Oh hey! It’s Christopher from Gilmore Girls™!

Well, not quite, but if his ex-wife here was Miss Gilmore herself this could easily be a crossover.

At the moment, I’m a little more impassioned about Gilmore Girls™ than Friends™ to be honest. It’s a shame not to have Lauren Graham popping up, I genuinely consider her performance as Lorelei as one of the best bits of acting in anything. Ever.

Why am I so enthusiastic about Gilmore Girls™? We’ve spent the last year and a half on a sort of “culture share”. My wife chose for us to watch Gilmore Girls™ which I have never seen, and I chose for us to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer™ which she hasn’t seen.

It’s turned out to be one of the best decisions we’ve made. After realising each show has more or less the same number of episodes, covers seven years in the life of a sixteen year old girl, and involves numerous world threatening situations (OK that last one might just be Buffy…) we thought they’d make the perfect double feature! And, boy, we were not wrong.

Genuinely, if I wasn’t already engaged in a foolhardy, long-form blogging project, I would absolutely start one comparing the two shows.

But you’ll have to imagine the incredible insights and observations I would have brought to that party. And instead content yourself with this killer scene of Ross and Phoebe having a proxy war for the sake of Christopher and his ex-wife.

 “The One With the Big News Part 1”

Chandler and Monica have been trying to sort some engagement photos. Is that a thing? I guess in the days of Facebook™ the process has been simplified a little. When we went to Vietnam for our honeymoon we saw lots of young couples dressed up beautifully for professional photoshoots in the lavish locations we visited. Not for weddings, it was a tradition for marking the engagement.

I can’t imagine that here, Denise and Terry dressed up to the nines commemorating their engagement at Alton Towers™. Lots of druids angrily chasing a newly engaged couple and their photographer off of Stonehenge™.

It’s a good job we don’t tend to do this over here as, like Chandler, I can’t smile in photographs for shit. Though I hope I’m not as bad as him.

We’re very lucky a quick witted person on our tour took a snap of our big moment, a photo we can treasure forever. If only there were camera’s around to capture Chandler and Monica’s proposal.

In the end Chandler resorts to getting high on anti-histamines for the photo. Aren’t those just for Hay Fever? But he’s acting like he’s wasted. Jeez, what kind of pollen do they have in America??

Rachel is continuing to be weird with her new assistant. Even Ross calls her out on it. Which is very much the Ross calling the kettle black.

She’s being super weird and controlling if you ask me, going out of her way to cock-block him even though she hasn’t got a chance in hell. Maybe I’m speaking too much from personal experience here, but she’d make an excellent mother.

Does anyone else think it’s weird for Ralph Lauren to feature so heavily in this show?? ™ Do you think they paid for all this exposure?

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

Along with the house-hunting there’s some other big news. I’m changing jobs!!

In this economy?! Yes, terrifying.

The funny thing is, I’m not sure I meant for it to happen. Yes, it’s been at the back of my mind for a long time. A change of scene, doing something different, the illusion of progression. So when I saw something that fit the bill I applied, assuming I wouldn’t get it.

Hell, I think the first time scarred me for life, took six whole months before I found anything.
I was convinced I ballsed up this first interview, then the next thing I knew there was a second, then a job offer.

HELP, I’ve changed job by mistake.

Is it a mistake to do it and try and move house at the same time? Quite possibly. But we’ve been sitting still for far too long. Sure it’s all the post-pandemic fallout, but honestly, you wait for one life changing moment and then they all happen at once…

There’s quite a sad start this week, as the credits remind me that James Michael Tyler is no longer with us.

The actor, who famously got the job as manager of Central Perk™ as he was the only extra able to use the coffee machine, will live on for decades to come (perhaps longer) as Gunther.

Together with his understated comic performance, for me he’s an inspiration to anyone wanting to work in the creative arts. He showed us it’s a long game, and sticking power is really the key. From his first appearance in the second episode it wasn’t until the ninth episode of the second series he even had a name. And a further ten episodes before his first line. Even his characters defining crush on Rachel didn’t come until the third season.

But Gunther’s became a reliable staple of the series, and it’s been a joy to see him again these past six years. Whether sparring with Joey, kissing Phoebe, or even achieving the impossible by making Ross seem less awful by comparison.

I’m sure James Michael Tyler himself will be missed by a great many people. And I’ll forever appreciate his work on Friends™. Not many actors can say they went from being an extra to an integral part of one of the best shows ever made.

“The One With All the Fridges”

My theory about Joey’s alcoholism is gaining some traction.

His attention span is already so damaged he can’t tell when Rachel is halfway through a story, rudely interrupting her with his own.

To be fair it is pretty exciting he’s getting the chance to audition for Days of Our Lives™ again. Especially given the rather muted reaction my Friends™ had to watching the pilot of Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E.™

That was the second time this week I had praise someone’s show that was, shall we say, less than professional? My wife took part in a local am-dram production celebrating the return of musicals after the pandemic. Well, that’s what I thought it would be, but it turned out the show was a selection of lesser known songs from musicals, with lyrical themes related to the pandemic.

Yep, it was essentially COVID: The Musical. So I spent an hour reliving the worst year of my life. In musical form.

Thankfully, unlike Joey, my wife was excellent as usual, so there was plenty of room to praise her afterwards, and skate around the other bits. And hey, it could never be as bad as Freud: the Musical

It wasn’t even the most cringe experience this week! That honour goes to Joey’s audition for Days of Our Lives™. I say “audition”. He actually refused to do one now he’s the star of his own cable show. Joey have you learned nothing from James Michael Tyler? Humility is vital to building an acting career.

Rachel isn’t looking much better in her story. After Ross’s student time, it’s now her turn for some sexual harassment in the workplace. Hiring a new assistant purely based on his looks. (I guess it’s funny because it’s a woman doing it?) He says his name is “Tag”. But I’m sorry, that is not a name. I’d have kicked him straight out the interview.

“Come back when you’ve got a real name! Tag, you are not it.”

Oh man, I haven’t even told you about Chandler, Monica, and Ross yet! (Ronicler?)

They got into a game of “Mutually Assured Destruction” sharing each other’s dirty secrets.

A lot of it isn’t even that bad though! “Oh, no, Chandler kissed a guy!!” Ha ha... How different things were in the days before Katy Perry sexually liberated us all. And, excuse me, but what is wrong with wearing leg warmers? They’re great! Wear them all day at work for all the excitement of secretly wearing tights but none of the danger, then take ‘em off when you go out to the pub, and it feels like you’re going commando!

This all stemmed from an actually embarrassing story, Ross crapping himself on Space Mountain™.

This is the exact reason you should never be with a sibling and partner at the same time. They have all the good stuff.

I don’t think I’ve got through a single family do with a prospective partner, without the caravan story coming up. It goes like this:

We went on holiday, and my sister refused to get out the toilet, even though I was desperate, telling me to go behind the caravan. I duly obliged, and awoke the entire camp by shouting “MUM, DAD, I’VE DONE A POO BEHIND THE CARAVAN, CAN YOU COME AND WIPE MY BOTTOM??”

I was 28 years old…

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

With 2020 firmly behind us, we’ve decided to try and move on with our lives. And started house hunting again!

We found a very cool house the other day, but were perplexed when we went to look at it to find four fridge/freezers in the kitchen. “Hrrm, maybe they really like batch cooking?” we thought and went to look through the rest of the house.

Yet, every cupboard we found, we opened it. And found another fridge! What is this?? Some sort of art installation about Narnia? Always cold enough for winter, never Christmas™?

Perhaps they were serial killers and needed somewhere to store the bodies?

Or maybe they just read too many sad books, and needed somewhere to put them all.