Transcript for Episode 30: Everyone Thinks Chandler Is Gay

This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Friends episode “The One Where Nana Dies Twice” If you’d rather listen to Glen and Drew than read what they say, click here. The transcript was provided by Sarah Neal, whose skills we recommend wholeheartedly.

Chandler:  So what is it about me? 

Phoebe:  I don't know—because you're smart, you're funny—

Chandler:  Ross is smart and funny. Did you ever think that about him? 

[characters laugh]

Chandler:  What is it?!

["I'll Be There for You" by The Rembrandts plays]

Drew:  Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast where we talk about the LGBT-focused episodes of classic sitcoms. I'm Drew Mackie.

Glen:  I'm Glen Lakin. 

Drew:  And if that intro did not tip you off, today we are talking about a show called—Friends? "Frems"? Am I pronouncing it right? 

Glen:  "Frahnds." 

Emelie:  Uh, yeah. I think it's "Frahnds."

Drew:  And that third voice you're hearing is Emelie Burnette who is rejoining us from Season 1 to talk about Friends. Hi, Emelie. 

Emelie:  Hi, Drew. 

Drew:  Emelie is a copy editor and writer living in Los Angeles. Emelie, if people have grammar questions, they can just tweet at you, right? 

Emelie:  I mean, they can—at their own risk. 

Drew:  [laughs]

Glen:  How do you feel about semicolons? 

Emelie:  I'm an em-dash girl myself, so—

Glen:  Oh. 

Emelie:  Yep. 

Drew:  Was that The Daily Nexus that made us love em-dashes? Was that just a house staff thing that they had there? 

Emelie:  Yeah. I think it was. They are helpful for line breaks. 

Drew:  They are, and they look nice, and they kind of make you look like you know what you're doing even though they really don't mean anything. 

Emelie:  Precisely. 

Drew:  This podcast is not about punctuation, though. It is about Friends. Emelie, what is your relationship with the TV show known as Friends? 

Emelie:  My relationship with Friends goes back to when I was in the fifth grade, and I found it on TV. I feel like it was reruns already. And then two summers later, I had to basically live with my brother- and sister-in-law to babysit in their new house—they moved from out of state—and she had all of the DVDs, and so that is how I spent my summer. And then we played the trivia game. 

Glen:  And you won? 

Emelie:  Of course. Like I said earlier, before this podcast started, I really like to win things. 

Drew:  Well, you're winning at this podcast already because it probably means you've seen every episode of Friends? 

Emelie:  I have. I have to say I'm out of practice, but yes, I have seen all of them multiple times. 

Drew:  That is very helpful. I have not seen every episode of Friends because I stopped watching when I was in college, but I had roommates who watched, so I'd get little bits and pieces. I actually just found out doing research for this episode that Winona Ryder was on at one point. 

Glen:  That part—you should know that because I told you that's another gay episode of Friends. 

Emelie:  Yeah. I was upset that that wasn't the one we were doing, if you recall. 

Glen:  Yeah. I've mentioned this several times. 

Drew:  Well, I drink a lot. We will get to that one, by the way. We're going to go through these episodes chronologically. Glen, what is your relationship with Friends? 

Glen:  I watched it. 

Drew:  Okay. Great. 

Glen:  I have more to say [laughter]. I've probably seen almost every episode. I didn't really watch the last season as it aired because I was in college, and it wasn't Frasier, so I was like, "Whatever." Actually, maybe I was out of college. Whatever. I didn't watch it. And I think it actually did apply to my gayness or gayety because it came out roughly when I was 15 or 16 or—I don't know. When did it come out, Drew? 

Drew:  In 1994—

Glen:  Yeah, yeah—so 14. And I was probably feeling very ugly and Friends had a lot to do with it because Matt LeBlanc and—

Drew:  But David Schwimmer and the other one are also on it, so that must have made you feel okay, right? 

Emelie:  "The other one."

Glen:  Yeah [laughter].

Drew:  Matthew Perry! I forgot his name. 

Glen:  That was Matthew Perry. No, Matthew Perry and Matt LeBlanc were both very wavy-haired handsome. 

Emelie:  Yeah. They had very swoopy hair. 

Glen:  And I could never have swoop hair. 

Drew:  Season 1, and then they chopped all their hair super short, and I didn't like that. As a 12-year-old who didn't realize he was gay, I was like, "Why did you care so much about the fact that they cut all their hair really short?" 

Emelie:  To be fair, I cared, and I'm not into that—

Drew:  Right. Well, we both might not have known what was going on at the time. 

Emelie:  [laughs] True. 

Glen:  Point being I was very much compared to a Ross, and I wanted to be a Matt LeBlanc. 

Drew:  Yeah. Ross sucks. I'm sorry for that. 

Glen:  It's fine. 

Emelie:  We're all a little Ross. 

Glen:  This room is full of Rosses. 

Drew:  Anyone who makes a point to be correct rather than being liked is kind of a Ross, and it's something we all have to fight. 

Glen:  Drew, what was your experience with Friends? 

Drew:  Like I said, my whole family watched it, and I liked it in junior high. I never really went back to it, and now it's one of those—I have the same relationship towards it that I have to all the chatty, metropolitan NBC comedies where it feels kind of phony, and I don't—I just have no desire to watch it again. So it was a little rough sitting through this episode, which by the way is "The One Where Nana Dies Twice," but which we are calling "Everyone Thinks Chandler is Gay." Emelie and I talked about what episode of Friends we should do, and the idea that we'll probably keep doing this podcast for a little bit—

Glen:  Until the law stops us!

Emelie:  I just really want to get to that last episode. It's less that I care about the podcast. I want to talk about Friends with Winona Ryder. 

Glen:  Oh. Whatever. 

Emelie:  I'm just kidding. I love you guys. 

Drew:  We're going to go in order. There's this one. I think the next big one is the lesbian wedding one, which is a huge one. But this kind of leads into this because it's basically the introduction of major gay themes on the show, and then—

Glen:  I thought that was a character at first—Major Gaythemes [laughter]. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. And then the one with Chandler's—they call her "Dad." We would say that's his mom, played by Kathleen Turner. It's a really misunderstood interpretation of how trans identity works—but the one with Kathleen Turner. Yeah. 

Emelie:  It's confusing. 

Drew:  And then the one with Winona Ryder. Is there another big one we should do? There's one more—like Ross doesn't like the fact that his son is playing with dolls, right? 

Emelie:  Yes. 

Drew:  Is that a gay episode, or is that a Ross-is-a-dick episode? 

Glen:  No. I feel like it's gay episode to us—at least to me, because that's my childhood, except my parents were very lovely about my proclivities with dolls. But I think that's more of a crisis of masculinity episode. 

Emelie:  Yeah. It's a microaggression episode. 

Glen:  Same thing with Freddie Prinze Jr., as the male nanny who's very sensitive and artistic. 

Emelie:  Yes. I had forgotten about that. 

Glen:  That's not really a gay episode either. It's just Ross can't handle other expressions of male identity, which is strange because he's the least masculine of the three. 

Drew:  But also kind of the biggest asshole. 

Glen:  Yeah. His is a very complex character. 

Emelie:  We could say those two things might be related. 

Drew:  That's true. Friends, if you somehow don't know, is a sitcom about six adults living in New York. I don't really know how much information to give. We usually give a quick rundown, so I'll say that it ran for 236 episodes and 10 seasons on NBC from September 22, 1994 – May 6, 2004. It starred—you know who it starred. Importantly, it was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman whose credits pre-Friends include Dream On and The Powers That Be. Do you remember that one? 

Glen:  No. I remember Dream On, obviously. 

Drew:  They wrote for Dream On. They created The Powers That Be, and it had Holland Taylor and David Hyde Pierce before he was on Frasier, and it was about a political family that were all fucked up. 

Glen:  You know how I feel about Holland Taylor. 

Drew:  She's great. Also, the mean mother-in-law from Dead to Me—

Glen:  Oh!

Drew:  I think she might be married to David Hyde Pierce's character. It wasn't bad. 

Glen:  I do remember it now that you mention her. I loved it. Not enough to remember it, but I loved it. 

Drew:  Joseph Gordon-Levitt was also on it, pre-30 Rock—[sighs]—3rd Rock from the Sun. 

Glen:  [laughter] I would watch 30 Rock from the Sun. 

Drew:  Someone's written that fan fiction already. They would go on, post-Friends, to do Veronica's Closet, a CBS sitcom called The Class, which was criticized for all the same problems that people have with Friends today, and Marta Kauffman is co-creator for Grace and Frankie, which is currently on TV—not with David Crane, though. 

Glen:  Think there's a story there? 

Drew:  I didn't want to get too far into it, but I'm sure someone that we know has heard something. If you listen to our previous episode, we talk about how it's actually Living Single that kicked off the trend of fancy young people dating and having jobs in New York, but Friends is the one that got credit for it. And in the wake of Friends, we also got The Single Guy; Suddenly Susan; Boston Common; Partners; Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place; the middle seasons of Ellen after it stopped trying to be Seinfeld and before it became "the lesbian show"; and is in some ways maybe a more dominant cultural force than Seinfeld was because there's so many shows that imitated it that flooded all the broadcast networks. 

Glen:  Did you mention Married with Children's "Enemies"-attempted spin-off? 

Drew:  No. We really should talk about all the attempted spin-offs. Yeah. Married… with Children did an episode called "Enemies" about shitty people that hate each other [laughs].

Glen:  Who live together—I guess in Chicago and not New York. 

Emelie:  I'm suddenly feeling very unprepared for this podcast I thought I was ready for. 

Glen:  You're ready for it. 

Drew:  We're jumping back to Friends. This is what I felt maybe people should hear if they haven't thought about the legacy of Friends. 

Emelie:  I appreciate you and what you're doing. 

Glen:  This is what we do to guests. We make them feel small. 

Emelie:  [laughs] It's working. 

Drew:  Most of those shows I mentioned didn't last very long, but shows like New Girl, Happy Endings, and How I Met Your Mother also owe a huge cultural debt to Friends and were influenced by friends but turned it into something that worked better and was newer and more contemporary, and that's why those lasted a lot longer. Before we go into the episode itself, there's two problematic things I want to talk about, and the first one is a conversation that's been happening a lot online recently, and that is whether Friends is homophobic or transphobic by 2019 standards. Just off the bat, do you guys have any feelings about this discussion? 

Emelie:  I feel like everything before 2000 is homophobic by 2019 standards—homophobic and transphobic. I think if that's your question, then the answer is yes. I don't like to get into the weeds on this question because I feel like they did what they could at the time, and it had a gay creator. So I don't like getting in the weeds on that too much because that's a whole issue of unpacking that person's mentality and the times, and I wasn't alive then—

Drew:  You were alive then. 

Emelie:  [laughs] I was alive then, but I was very young. 

Drew:  Do you have any thoughts? 

Glen:  Maybe in the sense that just with the erasure of the identities in New York during that time is—not egregious, just unfathomable? I don't know. You would think that these characters would show up. As for problematic portrayals, probably. Don't stick out for me, but the gay jokes we hear, for instance, in this episode were the standard gay jokes you heard in the early and mid-'90s. Like "If you are a fancy or funny or clean male—and if you have style, for sure—clearly you must be gay," or the joke is, "You are gay presenting and we're going to confuse you for gay." 

Drew:  Right. So I think you guys are both right. 

Glen:  Yay!

Drew:  I also think one of the reasons that this conversation is happening is that people who are much younger than us are just now burning through Friends on Netflix, and they have different societal standards than we did at that age, and they're like, "Oh. This thing that everyone says is great and was a huge deal is really fucked up," and not just the trans stuff. There's really fucked up racial dynamics where there are two persons of color that appear more than once on the show and those are Julie, Ross's girlfriend who's played by Lauren Tom who is Asian, and Charlie who is—did Charlie date both Joey and Ross? She's played by Aisha Tyler. 

Emelie:  Yes, she dated both of them. 

Drew:  That's it. There are no other people of color that appear in more than one episode, which is really fucked up. So people complain about that. They complain about Fat Monica, and they think it's weird how much glee the show seems to—it presents Monica being fat as if that's just a funny thing. 

Glen:  Drew, we have a hand raised. 

Drew:  Emelie?

Emelie:  I just—the Fat Monica stuff also bothers me, but these are the same people who find Fat Thor really funny, and I just want to point that out. Just want to put it out there. Fat Thor from the Marvel movie. 

Drew:  Oh, yeah. We're exactly picturing that right now. 

Glen:  In a sexual way. But was Fat Thor played for jokes or played as a legitimate expression of depression? 

Drew:  Both. 

Emelie:  Both. Don Cheadle made a joke about his veins being full of Cheez Whiz. 

Glen:  Oh, that's right. 

Drew:  Yeah. So I will say there is this amazing video called "Homophobic Friends," and it is a compilation of every arguably homophobic or transphobic joke ever made on the history of Friends. 

Glen:  I feel like you could have linked us to that, Drew. 

Drew:  I'm linking it in the show notes. I only found out about it right before this. But you wouldn't have time to watch it because it is 50 minutes long. 

Glen:  Oh [laughs]. 

Drew:  And there's an interview with the woman who made it, and she says, "I actually did cut stuff out. If I hadn't cut off the stuff that was redundantly homophobic, it would have been 90 minutes long." Okay. Well, 10 seasons. That leaves room for a lot of homophobia. 

Glen:  So it's really only 10 minutes per season. 

Drew:  Yeah. That's it. Don't downplay this. 

Emelie:  I'm actually grateful that you broke it down that way for perspective. It's still awful, but—

Glen:  Yeah. It's half an episode per season. 

Emelie:  Mm-hmm [laughter]. 

Drew:  So looking at some of the stuff that's been written about Friends recently, the best argument against it that I could find was by this woman named Samantha Riedel, and she says two paragraphs that I think sum up most of what people are saying. 1) "Friends is not a toxic show because of its overt homophobia or its trans-misogyny. It is not a toxic show because of the more subtle ways it reflects the bigotry of its time. It is a toxic show because both of these things are true about a sitcom that won national acclaim as a wholesome, apolitical show while actively adding to the gleeful mockery queer people in America have to face." 2) Her end paragraph is very damning:  "If you can enjoy Friends in 2018, more power to you. But be honest with yourself about what you're watching—a bunch of white people sitting around and making fun of whoever acts gay in between hooking up. Nostalgia might make things seem rosier, but make no mistake, Friends is a terrible show about cruel people who tear others down because of their perceived queerness, and its legacy will be forever tainted as a result." On the other side we have Emily Nussbaum, who is the Pulitzer Prize winning TV critic for The New Worker—ugh—The New Yorker. 

Glen:  I like The New Worker [laughter]. 

Drew:  The New Worker. That's, like, a communist magazine. 

Glen:  Yeah. It's like a Bernie Sanders pamphlet. 

Emelie:  It's like if they remade 9 to 5. 

Drew:  Yeah [laughter]. 

Glen:  [gasps!!]

Drew:  Who, I should say, is a cis-gendered woman who is married to a man. And this is not an essay. This is a series of tweets that she wrote. But she has very good perspectives on TV. She knows TV really well, and her counterpoints were good. She said, "Calling Friends homophobic is short-sighted, silly, and simplistic. It was a show co-created by a gay man scoring laughs off a mid-'90s cultural phenomenon:  straight men freaking out about seeming gay as a result of the increased visibility of out, comfortable, gay men. Every '90s white-boy sitcom had a plot like this. It was a cliché. It was a period full of weird, nervous jokes about masculinity aimed at and centered around straight men. Gay men themselves were portrayed on the show as ordinary people amused by these weird freak outs. Meanwhile, showing Ross's ex and her wife getting married was viewed legitimately as a pro-gay breakthrough. The show's comic aim could veer off course—the stuff with Chandler's dad always felt screwy—and some of it now feels hokey and sour, but it wasn't hostile to gay people. It was obsessed with the idea that if gay men were all over the Upper West Side happily brunching, what made Chandler and Joey any different? The way bigger '90s problem was how few central gay characters existed to have their own stupid freak outs until Ellen and finally Will & Grace." And then she also dings it for erasing Jewish culture, and a lot of characters on the show being Jewish-ish but not really—which is something we actually talked about when you did the Seinfeld with us because the Costanza family being non-Jewish Jewish characters, which is very interesting. And then this person on Twitter whose name is Ryder Kessler responded. Does that name ring a bell with you? Because he's one of our patrons. 

Glen:  Oh!

Drew:  And I was like, "Oh, I know this! Oh, thank you. This person—" 

Glen:  I mean, yeah! Of course! Oh god, Ryder Kessler—yeah. 

Drew:  So he responded to her very eloquently and said, "Explaining why there are a lot of gay jokes on Friends doesn't mean they weren't homophobic. I was watching Friends earlier today, and I love it, but it always burns me about how high the gay-panic jokes-per-episode rate is. As a closeted eight- to eighteen-year-old watching, the laughing at gay panic nuance was lost on me, but the gay-is-scary content certainly wasn't, and Friends was a worse offender than other sitcoms I watched back then—Golden Girls, Murphy Brown, and Seinfeld. It's a legitimate complaint," which I think is another great perspective—that no matter how we might feel about it, the people who are younger than us are going to take it in very differently. You probably took it in much differently because we were—you saw it later than we did. You being Emelie—sorry [laughter]. 

Emelie:  Yeah. Yeah, that's me. I think that Glen saw me scoff when Emily Nussbaum said "silly." I don't appreciate a cis-woman—a cis-straight woman telling the gay community that they're silly for being offended by something. That feels categorically wrong. But I see all sides. It can be both things. These aren't—[laughter]. 

Drew:  Are you saying that several things can be true at once? 

Emelie:  I am, which I realize is a cop-out, but it's nuanced, and you can find joy in problematic things. And also, the criticism about these friends tearing each other down—that's the basis of every modern sitcom. I wouldn't limit that to friends. So sure, the subject matter might have been about presenting gay versus any other topic—acting too smart, acting too dumb. The Big Bang Theory was the most popular sitcom on television. 

Drew:  Also owed a huge debt to Friends. I didn't even think about that one because I forget it exists. But yeah. Yeah. Sure. 

Emelie:  Yeah. It's just about Friends making fun of each other, which was not a healthy dynamic to have in real life. This isn't real life. 

Drew:  The Dick Van Dyke Show was also half about friends at work making fun of each other, and we don't have a problem with that. 

Emelie:  Yeah, and A Star Is Born was one of the biggest movies last year, and that's about a very toxic relationship, and they call that a romance story. I mean, it's complicated. 

Glen:  Yeah. I'm never going to say that a person of color or a trans person should not be offended by any of the content. I'm not going to speak towards that—and as a gay man, I've probably internalized a lot of the homophobia of the shows I watched, and this is almost completely news to me. I just washed it away, which is a condemnation of maybe both Friends and the times—and myself in some ways. So I don't know. The thing about Friends is that it wasn't so much—and I didn't do a lot of rewatches, like I'd watch maybe reruns here and there. No real storylines stick out for me that much. I watched this episode, and I probably hadn't seen it since it first aired, but I was predicting what the jokes were. I remember the jokes vividly. I remember the dad—Ross's dad—making that depression joke. I remember the packets of Sweet'n Low coming down from the ceiling. So bits and pieces of the show were very successful and stuck with me, but the strength came from the characters and how they stuck out, and I think the actors settled into those roles very nicely—in a sitcomy way. 

Drew:  This is the eighth episode of the first season, I should point out, so they are just getting their feet on who these characters are. 

Glen:  Yeah. Phoebe in this episode is a very different person than the Phoebe she would become, and I think she had become a much more level character, and I think a lot of the conversation around Friends is that the first season was more of a "Let's prove ourselves to the network as this quirky thing with all these quirky storylines and quirky characters," and all those things fell away. I think when those things fell away, they maybe did settle into some cultural weirdness with the gay stuff. Maybe that just became too comfortable for them once they no longer had the "Oh, well Ross has a monkey and a lesbian ex-wife, and Phoebe's really weird and talks to her dead friend in a pencil," and things like that once they lost the contrivances—I don't know. They may have leaned into the easy jokes more. 

Drew:  This is probably true, although Phoebe still keeps that weirdness. In the lesbian wedding episode she's possessed by an old woman. "Now I've seen everything" line. Yeah.

Emelie:  Phoebe I feel like gets actually weirder over the course of the show, the way Joey gets dumber [laughter]—like in this episode, Joey seems [like a] pretty level-headed guy.

Drew:  Yeah. Doesn't really say anything dumb. Phoebe seems like she's the dumb one in this episode if anyone is. Yeah. 

Emelie:  But Phoebe gets smarter, just more eccentric.

Drew:  Right. It's worth pointing out that this show was so new it actually aired at 8:30 because its first-season Mad About You was the dominant show, and Friends was in the hammock position between Mad About You and Seinfeld—which did not last long. It very quickly became the cornerstone of the entire night. But at this point, NBC would still be like, "Oh, is this going to last? We don't know." The week this episode aired was November 10, 1994. Friends was the fourteenth most-watched show this week with "only" 21 million people tuning in. Living Single, just for comparison's sake, aired in the exact same time slot—69th that same week. So, a big difference.

Glen:  Nice.

Drew:  Mm-hmm. This episode was written by Kauffman and Crane, and it was directed by that James Burrows guy that we keep seeing everywhere. 

Glen:  Oh! Hmm. I think he has a real career ahead of him.

Drew:  [laughs] Yeah. He's doing good. The episode opens with what is the B-plot, and the B-plot is kicked off with Chandler in his office breakroom and this coworker named Shelley comes in and tries to set him up on a date—after she addresses him as gorgeous which is kind of a warning sign.

Shelley:  You're not dating anyone are you? Because I know somebody who would be perfect for you.

Chandler:  You see, perfect might be a problem. Had you said codependent or self-destructive—

[audience laughs] 

Shelley:  Do you want a date Saturday?

Chandler:  Yes, please.

[audience laughs] 

Shelley:  Okay. He is cute, he's funny.

[sparse cackling from the audience]

Chandler:  He's a he?

[audience laughs]

Shelley:  Well, yeah. Oh, god. I just—I thought—

[audience laughs uproariously] 

Shelley:  Good, Shelley. Okay. I'm just going to go flush myself down the toilet now. Okay. Bye-bye.

[audience laughs]  

Drew:  She just presumed he was gay, and that's a no-no.

Glen:  I mean, that workplace interaction would not happen today, I don't think.

Emelie:  Yeah. I don't think you would offer up someone. You wouldn't try to set someone up at work.

Glen:  Especially, you wouldn't presume their sexuality and then try and set them up—or maybe people would. I don't know how real offices work.

Drew:  Emelie and I worked in an office once and it was a strange place where, as a gay man, the way straight women thought was the way they should interact with me was not right because I am not good at that, and I kind of took pleasure in being very disappointing to them. But it was weird the things they would just come up and say initially before they realized I'm not the one that wants to hear that." Is there a lesbian equivalent of that?

Emelie:  So in my new office that I work in I have chosen to just not distinctly out myself. It'll come up in conversation—

Glen:  When they listen to this podcast. 

Emelie:  —when they listen to this podcast. So I get a little less of that. But in my last office I got a lot of, "What are your thoughts on X—gay topic?" just out of nowhere from people I didn't interact with that much.

Drew:  By which you mean variable gay topic and not like ex gay—like E-X gay?

Emelie:  Correct. 

Glen:  So conversion therapy [laughter].

Emelie:  An example now would be like Kristen Stewart in the Charlie's Angels trailer.

Drew:  What do you think of Kristen Stewart in the Charlie's Angels trailer?

Emelie:  Kristin Stewart is the only good thing about that Charlie's Angels trailer. That's my take. 

Drew:  I'm okay with that. I wish Elizabeth Banks well.

Emelie:  Someone on Twitter—I hate when people say that and then they don't know who it was [laughter]—said that it looked like a Freeform Original Movie, and I agree with that assessment. 

Drew:  It will probably make a ton of money. Do you remember the office Christmas party when there was assigned seating and they put you, me, and the other two gay people in the office at our own table segregated from everyone else—and also, it was the table closest to the door?

Emelie:  [laughs]

Glen:  That makes me so happy. 

Drew:  And we were like—

Emelie:  That explains why we got along. Honestly, you just blew my mind. I hadn't even realized that that's what happened, but that is 100 percent what happened. 

Glen:  Is the gay table the new kids table?

Drew:  It's like the table that they want the least to do with, I guess. They didn't think any of us were important, I presume. It was really not okay, and I feel like that should have been brought to someone's attention because they may have done it accidentally—but the optics of it were not good. But it was Lady Boss who made that decision, and I feel like she would have felt bad if she knew about that—but who knows? 

Emelie:  Yeah. She probably would have felt bad. 

Drew:  Without naming names, she's also the person who cancelled Firefly. There you go.

Glen:  How do you feel about this scene with Chandler?

Drew:  I feel like it's not out of the realm of possibility that a woman who's way too comfortable around gay men would just go up and try to set one up with some other guy without really knowing a fucking thing about him. She doesn't know Chandler at all because if she did she probably would realize that he's not gay. 

Glen:  Yeah. His reaction was both exaggerated and understated in a very Chandler way. The movement was large, but ethereal enough to not ding him for making the typical straight guy, "Oh, my god. You think I'm gay?"

Emelie:  Right. If Ross had been accused of that in the workplace, he probably would have screamed.

Glen:  He would have broken things. 

Emelie:  Mm-hmm. I think that Chandler played that—like you said, it was a good combination of just offended enough but kind of kind in the delivery.

Drew:  Mm-hmm. Because you can't be an asshole about it because then everyone will think you're a homophobe. But also, that thread continues throughout the entire show, even after Chandler gets married.

Emelie:  So what we've decided is that the scene is true to the time?

Drew:  And possibly true to this time.

Glen:  [gasps]

Drew:  I would guess.

Emelie:  [gasps] Bridge.

Drew:  So there's the credits—and we all know the music—and then the next scene is everyone's eating takeout Chinese with very weird, large utensils.

Glen:  Yeah. I had my eye on the utensils for quite a bit.

Drew:  Is that a thing?

Emelie:  I was trying to remember. I was like, "These feel vaguely familiar," but I was like, "No. Those are those cutesy chopsticks that they had for a while." 

Glen:  Yeah.

Drew:  Chopsticks that had—

Emelie:  For kids. 

Drew:  Okay.

Emelie:  But that's not what they were using.

Glen:  No. These were very—I think in the first season they were trying to be so quirky, and I think they just were like, "Oh, look at these quirky chopsticks for white people who don't know how to use chopsticks—when you want to give up, the other end of it is a spoon and a fork." And they were large, and they still didn't know how to use them. I don't know if they weren't comfortable eating and acting at the same time yet because Monica just picked at those noodles.

Drew:  Monica has food issues, as we know.

Glen:  Well, now I feel bad. 

Drew:  I mean, she's also a chef.

Glen:  Oh.

Drew:  Yeah. Food is complicated for her. I think they just couldn't manipulate these weird utensils well enough to eat the Chinese food. They're all sitting around the table, and Chandler's going on about this.

Chandler:  Is that ridiculous? Can you believe she actually thought that?

Rachel:  Um—yeah.

[audience laughs] 

Rachel:  Well, I mean, when I first met you I thought maybe—possibly—you might be. 

Chandler:  You did?

Rachel:  Yeah. But then you spent Phoebe's entire birthday party talking to my breasts, so then I figured maybe not. 

[audience laughs]

Chandler:  Huh. Did any of the rest of you guys think that when you first met me?

Monica:  I did.

Phoebe:  Yeah. I think so. Yeah.

[audience laughs]

Joey:  Not me. 

Ross:  No, no. Me neither—although back in college Susan Sallidor did.

Chandler:  You're kidding! Did you tell her I wasn't?

Ross:  No. 

[audience laughs] 

Ross:  No. It's just because I kind of wanted to go out with her too, so I told her actually you were seeing Bernie Spellman who also liked her. So—

[audience laughs]

Drew:  And he's like, "Well, Ross is smart and funny. Does that means he seems gay?" and everyone just laughs instantly. So no one would mistake Ross for being gay because he's—

Glen:  Awful?

Drew:  Yeah. He sucks too much to be a gay person. I don't—

Glen:  I guess because—well, he also has a very problematic crush on Rachel. Since he never shuts up about his crush on Rachel is why you wouldn't think he's gay. I don't think that's what they're laughing at. They were trying to say, "Well, no. He doesn't have the same non-cis, straight-male qualities that Chandler apparently exudes." 

Drew:  "A quality" is what Monica says. 

Emelie:  Are we to believe that he is less smart and funny? Because I was looking at the way he was dressed, and it felt like he was on par with everyone in the room. I couldn't figure out why it would be so obvious that he's not.

Drew:  Because he's so tall? Sometimes tallness does throw people off. They don't think gay men can be really tall.

Glen:  That's not true. 

Drew:  Sometimes.

Glen:  As a tall child and a thin, tall person in high school, I feel like my tallness was a beacon [laughter]—only because I swayed so gently in the wind [laughter].

Drew:  It was probably the swaying, Glen.

Emelie:  More like a buoy. 

Drew:  Well it is weird thinking about what any of us would use to look at a person to determine if that person is gay or not because sometimes it is very easy to do, but other times it is something that you would have a hard time verbalizing. I don't know—does that make sense to you guys?

Emelie:  Are we going to talk a little bit about their use of radar later? It's just about a radar?

Drew:  Apparently "gaydar" was not in popular use at that time because it seems like they should have used that then.

Emelie:  I was looking it up. We can talk about it later.

Drew:  But there are studies where people are looking at pictures of humans and are asked to very quickly identify if they think a person is gay or not, and most people are very good at doing that and it's higher than probability would dictate [that] more often than not they can accurately guess what a person's sexuality is just by a still photo, which is really crazy to think about.

Glen:  Didn't symmetry used to part of the study of that? I know it's a measure of attractiveness as well.

Drew:  My face is really asymmetrical. It's really—I don't care. 

Emelie:  Have you guys ever done one of those things where they take a picture and then they put your face—your right side and then your right side again but they just flip it?

Glen:  No.

Emelie:  You either look like an alien or like Fat Thor. It's nothing—

Drew:  I look like two different people entirely because my face is asymmetrical. Also, I had to draw my face in an art class once—not a great experience. You get to see every weird thing about your face. They're like, "Oh, your eyes should be at the same level." I'm like, "Mine aren't." 

Emelie:  That's just being a teenage girl, for what it's worth.

Glen:  [tauntingly sings] Drew's a teenage girl.

Drew:  In many ways, yes. 

Glen:  So after no one eats their food—

Drew:  Rachel gets a call from Paolo if that's any indication of what's going on in the show at this point, and then Monica's dad beeps in with the news Nana's in the hospital. On that great cliffhanger, what's going to happen with Nana—

Glen:  She dies. Twice.

Drew:  Twice. Thank you, Glen. Okay. Well, commercial. 

["I'll Be There for You" by The Rembrandts plays]

[Gayest Episode Ever promotes A Love Bizarre]

Rachel:  I'm Rachel.

Joey:  I'm Joey. 

Phoebe:  I'm Phoebe.

Monica:  I'm—not doing this.

Joey:  Come on. 

Monica:  No. This is a shameless, exploitive attempt to get people to watch our show. 

Joey:  Exactly. 

Chandler:  Friends—Thursday nights, right here on NBC. 

Monica:  Would you stop? They've got us in our underwear. We're never going to be in our underwear. We're not going to be in our underwear, are we? 

NBC Announcer:  Friends—between Mad About You and Seinfeld. Thursdays this fall. 

["I'll Be There for You" by The Rembrandts plays]

Drew:  So we are back, talking about Nana and to a greater extent—

Glen:  She dead!

Drew:  She's dead. 

Emelie:  Or is she?

Drew:  Well—it happens. The Gellers arrive at the hospital, and it's Elliott Gould and Christina Pickles who play Mr. and Mrs. Geller and some other woman that we never see again—

Glen:  Yeah. It's her sister.

Drew:  Aunt—Lillian? This is her only appearance and I was like, "Am I supposed to know who this is?" No. Never seen her before or since. Played by Elinor Donahue, who was the oldest child in Father Knows Best.

Glen:  Oh.

Drew:  Yeah. Christina Pickles, it is worth pointing out, has a previous connection with Courteney Cox. They were both in the He-Man movie, Masters of the Universe.

Emelie:  Yes! That's what I was going to say. I loved Masters of the Universe. 

Drew:  I'm sorry. 

Emelie:  No, I currently can still say that I love Masters of the Universe.

Drew:  You're actually the first woman I've known to really like that movie because most of the people I know who really like Masters of the Universe are people who grew up to be gay nerds because it speaks to gay—it's very homoerotic.

Emelie:  Oh, my god. So homoerotic.

Glen:  It's also just a DC Fourth World movie. 

Drew:  Yes. Yeah. It's not a good—

Glen:  Yeah. Skeletor's dark side. They have boom tubes.

Emelie:  I sort of viewed it as a bootleg Back to the Future, like that kind of science-fictiony. And it also had the principal from Back to the Future in it as the cop—the bald guy? 

Glen:  Yeah.

Drew:  Oh!

Emelie:  Whose name I don't know.

Drew:  Jeffrey Jones? 

Glen:  No.

Emelie:  I just told you I don't know his name, so—

Glen:  That's Ferris Bueller's Day Off. 

Drew:  Oh. Okay.

Emelie:  Yeah. No, I loved it. 

Drew:  I like that Christina Pickles played Sorceress and does a decent job, and now she's playing Monica's pesky mom. 

Emelie:  I think she's great as Monica's pesky mom. 

Drew:  She is great at Monica's mom and I'm glad that the elder Gellers got so much screen time over this series. They got a lot right?

Glen:  Yeah.

Emelie:  Oh, yeah. 

Drew:  So this is worth talking about. Do they ever make explicit references to the fact that Monica and Ross are Jewish?

Glen:  Yes.

Emelie:  Yes. 

Glen:  There's a whole episode about dreidels and the Maccabees.

Emelie:  There's also the Christmas armadillo. 

Glen:  Yeah.

Emelie:  Because he doesn't want to do Santa.

Drew:  That does ring a bell. Okay. And then Rachel's also Jewish correct?

Glen:  No?

Drew:  Rachel Green is not Jewish?

Glen:  Is she?

Emelie:  I don't—

Glen:  Oh [I guess/my gosh 00:36:39]. 

Emelie:  She was engaged to—

Glen:  The dentist. 

Drew:  Barry.

Glen:  Yeah, Barry.

Emelie:  Barry. There are allusions to it. It's never said outright, I don't think. 

Drew:  So that would probably be an example then of what Emily Nussbaum was talking about, because if I said, "I'm bringing my friend Rachel Green to the party," I think most people would assume that this is my Jewish friend. Right? No? Am I just imagining that? 

Glen:  Okay. No we're—

Emelie:  I don't—

Glen:  No. Emelie and I are giving each other looks. We're concerned about you.

Drew:  I thought Rachel was also Jewish. I don't know why. 

Drew:  Hello. This is Drew interrupting to clarify whether beloved TV sweetheart Rachel Greene is Jewish or not. It is in fact never explicitly stated on the show, but nonetheless implied that she is. A 2014 Vulture article by Lindsey Weber—which I will link to in the show notes—cites the fact that Rachel is from Long Island, was engaged to Barry Farber, DDS, and calls her grandmother "Bubbe" as examples of this. Also, in case you're wondering, Weber also mentions Rachel's nose job. Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman said in a 2011 interview with The Jewish Telegraph that Rachel is actually the only Jewish friend because Ross and Monica have a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother whereas Rachel's mother apparently is Jewish. But it might just be Kauffman's "Word of God" that makes this so. Rachel's mom, by the way, is played by Marlo Thomas, daughter of—isn't Danny Thomas one?—Danny Thomas, though we are not to infer that Rachel is Lebanese. Listen to episode three if that joke doesn't make sense. 

Drew:  They're reminiscing about Nana's various habits, and this is where they establish that she used to steal Sweet'N Low packets. The nurse comes and says, "It's time." Monica and Ross say their final goodbyes to Nana, and when Ross finally does it, it did get a reaction out of me—even though it's in the title, like, I knew it was going to happen. But Nana springs back to life briefly and then dies again. That's what happens. 

Glen:  For really no purpose. It's not really talked about after this really in the episode at all other than it's a joke to the titular friends in the next scene.

Drew:  The nurse tells us "This almost never happens," which actually kind of made me laugh—but yeah. I was wondering if any of you guys had any sort of reach-around explanation for

Glen:  [gasps!] Emelie does.

Emelie:  I feel like Ross had some very reach-aroundy things here in relation to the gay subplot. Monica has no problem showing physical affection for her relative, and then Ross—a man—tries to, and it's a literal jump-scare moment.

Drew:  That's true. 

Glen:  I like that.

Emelie:  That was my deep read on it.

Drew:  It would happen to him because he's the most emotionally closed-off of any of the friends. I'm good with that. Then they go out and say, "Nana died," and they're like, "We know." And they're like, "No. It happened again." And then we're back in Central Perk, and Chandler is still fucking talking about the gay thing, and he's like, "Is it my hair?" 

Chandler:  I just have to know, okay? Is it my hair? 

Rachel:  Yes, Chandler. That's exactly what it is. It's your hair. 

Phoebe:  Yeah. You have homosexual hair. 

[audience laughs]

Drew:  And—

Glen:  It's a little bit his hair. 

Drew:  I know. One of the girls says, "You have homosexual hair." He kind of does, though. That's a weird joke. Only Hugh Grant can be heterosexual and have that wavy, floppy hair. It's too perfect. It's like pretty-boy hair.

Glen:  It's very nice. 

Drew:  Yes. It's very nice. That's not something my hair when I had hair would ever do. 

Glen:  Yeah. When I said that it gave me a complex, it gave me a complex.

Drew:  Which made it all the more frustrating that they cut it so short the next season and also Joey as well, and I just don't know what the idea was that none of the guys can have a lot of hair anymore.

Emelie:  The girls, they have this voluminous hair, and Rachel had "The Rachel" that was super famous, and then over the seasons they also brutalize it and make it super straight and stuck to their faces, and it's not cute anymore. So I think that maybe they just took the hair in a different direction on the show.

Drew:  Did Phoebe ever get an iconic haircut over the course of the show?

Glen:  No.

Emelie:  No.

Drew:  Poor Phoebe. She deserved it.

Glen:  What? She's fine.

Emelie:  She had great hair.

Drew:  She had great hair, but—so I think there's "The Rachel" 'do, and then Monica gets that bad haircut from Phoebe that's like the Dudley Moore haircut.

Glen:  She also gets dreads—not dreads—yeah dreads.

Emelie:  Uh-huh.

Drew:  Why? When? 

Emelie:  On vacation.

Glen:  When they go to the Caribbean. 

Drew:  Oh. I did not know that. Does it look good?

Glen:  No.

Emelie:  No. It looks really bad.

Drew:  [laughs] So Chandler is very upset by the fact that this coworker has thought that he's gay. Is there any argument other than internalized homophobia for why a straight person would be upset at being mistaken for gay? 

Emelie:  I can't even tell if he's upset. I think he more just wants to know the why of it. It could be that he wants to course correct, but I think he's just like, "Why does everybody think this about me?"

Drew:  I feel like he doesn't like it; otherwise, he would just let it go.

Glen:  Then it wouldn't be a story.

Drew:  Well, yeah.

Emelie:  And it's also Chandler who, if you're a fan of the show, you know is just kind of anxious about everything.

Drew:  Yes.

Glen:  And also given what we find out about his mother—second mother—he's going to have issues around homosexuality and homosexuality adjacent issues.

Drew:  Is it—when you say someone has issues with homosexuality isn't that a polite way of saying that they're kind of homophobic?

Glen:  Sometimes, but I don't—

Drew:  If I said, "This person has issues with a certain race of people," you'd be like, "Your friend's fucking racist." 

Glen:  No. He has issues with his perceived homosexuality. I think if—it's not like he—and again I'm not defending homophobes—but like when people say, "Oh, I don't have a problem with other people being gay. I'm just not gay." But where do we land on—his mom is trans, right?

Drew:  Let's just refer to his mother as Kathleen Turner, because that's the easiest way to make it clear who we're talking about.

Glen:  Growing up with Kathleen Turner—and again, it's the '90s. The psychology and science were muddled and gross, and it was just part of the conversation. And again, I'm not defending people who are homophobic, but I'm giving Chandler a little bit of a pass to just—not fixate on it, but just ask around being like, "Is there something I'm missing?" Because Kathleen Turner was married to Chandler's mother, and it wasn't until later in life that Kathleen Turner—

Drew:  Became Kathleen Turner.

Glen:  —became Kathleen Turner and made this decision. And if Chandler wants to approach it from an abundance of caution—if maybe his relationship with Kathleen Turner repressed certain things in him that are now red flags to everyone else—well, not red flags but a road map of sorts. If he is just conscious of his own reluctance—and this is again me being very generous to him because that's not even part of his biography yet. I don't know. I didn't read the Bible. Maybe it was. 

Drew:  I don't think they knew this about him. And the best argument I can think of is that being perceived as being gay is a giant cockblock, so that would be why he's anxious about it. But I basically read it as being homophobic.

Emelie:  That is the joke that they made earlier.

Drew:  And later, too.

Emelie:  Yeah. Again it comes up.

Drew:  They interviewed David Crane in the Chicago Tribune in 2016 when there was another round of people complaining about Friends being homophobic. And Crane, who is gay, strongly rejects the implication that Chandler was homophobic. And the quote is, "He has his own anxieties and issues, but I don't think the character was homophobic in the least," which "in the least" is kind of hard to do when he always has such a big Daffy Duck reaction to being seen as being gay. 

Emelie:  I read that as a gay person thinking they can't ever be homophobic. That's how I read his statement. 

Drew:  And we are often homophobic. 

Emelie:  Yeah.

Drew:  Yeah. 

Glen:  Not this podcast in particular, just we as gay people.

Drew:  As a people.

Emelie:  Our community is notorious for infighting. 

Drew:  They discuss Nana's two deaths. Phoebe goes all Shirley the Loon. 

Phoebe:  Well, I mean, maybe no one ever really goes. Ever since my mom died, every now and then I get this feeling that she's right here. You know? 

[audience laughs] 

Phoebe:  Oh! And Debbie, my best friend from junior high, got struck by lightning on a miniature golf course. 

[audience laughs] 

Phoebe: I always get this really strong Debbie vibe whenever I use one of those little yellow pencils. I miss her. 

Rachel:  Oh. Here, Phoebes. You want this? 

Phoebe:  Oh. Thanks.

Rachel:  Sure. I just sharpened her this morning. 

[audience laughs]

Joey:  Now see, I don't believe any of that. I think when you're dead, you're dead. You're gone. You're worm food.

[audience laughs awkwardly]

Joey:  So Chandler looks gay, huh? 

[audience laughs]

Phoebe:  I don't know who this is, but it's not Debbie.

Drew:  She's wearing a weird white vest that has black line drawings on it. One of a caterpillar.

Emelie:  I was looking at that the entire scene. It's distracting. 

Drew:  Right. I was actually listening to Keep It, and they were talking to Whitney Cummings, who's worked on a lot of different shows. She says that if you watch Friends, Phoebe's the only one who dresses like the '90s. Everyone else is a lot more basic because they dressed those characters to be in syndication and not look dated a few years in the future and also go overseas and work overseas. So everything has to be fairly standardized, but Phoebe's the exception because she's supposed to be a kook. So she's just wearing— like, Tara from Buffy on her worst day would not have worn that weird outfit. It's very, very strange.

Glen:  Yeah. It looks like she just ran through Blossom's closet and came out the other end. 

Drew:  Yes. So they were still trying to figure out how Phoebe dresses at this point. 

Emelie:  I mean, the clothes fit, which is more than Blossom could say. 

Glen:  True. 

Drew:  That's a burn on Blossom.

Emelie:  I love Blossom. I'm just letting you know that I noticed that her vest fit her well. 

Drew:  Right. What does Joey—Joey compares dead Nana to worm food and everyone makes a bad face, and then he throws Chandler under the bus being like, "So Chandler looks gay, huh?" Yeah [scoffs].

Glen:  Did you not enjoy this episode, Drew?

Drew:  I don't really enjoy watching Friends. I don't think it's that funny. Phoebe makes me laugh sometimes, and Joey makes me laugh sometimes, but the rest of them—

Glen:  Did you watch the Joey spinoff?

Drew:  No.

Glen:  I watched it.

Emelie:  Oh. I did not. No. 

Glen:  They really burned Pepperdine a lot.

Drew:  Why?

Glen:  I don't know.

Drew:  I know why, but someone on the staff must have just hated that school.

Glen:  Probably. 

Drew:  There are two scenes, and then in the next major scene, Chandler is in the office and he runs into Shelly again.

Chandler:  Hey, gorgeous.

Shelley:  Hey. Look, I'm sorry about yesterday—

Chandler:  Oh, no, no. Don't worry about it, believe me. Apparently, other people have made the same mistake.

[audience laughs]

Shelley:  Oh! Okay. Whew!

Chandler:  So what do you think it is about me? 

Shelley:  I don't know. You just have a— 

Chandler: [with Shelley] A quality. Right. Great. 

[audience laughs]

Shelley:  It's a shame because you and Lowell would have made a great couple.

Chandler:  Lowell? Financial Services Lowell? That's who you saw me with?

Shelley:  What? He's cute. 

Chandler:  Well, yeah. He's no Brian in payroll. 

[audience laughs]

Chandler:  Is Brian? 

Shelley:  No. I don't know. Point is that if you were going to set me up with someone I'd like to think you would set me up with somebody like him.

Chandler:  Well, I think Brian's a little out of your league. 

[audience laughs] 

Chandler:  Excuse me. You don't think I could get a Brian?

Drew:  It is interesting that they're saying, "This character can determine who is handsome and who is not, even though he doesn't want to admit that that's anywhere close to his personality."

Glen:  Well, I also feel like that is a weird change—not weird, but a change between the '90s and 2000s and beyond is that for a very long time men weren't allowed to comment on the attractiveness of other men, and they weren't allowed to acknowledge when another man was good looking. And I forget which show it is, but someone even says, "Just acknowledging another man as attractive doesn't make you gay," and the straight male character said, "Well, it doesn't help," and that got a laugh. I probably laughed. 

Drew:  Is that Seinfeld? 

Glen:  Oh, I think it is Seinfeld.

Drew:  That might be. It sounds like something George says. 

Glen:  Yeah. It's probably from the episode we talked about. 

Drew:  It might be [laughter]. That was a year ago.

Emelie:  So long ago. 

Glen:  Yeah. It is from Seinfeld. Thank you. So yeah. I think now that male attractiveness is more a part of our culture and men are valued for their looks more explicitly—praise be—that it is now just a common thing where men can acknowledge when other men are attractive.

Drew:  So it's progressive that Chandler was doing this, but they're playing it for a laugh. 

Glen:  They're playing it for a laugh. It's not progressive. 

Emelie:  Yeah. I think that's the joke, and then they set it up for the joke at the very end. But also, he is slowly realizing these things about himself, and then—is it the next scene when they're about to leave for the funeral?

Drew:  When he says the line. Yeah.

Emelie:  Yeah. So.

Drew:  We should say that right now because it transitions to the final chunk of the episode. But very quickly, everyone's getting dressed up to go to Nana's funeral. Joey and Chandler are the last two to enter, and he says, "Don't we look all nice dressed up," or whatever—I'll cut it in. And he's like, "Oh. It's stuff like this, isn't it?" And they're just kind of like, "Yeah. Ew." 

Emelie:  What's funny is if you want to talk about Chandler and Joey generally speaking in the series they have always had a very loving, affectionate, complementary relationship, and that wasn't standard—like, it's very physical. They haven't really established that yet in the timeline, but I just find that is an interesting point when we're talking about this show because that was straight males.

Glen:  But there were also plenty of jokes at that expense, like when they talk about sharing soap in the shower and Joey asks Chandler to think about the last place that Joey washes and the first thing that Chandler washes—so going from ass to face.

Emelie:  But again, Joey doesn't mind that. Chandler does, but that's because Chandler's neurotic.

Drew:  Well, it's Chandler's face. 

Glen:  It's also Chandler's face. It's not going from—

Emelie:  That's true [laughs]. 

Glen:  If it was going from Chandler's ass to Joey's face, Joey might have another opinion.

Emelie:  I feel like Joey wouldn't.

Drew:  They're not always going to take showers in the same order, so that really doesn't work perfectly, but okay.

Glen:  I also don't believe that Joey would take the shower first. He sleeps in and Chandler has a job.

Drew:  That makes sense. The third season is when Joey moves out, and Chandler is sad because he loses his friend, and that is what made people think that the show was gearing towards making Chandler realize he was in love with Joey and that he's gay because it does kind of play like a breakup because he misses his friend very, very badly—and you're allowed to miss friends you're not in relationships with. Like, that's a real thing, but it's just not something you ever really would see on a TV. So I think people were confused about that, and the creators actually had to say, "No. That's not what's happening. Don't worry." 

Glen:  Don't worry? Did they actually say, "Don't worry"?

Drew:  Kind of. I couldn't find that actual statement, but I did find something I actually remember reading back in the day in People magazine. It was like "Cheers and Jeers," but whatever the People version of that is, and this woman, Elaine Showalter, has this thing. The opening sentence is "I guess we're not going to see the Friends episode called "The One Where Chandler Comes Out," and she writes about how it seemed like it was going to happen, and they said it's not going to happen, and her final paragraph is actually very good. She says, "Viewers today rightly resist clichés about sexual identity, but we're also more willing—if Friends would dare us—to accept the notion that even our comedic favorites can make discoveries about themselves. Gay characters have come a long way on prime time, but producers seem unwilling to make them lead characters. It's time to grow up. If Chandler got a life to match his hair, I'd still be there for him." I'm like, "Oh. That's actually very nicely put."

Glen:  What is this, 1996?

Drew:  1996.

Emelie:  It's People magazine?

Drew:  People magazine, and Ellen came out a year later. 

Emelie:  Wow.

Glen:  I mean, yeah. The thing is, Chandler coming out would have been a more natural, better character and story decision than him falling in love with Monica and getting married. 

Drew:  What is the lead up to that? They get drunk and have sex with each other?

Glen:  Yeah. At a wedding. Yeah.

Drew:  Okay. 

Emelie:  Yeah. There was no lead up, which is why it was a big surprise, and they were surprised that the fans liked it so much. They weren't going to have it last, but the fans loved it—because that was the cliffhanger for the end of the season. So then they came back and kept it going.

Drew:  People were probably just glad that the focus was taken off Ross and Rachel for five seconds. 

Emelie:  You are not wrong. 

Drew:  I have a question about Rachel at this point. This is very early in the show, but the entire time Ross is shit-bagging Paolo and saying mean things about the fact that Rachel's seeing anyone that's not him. She has no idea that Ross is in love. How does she interpret all these fucking things he's saying the entire time? Is she just—

Glen:  That he's just being funny.

Emelie:  Yeah. Thinks he's goofy and adorable.

Drew:  He's not funny.

Emelie:  "Friend" zoned. 

Drew:  There might be something gay about the next scene, which is Ross literally stuck in a closet. What do you guys make of this?

Glen:  Mm-hmm. So my reach around for this—unless, Emelie, you'd like to go first—

Emelie:  No. Please go.

Glen:  —is that yes he's in a closet, and yes he discovers a secret stash of sugar sweetness.

Drew:  Oh!

Glen:  And it's for a grandmother who did not die peacefully. She came back to life—perhaps because she had unfinished business. My reach around is that if you keep your love in a closet, you'll regret it when you die. 

Drew:  I'm good with that. What do you have?

Emelie:  I didn't get that far. Just that he's in the closet, and then there's all that sugar in there, but also—yeah. He's playing dress-up with his dead grandma. He's helping. He's pretty fluent in what Grandma should and shouldn't be wearing and what matches and what doesn't.

Drew:  Like when they ask for a different sort of shoe, he knows how to interpret that. I'm not sure even I would know what—

Emelie:  I wouldn't know what it meant.

Glen:  Well, they ask for a slimmer heel. 

Drew:  Does this mean like a less narrow heel? 

Glen:  No, it means a more narrow heel—a slimmer heel.

Drew:  Oh, yeah. I don't know how words work [laughs].

Emelie:  Man—and I worked in fashion for a while. I just was like, "Slimmer heel? Could that mean the strappiness of the heel?" Because the '90s had very strappy shoes.

Glen:  I did actually pay attention to the shoes that they rejected and they did have a thicker heel, so I think that's what they meant. That's more of a day shoe whereas at night is when you can be dangerous and wear that thinner, higher heel.

Emelie:  Your attention to detail here is impressive.

Drew:  You're the copy editor. Come on.

Emelie:  I know! But it's all so different when it's a show you've seen so many times. 

Drew:  Right. I just thought of something weird. This episode is about Chandler seeming gay, and it's about Nana dying—but she comes back, and then she's really dead. But the next big gay episode is the lesbian wedding which has the plot of an old woman's ghost who possesses Phoebe. That's a weird through line of old ladies not being quite dead enough and gay themes that has not come up on any other show that I'm aware of. That's probably the only—there's probably just two of those. Probably not a third one.

Glen:  I'll ask the internet. 

Drew:  Yeah.

Emelie:  I have a feeling I'll have to unpack that on my own time. 

Monica:  Are these the shoes?

Rachel:  Yes. Paolo sent them from Italy.

Ross:  What we don't have shoes here? 

[audience laughs]

Joey:  Morning. Are we ready to go? 

Chandler:  Well, don't we look nice all dressed up. It's stuff like that, isn't it?

[audience laughs] 

Drew:  They go out to the cemetery, which is actual outside outdoors, and there is a laugh track. I say this because—it's ghost laughter. Thank you [laughter].

Glen:  Ghosts.

Emelie:  They are in a cemetery.

Drew:  And ghosts do exist on the show according to Phoebe. We did the Will & Grace episode recently, and there are scenes filmed on the streets of New York and there's no laugh track because, as Glen points out, it's weird. There can't be a studio audience there. There can't be a studio audience here, and Friends was like, "No. We've got to keep it." It doesn't bother me that it's there. It feel's kind of natural actually.

Emelie:  Yeah. I didn't even think of that while I was watching it. So, good on them.

Drew:  Nothing much happens in this scene, except Ross falls in an open grave.

Emelie:  Did anyone else find the lens shot that they did from his POV in the grave up at the "friends" really interesting? I feel like Friends didn't usually do stuff like that. 

Drew:  That's a perspective that—

Glen:  Yeah. They don't frame shots.

Drew:  No. 

Emelie:  Yeah [laughs]. 

Drew:  I guess that was before they realized that that's not something they do. I don't know. They were not outside very often either.

Glen:  There's that football game during the one Thanksgiving episode.

Drew:  Isn't there the one where they're at the beach and someone has to pee on someone else?

Emelie:  Yep. 

Glen:  Yeah. Joey pees on Chandler, or the other way around. But yeah. Isn't that [00:56:44]? Or am I thinking of another sitcom that did a pee thing?

Drew:  I don't know.

Emelie:  No, no, no. It was the pee thing, but I'm pretty sure that Monica was the one that got peed on.

Glen:  Oh. That's right. 

Emelie:  I just can't remember who did it. She got stung by a jellyfish and then somebody had to pee on her. 

Glen:  There's definitely a sitcom episode where a man gets peed on. I don't know. 

Drew:  Do you mean a sitcom episode or, like, a RedTube video? 

Glen:  Why not both? [laughter]

Drew:  Is there a reach around for Ross falling in an open grave? Because if it's just for that one joke, it's not a very good joke. 

Glen:  Any hole in the storm—I don't know.

Emelie:  Well, it's to get him high on drugs later so that he can have the scene with Rachel and then also the line with Chandler.

Drew:  That makes sense. So he gets hurt, and then they're at the reception afterwards—and Mrs. Geller gets him all doped up on painkillers, and he doesn't know what the fuck is going on. He cockblocks Chandler, who's being hit on by this woman who is from Candyman. She's the one that's at the end. She's the girlfriend of the guy who gets killed at the end of the movie. I recognized her. I looked her up. 

Andrea:  Hi. I'm Andrea. I'm Dorothy's daughter.

Chandler:  Hi. I'm Chandler, and I have no idea who Dorothy is.

[characters and audience laugh]

Phoebe:  Hey! Look who's up. 

Ross:  Hey.

Phoebe:  How do you feel? 

Ross:  [laughs] I feel great. I feel great—I fleel great.

Monica:  Wow. Those pills really worked, huh? 

Ross:  Yeah. Not the first two. But the second two, whoo.! 

[audience laughs] 

Ross:  [emotionally] I love you guys. You guys are the greatest. I love my sister. I love Phoebes.

Phoebe:  Oh! So nice.

Ross:  Hey, Chandler! 

Chandler:  Hey.

Ross:  I love you, man. And listen, man. If you want to be gay, be gay. 

[audience laughs] 

Ross:  Doesn't matter to me—mmm.

Andrea:  You were right. 

Glen:  Chandler could also in this instance just say, "He's high on drugs. I'm not gay." He could have corrected the record.

Emelie:  Well, as we learn a second later, her friend thought that he was gay. I feel like it would have been a hard sell to come back from.

Glen:  Fair.

Drew:  She's like, "You were right," and they walk away. I guess poor Chandler—I don't really—he's fine. 

Emelie:  I'm indifferent about that.

Drew:  Yeah. 

Glen:  It's a funeral. You shouldn't be hitting on people at a funeral anyway. 

Drew:  The scene with Mrs. Geller and Monica is nice because she's been [nagging/negging 00:59:17] her daughter the entire time, and it's nice that now you get perspective on maybe why she does that, I guess.

Mrs. Geller:  Your grandmother would have hated this.

Monica:  Well, sure. What with it being her funeral and all.

[audience laughs]

Mrs. Geller:  No. I'd be hearing about, "Why didn't they get the honey glazed ham?" or  that I didn't spend enough on flowers. And if I spent more she'd be saying, "Why are you wasting your money? I don't need flowers. I'm dead." 

[audience laughs]

Monica:  That sounds like Nana.

Mrs. Geller:  Hmm. Do you know what it's like to grow up with someone who is critical of every single thing you say?

[audience laughs]

Monica:  I can imagine. 

Mrs. Geller:  I'm telling you it's a wonder your mother turned out to be the positive life affirming person she is. 

[audience laughs]

Monica:  That is a wonder. So tell me something, Mom, if you had to do it all over again, if she was here right now, would you tell her?

Mrs. Geller:  Tell her what?

Monica:  How she drove you crazy for picking on every little detail like your hair for example.

Mrs. Geller:  I'm not sure I know what you're getting at.

Monica:  Do you think things would have been better if you just told her the truth?

Mrs. Geller:  No. 

[audience laughs] 

Mrs. Geller:  I think some things are better left unsaid. I think it's nicer when people just get along. More wine dear?

Monica:  Oh. I think so. 

Mrs. Geller:  Those earrings look really lovely on you. 

Monica:  Thank you. They're yours.

Mrs. Geller:  Actually they were Nana's.

Emelie:  I think their arc was my favorite of the episode.

Glen:  Yes. The acting was also really good.

Emelie:  Very good.

Drew:  Christina Pickles is really good. Also Courteney Cox is really good, but I know that. It's just nice that there's something behind Christina Pickles. She seems like she actually cares about Monica.

Emelie:  They also left things unspoken where a lot of shows would spell it out. Like at the end, she's not going to cop to the fact that she's been acting like her mother and criticizing her daughter so much, but then you see her pull away from a criticism that she wants to make—and you just see that. You don't hear it, and I really appreciated that. 

Drew:  That is more subtle. They come to the conclusion without having to spell it out. Yeah, that's nice.

Glen:  And also, she remains within character the entire time. It's not like Monica's mom was all of a sudden not Monica's mom and showing sweetness. It was sweetness through the lens of how she knows how to act with her daughter and how she can still show affection without breaking the rules of their relationship. Do we want to try and tie the Monica-and-her-mom storyline to any sort of gayness? Out of just parental approval for choices a parent might think are wrong?

Drew:  The mom doesn't seem to approve of anything that Monica's doing at least cosmetically—physically—and she finally realizes that that's not helping anything. 

Emelie:  And they do play it as a gender dynamic. And over the course of the show, too, it's exclusively with Monica, the daughter, whereas the son can do no wrong. I don't know where that's going [laughs].

Drew:  Ross tries to confess his love to Rachel, and she just completely brushes it off. She's willfully ignoring the fact that he's putting all this out there.

Emelie:  Well, in this moment he is high, and she has also just told other people how much he cares about them.

Drew:  That's true.

Emelie:  I was curious—do we ever see Chandler watching the game with the other guys?

Glen:  All those hairs look alike. 

Drew:  Yeah. 

Emelie:  Because literally every man in the room has pooled around Joey—the uber-masculine character in the course of this episode for the purpose of this episode—around this football game that they're watching.

Drew:  Because Joey has snuck a radio in his blazer and is listening to the game the entire time.

Emelie:  Yes. And they're all watching in the corner, and it's a big thing, but you never see Chandler interact with that at all.

Drew:  Does Chandler like sports? 

Emelie:  I don't think he does, but they haven't established that in the show yet. But I just find that interesting. It was something  I noticed watching it because the dad character—all the other significant male characters you see watching the game.

Drew:  If Chandler was over there it wasn't obvious, at the very least. And now they're back at Central Perk, and at this point—it does seem weird to me. I feel like maybe this is people—maybe this is just UC Santa Barbara talking, but it's like they should be having beers instead of coffee at night all the time. Seems like a lot of caffeine to take in late at night. 

Emelie:  Well, I mean, they're neurotic so—

Glen:  I love coffee at night. 

Drew:  I do, but I feel like after a funeral I would probably be drinking alcohol. But that's just me.

Glen:  No. I feel like after a special occasion like a funeral is when you want to have coffee. You're just sort of savoring the moment.

Emelie:  Yeah. They do it at weddings too, like after the cake and everything. It's the post-meal—

Glen:  Coffee started as an after-dinner drink. 

Drew:  Really?

Glen:  Yeah. I think so. 

Emelie:  I don't know the origin of coffee, but I know that historically it has often been used as an after-meal beverage.

Glen:  Because it helps with digestion.

Drew:  So do digestifs, which are alcoholic. I'm not arguing. I'm just saying.

Glen:  So they're sitting at Central Perk [laughter].

Drew:  Looking at photos. What do you guys make of what happens with the photos? What do you guys make of that weird connection they make between Nana and Monica?

Chandler:  Who are those people?

Ross:  Got me.

Monica:  Oh, that's Nana. Right there, in the middle. Wow. Let me see. "Me and the gang at Java Joe's."

Rachel:  Wow. Monica, you look just like your grandmother. How old was she there? 

Monica:  This was 1939. Yeah—24 - 25. 

Ross:  Yeah. Huh. It looks like a fun gang.

Glen:  I don't have a gay reach around for it.

Drew:  Okay.

Emelie:  Not with the Monica stuff, but the Buffalo Bill joke with Ross and—

Drew:  That's how it ends right? 

Emelie:  Yeah.

Drew:  Okay. But they make a point of they find this picture of Nana at Java Joe's with her friends back in the day, and she's the same age that Monica is now. And that's nice, but I don't know—

Emelie:  I feel like a lot of the Nana sentimentality stuff in this episode didn't feel like it was serving anything for the show. It was sweet and really lets you linger in it, but I couldn't understand really the purpose.

Glen:  You have close friends in your 30s and then you die alone—or you have close friends in your 20s, and you die alone.

Drew:  Yeah. They're mid-20s at that point.

Emelie:  I wonder if it was just part of trying to figure out who they were as a show, like, "Do we want to be the sentimental ones—make you think about your place in the universe in addition to being funny and cute and accessible?" But yeah, it just kind of floundered for me.

Drew:  I kind of do—it made me realize that the show was a more sentimental show than I remember because I just remember the goofy parts. But they do have—like the shot of all the Sweet'N Low packets falling down on Ross while he's stuck in grandma's closet is sweet and kind of a neat shot even if the physics of what's going on does not really make sense. But a big difference between this show and Seinfeld is that Seinfeld never did shit like this, and this show kind of does it often, and it's not entirely unwarranted. I feel like a lot of times they actually earn the sentimentality.

Glen:  Also, just being anything that's in the '90s about New York, I think, is drawing on the independent- and short-film culture and trying to make all these sweet endearing moments and thinking that's edgy. 

Drew:  That's true. Also, interesting that when I think about the modern version of this, which is New Girl—that New Girl is even more heavily borrowing from an indie-film aesthetic. It's shot more like an indie film than it's shot like a sitcom, I guess—

Glen:  Well, it's a single camera show.

Drew:  I know, but the effect of it is that it doesn't look like a traditional sitcom at all. It looks more like what you'd see in an independent film.

Glen:  Right.

Drew:  Anything? Oh. So yeah.

Glen:  There's more scene with the gay.

Drew:  No, there's Buffalo Bill.

Joey:  Ooh. Look, look, look—I have Monica naked. 

[characters and audience laugh]

Ross:  No, no. that would be me again. 

[audience laughs] 

Ross:  I'm, uh, just trying something. 

[audience laughs uproariously]

Drew:  Why would you take a picture of that? 

Glen:  Because naked kids are what parents take pictures of.

Emelie:  Parents would find that hilarious if their kid was trying something out.

Drew:  Tucked his peen and walked around?

Emelie:  Yeah.

Drew:  Really? 

Glen:  Yeah.

Emelie:  Oh, yeah.

Glen:  That did not rub me strange at all. 

Emelie:  Nope. That read so true. 

Drew:  I don't have pictures of that.

Glen:  It was the truest moment of this episode.

Emelie:  [laughs]

Drew:  Huh. Okay. Well, maybe I was a boring child. And then we have our final scene.

Glen:  Yes.

Drew:  Which is we meet Lowell and—

Glen:  And Brian.

Chandler:  Hey Lowell. 

Lowell:  Oh, hey Chandler. 

[audience laughs]

Chandler:  So how's it going down there in financial services?

Lowell:  It's like Mardi Gras without the paper mâché heads. 

[audience laughs] 

Lowell:  How about you?

Chandler:  Good. Good. Listen, I don't know what Shelly told you about me, but I'm not.

[audience laughs]

Lowell:  I know. That's what I told her. 

Chandler:  Really?

Lowell:  Yep. 

Chandler:  So you can tell?

Lowell:  Pretty much. Most of the time. We have a kind of radar.

[audience laughs]

Chandler:  So you don't think I have a—a quality?

Lowell:  Speaking for my people, I'd have to say no. 

[audience laughs] 

Lowell:  By the way, your friend Brian from payroll—he is. 

Chandler:  He is?

Lowell:  Yep, and way out of your league. 

[audience laughs]

Chandler:  Out of my league! I could get a Brian. If I wanted to get a Brian, I could get a Brian. Hey, Brian.

Drew:  And people's estimations are—Chandler is correct that he could do better than Lowell.

Glen:  Uh—I don't think so.

Emelie:  I understand that I am not the target demo here, but I thought Lowell was—

Glen:  I thought he was cute?

Emelie:  Cute.

Glen:  Lowell's cute, and he also seemed perfectly nice and funny and actually intellectually on par, and I thought that the point of this scene was going to be like Chandler is just like this gay dude, which wasn't the point of the scene at all. Lowell needed a better suit, but it was the '90s, so I'll forgive him for that. But he's perfectly cute.

Drew:  What Chandler's wearing in that scene is hideous.

Glen:  The tie! 

Drew:  It's a tie, and it's a really wide, orange shirt that has giant pockets on the breasts on both sides, and it's just like—ugh.

Emelie:  He has weird work clothes throughout the show. It's the ties [laughter]. 

Drew:  Yeah. That's not good. That's not good. So you normally don't think the gay characters are that cute. I didn't think he was that cute.

Glen:  I also didn't think Brian was all that.

Emelie:  No. I didn't either.

Drew:  I did think he was out of Chandler's league though. I think that was also correct. 

Glen:  I don't think he was out of Chandler's league. I thought he was maybe upper tier of his league, and you also don't know what he's into [laughter]. 

Drew:  We don't. So yeah. He sees Lowell and says, "Oh, yeah. You know I'm not?" and he's like, "I knew that you weren't." And he's like—this is when the radar comes up.

Glen:  Gets a laugh. 

Drew:  Because the idea of gaydar was not a widely known concept at that point, but people knew that gay people could spot other gay people, right? That's not new is it? 

Glen:  I think that's perfectly established because how else would we find gay people to sleep with? 

Emelie:  How else have you thrived for centuries?

Glen:  Yeah [laughter].

Drew:  Trial and error—trial and really unfortunate errors. I also like that Lowell says, "Most of the time we can tell. Sometimes there are surprises," and then he leaves. And [Chandler's] like, "I could totally get a Brian," and then Brian's there. He's like, "Hi, Brian," and that's it. Brian not credited.

Glen:  Oh. How are we going to find him?

Drew:  I don't know a few actors in this—not everyone who is named actually gets credited, which is weird. And that's Friends—that's the first of at least four episodes of Friends that we will have to talk about in the near future.

Glen:  Emelie, do you have any final thoughts about Friends?

Drew:  Oh, sorry. That's right. 

Emelie:  Final thoughts about Friends— 

Glen:  This episode, I guess.

Emelie:  I'm honestly concerned to do a full re-watch because—like I said, I haven't re-watched it in a while, [but] I watched this episode to get caught up again for the show—because I'm a nitpicker, so I will probably pull from Emily Nussbaum's feedback and all the criticisms and then feel super conflicted about this show that I loved for so long. This episode—it was fine. I feel like it has issues. Overall, I didn't walk away offended. It just felt like true to 1994. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. I agree. That sounds like a good perspective. Glen, do you have final thoughts?

Glen:  Same. Thoughts. I don't have the same fondness for Friends. I thought it was fine. I enjoyed watching it at the time. I enjoyed the characters more than the storylines, as I already said. And again, this episode is fine, but it's more interesting knowing the stuff we know about Chandler. I think if I divorced that knowledge from the episode, maybe it could have rubbed me like it rubbed you—oh. I shouldn't say it like that. But here we are.

Emelie:  Why can't you say it like that? Don't internalize anything.

Glen:  This is the '90s [laughter]. So Drew, how did it rub you?

Drew:  I still don't—I don't really have more of an opinion on how homophobic I think it actually is, so what I was thinking of is that we would do the lesbian wedding episode next season and that I would do a re-watch of every episode leading up to it just because that's doable. That's not even two seasons, I think, so I could actually find the time to do that. And I know that at least the kind of—not anti-lesbian humor. I don't know how to describe the attitude that Ross has towards Carol and Susan, but it's not positive and—

Glen:  Well, he was also hurt and betrayed.

Drew:  I'm saying yes, but it can be read as he had his feelings hurt or he just really resents that his wife is now in a relationship with this woman. It can be two things. Why shouldn't it be? And that's there right from the beginning. In the first scene of Friends we see them sitting around Central Perk, and he comes in, and his heart is broken because Carol has finally moved out. And one of the first things Chandler says is "Sometimes I wish I was a lesbian," which again is a very interesting statement when you think about what his family is and what his whole dynamic is going to be. It's one of the first things he ever does is wish that he were a gay woman, which is very strange. I just kind of want to get a sense for what it all adds up to and how it pays off in that lesbian wedding episode. And then I will stop watching Friends and just watch the gay ones from there on out. Yeah.

Glen:  But Season 8 is good. 

Drew:  Is it?

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  All of it?

Emelie:  What happens in Season 8?

Glen:  I don't know. I just felt like the jokes had a sweet spot. Maybe I just have a fondness for the episode where Ross—I forget what he finds out— that someone, maybe Rachel, is pregnant—I don't know. But Phoebe is like, "That is brand-new information," and it's the perfect delivery of that line.

Drew:  I actually have some of awareness of Lisa Kudrow speaking that line. 

Glen:  Yeah.

Drew:  Yeah. Okay.

Emelie:  That's the one where they find the sweater and they realize that Ross is the dad and—

Glen:  Yes.

Emelie:  Mm-hmm. Yeah. That was a good season.

Glen:  Thank you.

Drew:  Does it have gay stuff?

Glen and Emelie:  [disappointed] No. 

Drew:  Emelie, if people want to ask you questions about grammar or Friends, where can they find you on Twitter?

Emelie:  My handle is @EmeliesALot. I said "Eme lies a lot" last time, which was my joke when I was 12. And now, as I explain it to people as an adult, "Emelie's a lot" applies better and makes a little more sense. It's E-M-E-L-I-E-S-A-L-O-T.

Drew:  Right. Glen, where can people find you on Twitter and other things?

Glen:  On Twitter I'm @IWriteWrongs—that is "write" with an R. So I-R-I-T-E-wrongs, and on Instagram @brosquartz.

Drew:  No. It's write with a W.

Emelie:  Yeah.

Glen:  Oh, my god! 

Emelie:  [laughs] I was like, "I know your handle."

Drew:  There's also an R there, but yeah.

Glen:  Can you just do it? I'm very tired again. Drew, do it for me again.

Drew:  You can find Glen on Twitter @IWriteWrongs. That's write—R-I—fuck. Now you made me do it.

Emelie:  [laughs] There's a W, everybody. W like "write."

Drew:  W-R-I-T-E-wrongs, and then Glen is on Instagram @BrosQuartz B-R-O-S Q-U-A-R-T-Z. Yes, that's a Steven Universe reference. My name is Drew Mackie, and I am on Twitter @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E. You can find this podcast on Twitter @GayestEpisode, and we're also on Facebook. You can listen to all previous episodes of this show at gayestepisodeever.com or on Apple Podcast or anywhere else you'd normally find a podcast. If you look for us somewhere where you would normally find a podcast and we're not there, tell me, and I'll put us there because it's important that we're there. As we said earlier, we do have a Patreon. It's patreon.com/gayestepisodeever. Please give us money that will help us get around to doing a Season 3 sooner rather than later. All donations help us unlock the fun, cool bonus podcast we're going to do when we make enough money. This is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles based podcast network. You can find out more about the TableCakes shows at tablecakes.com. That is the end of the show. I don't have anything to say about Friends at this point. Are you guys good to go? 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. 

Emelie:  Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  Do you want to say bye?

Emelie:  Bye.

Glen:  Bye forever.

Drew:  Bye forever. Podcast over.

["Sugar Town" by Nancy Sinatra plays]

Katherine: A TableCakes production.