Here we are, part three of the “Is it Christmas yet???” special. Where, like Narnia, it’s always winter but never Christmas.

“The One With the Park Failure”

And the Friends™ have finally reached Thanksgiving™!

It’s essentially a bottle episode, Thanksgiving™ dinner at Monica and Chan Chans, whilst Joey and Ross are desperate to leave for the party hosted by Elle “not a character” Macpherson. Incidentally, Joey’s on prime creep behaviour here, turning up the heating in his flat to try and get the women to strip off. But WHAT A BOTTLE EPISODE. With perhaps the greatest sketch of the show, Rachel’s beefed up trifle.

Rachel’s attempts at cooking for the first time go much worse than my attempt at Christmas dinner (3 stars) as the pages of the cookbook are stuck together. This gives an opportunity for quite possibly the dirtiest joke in the show, as Joey turns to blame Chandler. My wife is so innocent I had to explain that one to her… Chandler’s into food? Who knew… whatever next, Sharks?!?

We were all forced to pretend to like the Trifle to save Rachel’s feelings, with the exception of Joey who loves beef trifle almost as much as he loves trying to get on the sex offender register. He goes so far as eating everyone’s leftovers, guzzling them down with all the abandon of a baby unaware that choking is a thing.

Yep, our baby has finally started solids, as if I needed another daily dose of something to panic about, but is doing great so far. Even if I can’t bring myself to eat the leftovers. Think I’ve put on enough weight in lockdown without it thank you very much…

She’s reached the ‘3 Men and a Baby Stage’, crawling round and creating as much mischief as possible. Only without the added sexiness of Tom Selleck.

(This was a real film)

The only thing I couldn’t quite enjoy was the, usually welcome, return of the Gellar parents. Not from anything to do with them, it just made me a little sad again to have missed my parents at Christmas™.

But it shouldn’t be long now! It’ll all be over much before I finish watching this bloody TV show.

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

I was looking after the baby the other day and realised I had half an hour to kill before the next bottle and nap, so decided to take her down the park. She’s already into the swings, or indeed, moving in any way, and they’re a lot easier than carrying her.

But I’d got my timings terribly wrong, and half way there she started falling asleep. Oh no! You shouldn’t sleep till after the bottle, crap, gotta get back, gotta get back.

We made it and, mercifully, she still slept and I was allowed my forty minutes of respite.

The next day I tried to go again. Half the sky blue, half the sky grey. “It’ll be alright” I thought, only a little bit of rain if it catches us. But no, once again the swings were not to be as by the time we got to the park we were enveloped in a thick blizzard.

Yes, it’s very exciting for her to see snow for the first time. But please, God, let me get to the park tomorrow. There’s only so much pacing round the living room a man can take.

Christmas at my mother-in-laws was an atypically quiet affair.

No-one got their head stuck in a Turkey. No-one punched me in the face.

Mostly we tried to make the best of the situation, grateful we were able to be together unlike so many others. Remembering better times and avoiding politics at all costs. As if we were making a new Star Wars™ movie (1 Star).

 “The One With the Sad Christmas”

And now it’s back to work, a wondrous time of quiet reflection on how much easier dealing with things was when we could just relax and follow the babies schedule.

Appropriately this is a boss heavy episode. One specifically: Ralph Lauren.

The big man himself shows up. Mostly to put a bit of animosity between Rachel and her immediate superior. You’ve got to wonder what they paid him to walk in and out of a lift a couple of times without doing anything.

Joey rather hits the nail on the head as the Friends™ ponder why their boss doesn’t like them:

“Maybe it’s because you’re all hanging round here at 11.30 on a Wednesday?”

Now we finally know how they seem to be spending so much time in Central Perk!! They’ve been playing hookie the whole time. Or maybe they’re just on Furlough?

It’s frustrating that, with the on-again, off-again nature of work at the moment I’ve finally got a chance to get into all sorts of Shenanigans like the Friends™ but can’t because of having a baby. Yep, that’s the only reason… *stares forlornly out the window*

I did get to go into work briefly before Christmas. What a way to discover I now habitually refer to myself as “daddy” in the third person.

“Daddy needs to make some tea” I muttered, as my boss tried to hold in a laugh.

Another person with their hand over their mouth to save embarrassment is Ross. The big idiot has bleached his teeth for too long. Oh, how we laughed. The problem with this is, it is Hollywood after all, so really his teeth look no whiter than Monica’s. But fair play, the UV light did make my wife laugh so much she woke up the baby. Thanks a lot Friends™… I thought you were on our side?!

It’s a shame we don’t get more from Ross’s date, who’s played by Missi Pyle. Any comedy fan should know her best from Dodgeball™ and Galaxy Quest™.

She’d certainly be able to bring more personality than Elle Macpherson who is barely even a character.

Perhaps the writing is to blame? There’s a lot of Toxic Masculinity™ here, more than we’ve had for a while. Chandler and Joey checking out her room, and obsessing over the “girlie” things she brings in the flat. I do get the feeling of attachment to the old place though. It reminds me of when we moved out of our student house after three years, and Dr Phalange went and peeked over the wall one day to see what they’d done with her garden.

Even now, after over a decade, people take and share the odd picture of the gates of the halls where we all met. It’s sad to think of so many students this year having that experience ruined for them.

Most of the Toxic Masculinity™ seems to be coming from Chandler, but the attitude underpinning it all is quite sexist. Often in the show his behaviour would be held up and mocked; certainly nowadays the joke would be more at his insecurity. But here it’s presented more as Joey being in the wrong for being interested in the things Elle Macpherson likes.

Come on guys, it’s 1999.

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

Our Christmas™ was tinged with sadness for another reason this year. (As if you couldn’t get enough). My wife’s family cat, almost as old as this episode, got into difficulty a few days before Christmas. It was clear that the end was pretty close, but he soldiered on through Christmas.

This lead to a bit of unexpected humour, his difficulty moving meant our revelry was sporadically interrupted by us realising he hadn’t been to the litter tray for a while and that he was about to “go off” if we didn’t urgently take him there ourselves.

The worst time was when he was, somewhat foolishly, on the sofa. I was playing with our baby who is completely obsessed with cats right now, but got a little too close and scared the piss out of him. My mother-in-law desperately picked him up to stop him peeing on the sofa, carrying him across the living room to the litter tray, a huge gush of piss flying out the whole time.

Baby was laughing at the whole thing. I think she’s relieved she wasn’t the only one pissing herself anymore.

In the true spirit of Friends™ we had our own moment of pathos at the end. Right as we were getting up to leave he mustered the strength to walk again and came up to us all in the middle of the floor, baby and all. It was a lovely moment to all say goodbye, and get some beautiful pictures of him with three generations to remember him by.

Happy Holidays!

Or, not. As the case may be.

Yes, Christmas™ has come and gone. And it’s becoming MY Christmas™ tradition to be slightly behind Friends™ at this point, not quite getting to the yearly Thanksgiving episode that calibrates my quest.

At least no-one got their head stuck in a Turkey. Or, they may have done. We wouldn’t have known.

“The One Where I Miss Christmas”

It’s already New Years and, despite timey-wimey shenanigans meaning the Friends™ haven’t done Thanksgiving yet, Rachel and Phoebe are getting in the spirit by going for a run.

Well, Rachel’s going for a run. Phoebe is doing whatever the hell she’s doing. It’s nice for her to have a chance to flex some physical comedy muscles, and I’m sure a lot of us can relate to the unadultered joy of running wildly through the park. Screaming internally.

My wife’s new years’ resolution is to take up the couch to 5k charge. Good luck to her!! Personally I’m going for the “couch to literally anywhere else”. And I never thought I’d say that. 2020 has changed me, man…

One thing that hasn’t changed is Friends™ propensity for dropping in special guest stars with questionable acting ability, and this time it’s the form of Elle Macpherson who, I’m reliably informed by a Google™ image search, was a supermodel. And believe me, it was a very thorough image search.

She’s Joey’s unlikely new roommate, causing him to question Chandler and Ross on the secret to repelling women. Poor guy is completely unaware that by 2020 his creepy behaviour will suffice. And HELLO. I’m right here Joey! I could write a book on repelling women. Excluding my relatives I’ve only spoken to one all year. Of course, the book would be SO good women would no longer be able to get into the bookshops. In fact, I think that may already be happening… Damn, I’m good.

Over with Mondler (I swear I coined that, but here Ross is using it. I should charge him royalties). Over with CHANICA, there’s a lot of boxes being unpacked. Which is giving me major flashbacks to the height of lockdown, the endless trudge of me recycling my wife’s Amazon™ boxes, and the next day another delivery arriving. Boxes. Soo many boxes.

It did give us a bit of fun, putting baby in a box full of packing chips like a makeshift ball pit. God I miss the days of the work Christmas™ party taking us to a club that’s a giant ball pit.

Once he’s done, Chandler tries to treat Monica by tidying up, only for everything to be out of place. Like Monica something like this would really throw me out of whack. But, now we’ve had some time with the baby I’m more used to things being cluttered. If anything, after staring at the same four walls for so long, I’m craving a bit of variety in our feng shui. I’ve never been so relieved to put up the Christmas tree.

Come to think of it, I can’t believe its taken Chandler the whole holiday to move!! To be fair to him, it took the whole time for me to make our home videos into one long video. I thought that sort of thing was supposed to be easy now?!

Despite my video editing woe, you’d think I’d manage to squeeze in another episode, but it’s no biggy not getting to Thanksgiving yet, as we missed Christmas™ in both senses of the word.

After years of hoping, Christmas™ was finally cancelled! The one year I was actually looking forward to it; babies first Christmas™. My chance to off-load her on some relatives for a bit.

The last minute announcement was pretty devastating, to us and millions of other households. Not least because we hadn’t bought any food. However! With a newborn, we’re exceptionally lucky, as we have her (naturally), but (mostly) it means we can form a support bubble with one other household. Rescuing our plans a little, but meaning a difficult choice.

(Incidentally, they kept this loophole bloody quiet. Half the parents we know weren’t aware of it. Presumably as it applies to our erstwhile Prime Minister. Wonder who he picked? With at least six children by at least three women, it’s surely the hardest choice he’s made all year.)

Our choice was essentially made for us, as my parents decided to bubble with my younger sister who lives alone. Christmas™ with my mother-in-law?? Great! If only jokes about that were still in vogue.

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

When the pre-Christmas wait got a bit too much, we decided to take a trip to a National Trust area near us.

Sure it was pissing it down, but maybe over there the weather was better. We needed to get out the house.

After an uncomfortable journey, agonising over whether the weather would change, (and whether we should turn back) we arrived. And I found the “really cool monument that's right up your street” my wife promised was actually an unimpressive middling column. And it was still raining.

First things first, we found the baby change toilets, and sorted the source of the car journeys nasal discomfort out.

And, oo lovely, there’s a café with outdoor service! Just have to go back across that huge muddy puddle blocking the baby change. My shoes in a state of woeful disrepair which would make a cobbler call in sick. They were utterly unsuited to the task at hand. I was completely underprepared. My feet were going to get wet.

But I made it, with all the grace of Sherlock besting Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. Only to find there was a one way system. Of course there was. Even if we were the only customers in a 5 mile radius. I dutifully obliged, and swam back across the puddle.

After we bought our drinks we thought, maybe it was a bit too wet to walk around after all and decided to go home.

It was a long way to go just to change a nappy. But ultimately worth it to get a cup of tea that tasted slightly different to the one at home.