Tuesday, January 13, 2009

My Favourite Bits From Friends

I have lost count of how many times I've watched the entire series of Friends. I never get tired of it. There are some bits in particular that I really adore.

There's this bit in one of the earliest episodes. Rachel has given up everything, her family, the guy she was about to marry, her way of life. She has no job, no place to live, and she comes to stay with Monica. She really has nothing, but there's this conversation where Ross tells her that she's going to be fine, because she has a whole new life ahead of her. She has magic beans. Later, the credit card company guys call her to ask if she's fine, because there's been no recent activity on her card. She tells them that she's fine, because she has magic beans. I think we all have a few magic beans that we sometimes forget about. It would do us a lot of good to use them every so often.

There's the part where Phoebe is pregnant and is beginning to crave meat. Now she's basically a vegetarian, because she has strong concerns for innocent animals. But it seems that, at that point, that's all she can eat without throwing up. At this point, Joey does two things. One, he offers not to eat meat until Phoebe has the babies, so that no extra animals would have to die, and she would just be eating his animals. I found that really sweet. And he also told her that if she had to do something wrong, she should do it right. If she had to make a sandwich with meat, she should put lots of it and the right kinds to make a great sandwich. I really like that principle. It's what I abide by every time I make an exception on my diet. If I have to eat ice-cream, I will eat a generous helping of my favourite flavour. Not a rationed helping of the sugar free kind. Because if i am going to break my rules, I better have fun doing it. The first time I visited this little donut place near my office, when the guy asked me what flavour I wanted, I told him to give me whatever had the maximum amount of chocolate in it. Abhinav was pretty amused at that, but that's how it works for me.

There was this episode where Phoebe made a list of things she wanted to do before she was thirty one. One of those things was to have the perfect kiss. Everybody was in the coffee house, and Phoebe wanted to go home and be by herself. Joey told everyone that he'd walk her home. He went out on the street and asked her to close her eyes. And he gave her enough reason to cross that item off her list. I think that was one of the sweetest moments ever on the show.

Towards the end of the series, there was a conversation between Ross and Rachel where they were talking about Rachel going to Paris. She told him that she was scared, but it was good scared. Like when-she-first-moved-to-New-York scared. Or like when-she-found-out-she-was-going-to-have-Emma scared. A lot of good things in life scare us, don't they? New beginnings are scary, but we need to distinguish between good scared and just plain terrified.

Okay, I guess this is a long enough list for now. But it is certainly not exhaustive. I will definitely add to this in the future.

2 comments:

Prats said...

I love friends....
The phoebe and the joey kissing is an awesome moment, my other favorites are-

1- The one in which Joey doesn't shares food on the date and ended up eating his date's desert

2- Ross goes out to get the job back for Rachel bribing her boss

3- The last/second last one where phoebe says This is the best day of my life ever. You guys are getting back together, monica and chandler are having their baby. There are chicks and ducks in the world again.


Who is your favorite character in friends.

Bhavya said...

My favourite character... hmm that's a tough one. I had a massive crush on Joey once. But I always thought that Ross is a lot more the kind of guy I would actually want to be with. I always loved Chandler's weird jokes too. Oh, and I have a soft spot for Monica, because I could relate to her because of her obsessive cleaning and organising, and because she used to be fat and eventually learnt to control her diet. But actually, I think my favourite character would have to be Janice. It was always hilarious the way she'd materialize out of nowhere at the most inopportune time and place, and say "OH MY GOD" in her own special way.