. Like making a wedding seating plan.

I suppose that’s why we never bothered in my Real Live Friend group. Both the couples at the center of our last two break-ups, including Monica Number 2, and Chandler Number 2 and Joey Number 1, remain friends with all of us. (If not quite with their partners anymore #SadFace).

It’s enough to drive anyone to smoke, and Chandler has succumbed as Rachel and Ross remind him of his parents divorce. This is the first real hint we’ve had that Chandlers childhood was a lot harder than previously let on. Him starting smoking at nine years old is particularly disturbing, and plays a little strange given how seriously the dangers of smoking are now taken (along with him smoking inside against other characters wishes).

We’re moving in the opposite direction as my fiancée has finally also kicked the habit (congrats!). To be completely honest, I have had the odd one since stopping over three years ago. She noticed this for the first time when I got back from a Real Live Friends wedding which I’d ended with a cheeky (but disgusting) menthol.

“So THAT’s what it’s like when you kiss someone after they’ve had a cigarette!?”

Yup, welcome to my world. Though to be fair, with her recently returned sense of smell, she does now have to put up with me. We’ll call it a draw.

Rachel and Ross are at an impasse as well. The Friends™ are refusing to take sides but, with Ross unwilling to admit his mistakes (“We were on a break!”), they head off in Phoebe’s grandmas cab without him. Before running out of gas. God! Can’t the writers come up with ANY original ideas? Rather than just stealing them all from me?!

Fortunately this allows Ross to save the day and things look like they may be able to continue as usual, though we never do see any skiing. I guess “The One Without” was just a handy way to avoid a very expensive episode of television.

Hey, maybe we should go skiing?

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

I’ve been feeling pretty Zen lately. I seem to have become a lot happier just passively letting things happen to me.

Sure, there are still things I want to do but these all fall in a routine now. Playing music, going to work, seeing my partner and Real Live Friends; I’ve arrived at a place where I can just let everyone else make decisions and say yes to whatever I can fit in.

And so Friends™ has come to have this influence over my life as well.

After noticing last time that none of the characters have had 90s curtains for quite some time, I took the plunge and cut mine off, seeing it as an opportunity to relive a favourite old haircut (whilst I still can): a bleached blonde Mohawk.

(No-one please point out that all my hair styles are apparently failed attempts to emulate David Beckham.)

This has resulted in my fiancée not even being able to look at me as I remind her too much of her ex. But the Friends™ gods demanded it! It’s like they’re forcing us to be like Rachel and Ross, unable to be in the same room together.