I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got nine new comics.
Check them all out here:
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got nine new comics.
Check them all out here:
I’m feeling ambitious tonight. I want to write another one of my “Friends” watch-a-longs and the next one I have to watch is “The One After the Super Bowl.” It’s season 2 episode 12 (and 13) and is 48 minutes long and so is twice the length of the episodes I’ve done before. This might take a while. It first aired on January, 28, 1996. That’s year that the Cowboys defeated the Steelers. I watched both the game and the episode of “Friends” afterwards. It was probably the first episode a lot of people saw but I watched the show from the beginning so it was just another episode for me. Since I’m a NY Giants fan I’m sure I liked the episode better than the game (The Cowboys won the Super Bowl).
We open with a fake commercial for “Monkey Shine Beer” where the monkey on screen reminds Ross of Marcel (the monkey he had in season one). Plot twist! It is Marcel. I hate that stupid money and most of the plots and jokes involving him so this might not be the episode for me. Lots of monkey jokes in the opening scene. And here comes the theme song. I just might sing along.
Quick set-up. At the coffee shop Joey gets his first fan mail so Joey might have a stalker. Ross is off to San Diego for a conference and to visit his monkey at the zoo. That’s the first plot and it’ll go through both episodes. Then singer and actor Chris Isaak shows up for the Phoebe plot. If I remember correctly this episode has lots of famous guest stars. She’s going to sing to children at the library. That’s plot number two.
Now we’re at the boys’ apartment and Joey’s starker shows up and she’s played by Brooke Shields. I remember her being very good in this roll. The joke is that she’s crazy but she’s so hot that they can’t seem to just brush her off. I just noticed there is glass over the foosball table in their apartment. I don’t remember seeing that there before or after. Joey and Chandler panic and it’s pretty funny. Then they get a look at Brooke’s hotness and all the panic is gone.
Next comes our first scene of Ross looking for his monkey at the zoo and Fred Willard is the guest star. He’s always funny. He tells Ross his monkey died. Its a short scene and then we’re off the library for Chandler to tell the girls about Joey’s stalker and to see Phoebe sing. Some solid if unspectacular stuff. Phoebe’s inappropriate for children songs are the highlight.
Joey is out to diner with his stalker and she thinks he is his character. Brooke Shields really shines in this episode. That scene ends quickly and we’re back to the zoo with Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer Simpson, as he tells Ross his monkey is really alive. It’s a quick scene and we’re back at the restaurant with Joey and Brooke. They’re both excellent playing off each other.
Phoebe’s got another song that is full of solid advice for kids but is still inappropriate. Chris Issak is not to fond of her performance but still wants to kiss her. All these scenes are short so we’re back to the zoo with Dan Castellaneta being creepy and Ross being baffled. This is another funny scene.
Back to NYC. We get an establishing shot of the Midtown Library where Phoebe is singing. I take pictures in front of that library during my street photo trips in the summer. It makes me feel a little nostalgic for the summertime. Meanwhile Ross is telling everybody what he found out about his monkey. What is everyone else still doing at the library? Did Ross teleport across the country? I still hate the monkey plots. At least we get another song from Phoebe about how animals get turned into food.
Another quick turnaround and everyone is at Joey’s apartment when Brook Shields shows up. It’s another funny scene. Jennifer Aniston is trying her best not to break up in the background but sometimes she can’t help but grin. Lots of glasses of water being thrown in Joey’s face. Funny gag. They finally get rid of Brooke in an amusing way.
In another quick scene Phoebe gets fired for singing the wrong stuff to children and then we get the continuation of the monkey plot. Marcel is in town filming a movie. Of course they have to go see him. But first Phoebe’s kid fans show up at the coffee shop to her her sing and get more of “The truth.” End of that plot line. Now onto the movie set to see Marcel. I could do without this unfunny part as they sing “Wimoweh” to Marcel to get his attention. I think this is where they split the episode in two for syndication.
The monkey plot continues as they all hang out on the movie set. Lots of movie jokes and Joey is looking for a role from the director. And who makes an appearance? It’s Julia Roberts. She was at the height of her movie star fame at this time so they’re really pulling out the big guest stars for this second half of the episode. This is the new second plot for the second half. Julia Roberts also does an excellent job.
Julia Roberts sees Chandler and it turns out she went to grade school with him. They catch up and plan to go on a date. Now Jean Claude Van Damme shows up and Monica has a crush on him but is shy about it. So Rachel goes up to him and of course then Van Damme has a crush on Rachel. It’s all very junior high. We have our three plots. Monica and Rachel fighting over Jean-Claude, the monkey, and Julia and Chandler.
Back to the coffee shop where Rachel tells everyone about her date and Monica is jealous. More monkey jokes. Chandler tells everyone about his date with Julia. He likes her a lot. Now we get to see another Chandler and Julia date. Lots of kissing on the couch. Cut to a Ross and his monkey on a date. Almost. It gets cancelled. It’s so dumb. Man these scenes go by quickly.
Now we get a big scene back at the apartment with the three women. Monica and Rachel are going at it with Phoebe as the referee. Then it gets physical and funny. Phoebe has to break it up with some ear pulling.
Another date scene with Joey, a girl from the movie, Ross stag, Chandler, and Julia. Julia is coming on strong. This whole plot is about how Chandler can’t believe his good luck and we’re all waiting for the other shoe to drop. Julia and Chandler go to the bathroom to fool around but then Julia gets her revenge for a fourth grade prank and leaves Chandler in the bathroom wearing nothing but her underpants. Much like Brooke Shields, Julia Roberts was excellent in her guest starring role.
Oh look, it’s Van Damme out on a date with Monica. Except Monica now finds herself invited to a threesome she doesn’t want. That’s the payoff joke and Van Damme makes it work. Back at the apartment and more physical fighting between Monica and Rachel. It escalates to handbag marinara. One of my favorite Friends’ bits. Phoebe has to be the voice of reason.
Back to Chandler in the bathroom stall. Joey comes in and we get some good comedy. Now Ross comes in. This is one of the funniest scenes in the show. Chandler’s walk-by holding the stall door to cover himself is classic.
Coffee shop. Joey got a replacement part in the movie. Now we get more monkey jokes as Marcel shows up. Even a monkey comedy montage that isn’t funny. A classic scene followed by a clunker. A funny Van Damme kissing scene follows that. And a tear jerking monkey goodbye. At least it was supposed to be emotional. I found it cringeworthy.
The final scene is a Joey hamming it up in his movie death scene. And we’re out.
I just checked with http://http://uncutfriendsepisodes.tripod.com to see what was cut out of the episode and there was a bit. Mostly a line here and there but stuff I want to see so I’m glad I watched the old extended DVD copies I have rather then any HD streaming ones. I also checked with the ratings I gave to the episode back in 2013 and I gave it three out of five stars. I stand by that. There was a lot of funny stuff in this double sized episode. Plus some good guest stars. Sure I didn’t like a lot of the monkey jokes but other stuff made up for it. Anyway it just took me a good hour and a half to watch the show and write this so I’m off to bed.
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got seven new comics.
Check them all out here:
Make your habits work for you. That’s my lesson for the day. Someone once told me that good habits are as easy to develop as bad habits so you may as well develop some good ones. They’ll help you rather than hurt you. I try to make my art habits good habits. What got me thinking about this was this very blog. I write it once a week but I have no set time to do it. For the last month or so it’s been on Tuesdays but now I’ll be busy all day on Tuesdays until the summer. I wasn’t sure when I’d get this done until this very moment on a Thursday night. I decided to just do it.
Writing my comic strip “Four Talking Boxes” used to be as haphazard a thing as this blog the first few years I was writing it. I had no set schedule to write my five strips a week. I’d sneak them in when I could. Sometimes I’d get one a day done and sometimes I’d have to write a bunch of them in row to make my deadline. Not being a fan of deadlines I decided to schedule some writing and get ahead of things. Now I write one of them a day early in the morning. I get up, shower, go to my studio, open up my laptop, and start writing a strip. I actually write it as I’m getting dressed and ready for the day. It takes about fifteen to twenty minutes (half an hour on a bad day) to write one and then I eat breakfast.
I wrote them that way, seven days a week, for two years until I was so far ahead with the writing (since I only need five a week) that I cut it back to six mornings a week. Why not five? I don’t know. I think I just like the idea of having a lot of them written just in case. But I don’t even think about it anymore. I just do it every morning. It’s a habit.
Getting the strip done by adding the art to them takes a lot of habit too. I’ve been doing it for over ten years now and it’s made me no money so why do I do it? That’s the question I ask myself almost every time as I assemble my strip these days. The answer is generally: habit. I do them because my other choice is to sit in the chair and do nothing. I may as well spend the half an hour to forty five minutes putting the strips together. After all I’ve been doing them for ten years. Why stop now?
I’ve moved the day I put my strip together over the years. When I started out I always did them on Thursday mornings. I did them like that for ages before I decided, one football season, to do them during Jets’ games. Being a Giants fan I wasn’t really interested in the Jets’ games so it was good to work during them. Then for a while I started doing them on Monday mornings because I wanted something solid and reliable to count on to start off my week. Now I’m back to Sundays but early Sunday morning. It’s the first thing I do in the morning long before the football games.
Another art habit I have going on is my inkbooks. I’ve filled twenty of them over twenty years. I’ve written about these before. My inkbooks are my 5.5×8.5 sketchbooks that I draw in. Six to nine little ink drawings a page and I fill up about eight pages a month. I’m on book twenty one and I plan to keep going with them because why stop? These inkbook are where I pull most of my images from. They’re step one of my process. All through the 1990s I barely ever filled a sketchbook. Every piece I made had to be pulled out of the ether. That’s a tough process. I’m glad I started a new habit to make things easier on myself.
I’ve been noticing lately that doing my “Dreams of Things” covers has really become a habit too. First off I can keep them around in various stages of completeness and pick up one and work on whatever stage fits my fancy. Secondly they are a good outlet for making weird drawings and I like making weird drawings. If I’m standing around wondering what I could possibly do they’ll come to mind. I know how to make one. I’ve made over eighty of them so it’s a long running series now. I can count on making one. It’s a habit.
When something is not a habit it takes a conscious effort to get it done. Take my large ink drawings for example. I’ve make a lot of them over the last couple of years but they’re not a habit. First of all I have to have large paper to make them and I don’t always. I have to order the paper off the web so that means I usually have to wait until I need a few more things to make the shipping worth it. Even though the paper is fairly cheap at twenty dollars for ten sheets it’s not as cheap (or easy to store) as smaller paper and pads.
It also takes three days to make a big ink drawing. Most of my art habits are for things that take an hour or under. That’s easy. A piece that takes twenty hours is a big chunk of my life. So I go through phases of wanting to make things that take that long. I’ve made three big ink drawings in the last month but before that I don’t think I’d made one in about eight months. I go through phases with big things like that.
I just bought a new bag for commuting and I’m hoping to fill it with things that will help facilitate my art habits. It’s still a work in progress though. I have a small aluminum case for my art cards that I carry when I need to draw cartoon art cards during my commute. Now that case goes in a small bag with a pencil and pen. But that bag is too small for my inkbook. So I ordered a slightly bigger small bag for my inkbook. My ultimate goal is to have a bunch of art supplies organized and kept in my commute bag. Right now I’m always moving stuff in and out of it so I’m always thinking about what’s in there. I want to be able to grab it without thinking and go. I think it would be cool to take some art habits on the road.
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got seven new comics.
Check them all out here:
I’ve been reading “Love and Rockets” by the Hernandez Brothers since about 1987. That was about five years after it started. I had read a little of their stuff before then but it wasn’t until my junior year of college that I put it on my pull list and started reading it regularly. I’ve read it ever since in all it’s volumes. Since it was on my pull list I’ve also always read it as a periodical. Whenever a new issues came out I read it. I didn’t buy any of the collected editions until they came out with “Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories” by Jaime Hernandez in 2004.
As a result of my “Love and Rockets” reading habits I’ve never read Gilbert “Beto” Hernandez’s stuff in collected edition until now. His book “Luba” came out back in 2009 (ten years ago!) and I put it on my Amazon Wish List but somehow never bought it. I don’t know why but it was never a priority. Plus no one in my family ever picked it off the list when buying me a birthday or Christmas present. So I’ve missed out on it all these years until recently when I got a library card. It was among the first things I looked to see if the library had and sure enough it was in the system. They ordered it from a nearby library and they held it for me.
“Luba” runs nearly 600 pages and collects Beto’s stuff that first ran in “Love and Rockets” from about 1995 to 2006. It could just as easily been called “Luba, Fritzi, and Petra” because it’s about three sisters. I think Luba was the first sister that Beto wrote and drew stories about so she continued to get title billing. The three sisters are Mexican or Mexican American and live these days in Southern California. They have lots of children, cousins, extended family, and friends and that’s who the stories are about. About half the story is in supposed to be in Spanish as indicated by < “Luba” is a bit hard to describe as it’s a collection of short stories. Some as short as one page but most from around four pages to eight pages. There are also a bunch of twenty page stories especially near the end. According to the index there are about a hundred stories in the book. The stories are all center around the three sisters but can include any of the people in their world. There is also a lot of nudity and sex in the book. I would call it a soap opera but that wouldn’t get across what I mean. I consider soap opera to be a structure. It’s drama that’s all about teasing watchers and getting them to tune in tomorrow to see what happens. There is plenty of drama in “Luba” but no teasing. Each story had an end. It’s not trying to sell us on the next episode. The defining physical characteristic of the three sister is their large breasts. There are plenty of large breasted women in entertainment in general but they’re usually there as eye candy. They give us something nice to look at but aren’t important to the plot or characters. That’s different in “Luba.” Their large breasts are an important part of the three sister’s personalities. They’re well aware they have them and two of the sisters use them as much as they can to their advantage to gain things in love and life. The third sister eventually gets a breast reduction for health reasons and because she prefers to downplay her large breasts. Since this is the story of a family there are also a lot of children in the stories. I think Luba has seven children and Petra has two. Plus some of Luba’s kids had children. There are also other cousins around. Sometimes the stories are about the kids. Those stories are usually humorous. Then there are the men. The three sisters have different fathers plus they each have had a couple of husbands. Then there are some boyfriends and hangers on. There are a lot of men in these stories and often they come and go. Only a couple stick around from beginning to end. Life, love, career, and sexuality are what all these stories in “Luba” are about. Oddly for such a long book there is no overarching plot to it. Each story is its own individual thing that takes place in the life of all these characters. That’s how this book works until about the last hundred pages. That’s when an ending develops. It’s not a huge dramatic ending but it wraps up the story in an emotional way. It felt like an ending. It’s tough for me to criticize the art in this book. Beto is a master cartoonist who has been drawing for a very long time. He doesn’t make wrong decisions and his art is as clear and concise as possible. The only possible criticism I have of his art is that there is never anything unexpected in it. He always sticks to a grid. Though his grids are as varied as possible he doesn’t break them. I don’t even know if that’s wrong or it’s just that I occasionally get tired of him always being right. There are also panels that are breathtakingly beautiful. He seems to always choose to draw the right line and his women are quite striking. His men too when he chooses to draw them that way but there are only a couple of men in the book who are supposed to be beautiful. It’s an easy book to flip through and just look at the pictures after you’re done reading it. One weird note about this book has to do with the editor’s notes. They’re a bit of a tradition in comics where if the editor or writer wants to explain something they leave an asterisks next to a sentence and then a quick explanation at the bottom of the page. Beto often explains what songs, movies, or TV shows are playing in a given scene. He also explains (since the story is about three sisters) that “Tia” means “Aunt” in Spanish. Except the explanation comes on page 550 or so. The word was used throughout the book so it was funny to read the explanation (which I knew already) so late in the book. It was there because it was in the original story which was probably printed in the first issue of one of the “Love and Rockets” volumes and therefore he thought it needed some explanation but in this context it amused me. So this is a great book. It was really amazing after all these years to read so many of the Luba, Fritzi, and Petra stories in one volume. It has also been so many years (15-25 years!) since I first read these stories in periodical form that it was like they were all new to me. I really enjoyed them. No I’m going to have to go back and read the older Luba stories.
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got nine new comics.
Check them all out here:
Nine years ago. That’s how long ago it was that I bought a Polaroid Zink printer. I bring up the subject now because it’s January, as I write this, and I started a new sketchbook. I only draw in ink in this particular sketchbook so I call it an inkbook. I’ve written about them before over the years and I fill one of them a year. This is inkbook number 21 and is named “Bridgework.” I randomly chose that name from the dictionary. That’s how I name all my sketchbooks.
I bring up the Zink because it prints 2×3 inch stickers. I bought it back in 2011 on a whim. I like to try out new art supplies, gadgets, and gizmos so I’m always looking at the new technology that’s coming out. The Zink doesn’t use ink to print, It has some kind of special paper that the printer applies heat to in order to make a print. Polaroid still has printers like this one but doesn’t call them Zink any more. I think this product line was a failure because I bought mine on clearance for $30. At full price it retailed for about $100.
I never really found a good use for my Zink. It’s only about the size of a deck cards so it was meant to be portable. Plus it has a battery so you can make sticker prints without it being plugged in. It also has a Bluetooth connection. I think the idea was that a person could carry this with them to a party and then make stickers from any smartphone photos that you took. People would have fun hamming it up for the sticker photos like they did with an old Polaroid instant camera.
I’m not sure if when I bought this I ever had any intention of doing that but I certainly never did. As a matter of fact I don’t even remember why I bought it. But that’s not unusual with me. Sometimes I buy something I think I can make art with and figure out exactly what I’m doing with it later. But I never quite figured out what to do with this Zink printer. I can remember back in 2013 I made my family some stickers out of family photos for Christmas presents. But they liked them as photos better than as stickers. They never got stuck anywhere. So it was better to just give them photos.
The inkbook that I just started is a Strathmore 400 Series 5.5×8.5 inch spiral bound sketchbook. It has a hundred pages in it but I never draw on the first page. That page tends to get roughed up a little so I use it as endpaper and start drawing on page two. But sometime over the years I got bored looking at a blank page one so I started to put stickers on that page. Any stickers I happened to have.
I don’t know if you can see this problem coming since, if you’re an adult, you probably haven’t thought about it but usually only children have stickers. Occasionally I’d be given stickers as part of someone’s promo push for some product but not that often. I’d throw a couple of stickers in the side tray of my art desk if I got them but mostly I didn’t get any. So January would roll around and I’d have no stickers for my new inkbook..
In glancing back at my old inkbooks I can see that it was in 2014 I started to make my own stickers for the front of the books (though for some reason my 2017 inkbook has no stickers in it). I’d use my own photos or ones found on the internet and make 2×3 inch Zink stickers out of them. So that was what I was doing today.
When I first got the Zink printer I remember having to figure out how to format an image to get it to print properly. Though the print is 2×3 inches it’s not exactly 2×3 inches. The stickers are also full bleed which means there is no border around the image. It prints edge-to-edge. So it digitally trims off a small portion all around the photo. I eventually settled on an exact 2×3 inch 300DPI jpeg that loses some of the image around the edges. It works well enough for stickers.
I remember it taking some time to figure out the bluetooth connection too. I used to print them from my desktop computer. I’d have to open my bluetooth preferences, select the printer, pair it, and then a printer queue would come up and I’d have to drop the jpeg on that. It’s not like regular printing where I pick the printer from a list and then pick the paper and format.
Now the printer won’t even work with my computer anymore. I go to pair the computer and printer and the computer refuses to. I’ve never figure out why or how to fix it. Instead I figured out how to pair it with my phone (which is not very new either). So now I have to plug my phone into my computer, drop a photo on it, connect the phone to the Zink, and hit send. It actually took a bit a doing a few years ago to figure that out but it still works.
Since I only use the Zink printer once a year I forget it exists. Like I said it’s very small so I have it stuck in a box on a shelf. It was only in December as I was cleaning up that I said to myself, “What the heck is in that box?” and looked in it. Sure enough I had forgotten it existed until that very moment.
One thing I might do with the printer is make some stickers for sticking on the streets on NYC. It was only last year, as I was taking street photos, that I noticed a lot of stickers on signposts and such as I was walking down Seventh Avenue. I started taking pictures of them. There are are lot of creative and artistic ones. Maybe I’ll add one or two myself. Or maybe not. But at least my new sketchbook is ready to go. That counts for something.
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got seven new comics.
Check them all out here:
Okay. Lets’s pop in “Friends” season two episode four and see what it’s all about. The name of the episode is “The One With Phoebe’s Husband” and it originally aired on October 12, 1995. I watched it first run and at that time in 1995 I had just turned 29 years old a couple of months before. I was right about the same age as the friends. I was only a year or two older than the characters.
In looking at my calendar from that time I can see that I worked at Marvel Comics that whole month except for the 12th and 13th of October. I wonder if I was sick those days? I wasn’t sick very often but I see no entrances on my calendar for the 12th-15th. Looks like I didn’t make it to the comic shop for my usual Saturday trip. I must have been under the weather. I can see earlier in the week I wrote two checks. One for a subscription to Archeology Magazine (which finally didn’t get renewed this very year – 2019) and another for a Time/Life book on the Ancient Persians. I’m a history fan. Now lets see what going on in the show.
In the opening scene we have Rachel in the apartment on the phone with her mom as a pigeon flies in. She pots the pigeon. Good Family Circus reference. As a surprise we get introduced to Phoebe’s previously unknown husband, Duncan. It’s a good and funny intro scene. I like it overall and even though I remember not liking this episode a whole lot It starts well. I always enjoy the theme song.
Next scene Phoebe tells everyone who Duncan is and we get all the set up we need for that plot line. Phoebe married him because he needed a green card to stay in the country. Phoebe was in love with him but he was gay. And he’s a Canadian ice dancer. His profession is a question in the “Friends 25th Anniversary Trivia Game” app. A nice “Phoebe eats meat” joke. Good gasps. Here is where we find out Chandler has a third nipple. That’s a classic bit of Friends lore. All sorts of secrets are revealed after that. This was a good scene. The ensemble was in full form. I’m liking the beginning.
Now we cut to Central Perk and Julie (Ross’s girlfriend) shows up. Rachel still doesn’t like her. I find it annoying how much Rachel is into Ross as soon as she found out she couldn’t have him. But I’ve always found Rachel a bit annoying. She was written that way so it’s no surprise that I do. Her mocking of Monica is funny. Phoebe shows up dressed all hot for Duncan who she hasn’t seen in ages. Plenty of Chandler’s third nipple jokes fly this scene too.
Now it’s a Ross and Rachel scene. Ross confesses he hasn’t had sex with Julie yet. This scene is awkward. Once again, it’s written that way but it still has a lot of cringes in it. It’s tough to take. Rachel’s gives bad advice but delivers it in a nice powder blue top. I can remember describing this show to my friends (back when I first watched it) as a “Jiggle Show” reminiscent of something like “Three’s Company.” Lot’s of hot women in tight tops. I’m okay with that.
New scene with Phoebe and Duncan in his dressing room at Madison Square Garden. They get along just fine. That scene was short and now we switch over to Ross and Julie kissing as the remaining friends drop by. Ross is not going to listen to Rachel’s bad advice. As a call back to an earlier scene they’re all going to watch a porno that Joey was almost in. He’s just the guy who stops by to fix the copier. Here is his big line. “You know that’s bad for the paper tray.” Another funny scene.
Back to Phoebe and Duncan who tells Phoebe that he needs a divorce. He then confesses the he’s discovered that he’s not really gay. I never found this scene funny. It just takes all the stereotypes of a person discovering he is gay and applies them to a person who discovers he is straight. I’m guessing that it’s supposed to be wacky and ironic but I find it predictable and unfunny. Phoebe being hurt and upset is the only part of this scene that rings true to me.
Monica coming out of Ross’s bedroom and saying “Y’know it still smells like monkey in there” is a good line. I never liked the monkey from season one and am okay with them mocking the whole monkey storyline. Rachel doesn’t want to leave Ross’s apartment because she doesn’t want Ross to have sex with Julie. Crazy Rachel is uncomfortable but funny.
Duncan gets his divorce papers signed and Phoebe leaves him never to see him again. It’s sad and touching but she throws a little bit of her own crazy in there to lighten things up.
Now back to Rachel being crazy. I still like her top though. That’s the story of Rachel. Annoying but her hotness makes you put up with her. She continues to try and sabotage Ross and he doesn’t even know it. In the end Rachel relents and gives Ross some good advice. The scene ends with Rachel all frustrated but she’s funny about it.
Final scene. “Singing in the Rain” is playings Ross skips down the street. They make it obvious and funny that he finally had sex with Julie. Nice goofy ending.
I just checked my 2012 ratings on this one and I gave it three out of five stars. That sounds about right. It was a pretty good episode. A bunch of good stuff but one of the storylines didn’t do it for me.
I just went and checked the site “The One With the Uncut Friends Scripts” to see what was in the extended episode that I watched that wasn’t in the broadcast version (current and past) and there wasn’t much cut out. Only a couple of Rachel’s lines when she was being sarcastic to Monica in the first Central Perk scene. They were a couple of good lines though so I’m glad I watched this version. Someday I’ll watch the HD ones on Netflix but not today.