Maybe the third year of “Friends” isn’t as funny as the first two years, but it’s still much funnier than its contemporaries on TV.
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At its best, the situation comedy "Friends" captures the Zeitgeist of the 1990s with startling accuracy. That it is funny without resorting to cruel ironies only solidifies the cheery, optimistic outlook of the show´s creators. Sure, some of its sarcastic jokes hit a little close to home, but the characters seem to care genuinely for one another and about being good people (unlike the tools in "Seinfeld").
Warner Bros.´s first "Friends" DVDs consisted of "Best of ´Friends´" collections. Those releases were a hodge-podge of episodes from various seasons. Thankfully, the studio has come to its senses and is now releasing "Friends" season by season. Following Fox ("The X-Files") and Paramount´s ("Star Trek: The Next Generation") leads, Warner Bros. is using a digipak-gatefold-design approach to the "Friends" box sets rather than packaging each disc in a separate keepcase/snapper case. "Friends": The Complete Third Season Box Set includes twenty-five episodes on four DVDs. Each episode contains footage not seen during its original broadcast. Mostly, these are mere seconds that were cut here and there in order to fit in a couple of extra commercials on the air.
Disc 1: "The One With the Princess Leia Fantasy", "...Where No One´s Ready", "...With the Jam", "...With the Metaphorical Tunnel", "...With Frank Jr.", "...With the Flashback", "...With the Race Car Bed".
Disc 2: "...With the Giant Poking Device", "...With the Football", "...Where Rachel Quits", "...Where Chandler Can´t Remember Which Sister", "...With All the Jealousy", "...Where Monica & Richard Are Friends".
Disc 3: "...With Phoebe´s Ex-Partner", "...Where Ross & Rachel Take a Break", "...With the Morning After", "...Without the Ski Trip", "...With the Hypnosis Tape", "...With the Tiny T-Shirt".
Disc 4: "...With the Dollhouse", "...With a Chick and a Duck", "...With the Screamer", "...With Ross´s Thing", "...With the Ultimate Fighting Champion", "...at the Beach".
During the show´s run, Jennifer Aniston (Rachel), Courteney Cox Arquette (Monica), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe), Matt LeBlanc (Joey), Matthew Perry (Chandler), and David Schwimmer (Ross) have become highly-paid stars. Their chemistry makes the show, for they simply look like people who wouldn´t mind hanging out with one another 24/7. I also like how the show reaches back into the characters´ pasts to provide a sense of where the six friends will be in the future. That respect for how the sextet came to be gives the characters a solid base for their growth as fully-realized personas.
For example, in "The One With the Flashback", Janice (Chandler´s on and off girlfriend) asks if the six friends have ever slept with one another. The show then shows us a flashback of the neighborhood, with the Central Perk café once being a bar with a pool table, with Joey misunderstanding Monica´s invitation to have a drink with her, with Rachel and her rich friends gawking at her engagement ring (before she ran from the altar and into Central Perk in Season One´s very first episode), and with Ross being supportive of his wife´s attempts to make new friends. Little does he know that his wife is discovering her true sexuality...and the fun just snowballs from there. "The One With the Flashback" has the kind of laugh-out-loud moments that exemplify the show´s usually brilliant writing.
In Season 3, we also see how well Ross and Rachel are doing as a couple after years of the former pining for the latter to the girl´s total obliviousness. However, they also find themselves having to work at their relationship after the "honeymoon" period dies away. The paleontologist Ross has little in common with the fashion-crazy Rachel, so the two often fall asleep when attending each other´s seminars or dinner functions. Ross is too clingy, but Rachel doesn´t seem to value Ross as much as she should. This all leads to the season´s midpoint, during which Ross and Rachel break up.
The thing is, the third season of "Friends" loses some steam after Ross and Rachel break up. The episodes become more self-contained than I like, so there are fewer laughs after the Ross-Rachel break up than before it because I couldn´t make a connection with any of the narrative threads being used. Monica´s relationship with a computer software mogul doesn´t have the spark that her relationship with Richard (Tom Selleck) did during Season 2. The series also resorts to cheap laughs, as when Joey and Chandler adopt a chick (a baby chicken) and a duck (you guess which episode this one is) and when Rachel dates a guy with severe anger problems (played by Ben Stiller).
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