FRIENDS
“THE ONE WHERE RACHEL RUNS AWAY . . . AGAIN”
Rachel, newly unemployed, has run off to Paris. But one bored night in her hotel room, she watches her videotape of the “Sex and the City” finale, the one where Carrie Bradshaw went to Paris. She realizes what a huge honking cliche she is and gets on the next plane home. But she doesn’t tell Ross, who happens to be at the airport because an important dinosaur bone is coming in. Deplaning, Rachel sees him holding the bone, wrapped to look like flowers, and talking to the attractive scientist who delivered it.
Although this would be the 372nd coincidental misunderstanding keeping them apart, it does not last, because the scientist slides under the arm of her hunky boyfriend and, just as Ross is preparing to deliver his 811th Really Sad Face, his eyes meet Rachel’s. He mouths, “marry me.” She responds, “Yes.” They run to each other, but the dinosaur bone accidentally knocks Rachel out.
When she comes to in a hospital room, she realizes she still can’t wed this drip. And so she sneaks out, bringing the series full circle: Just as in the first episode, Rachel is a runaway bride, and now she’s looking for a new gang of attractive, age-appropriate people to hang out with. Ross, finding the note she has left, completes sad face No. 811.
Meanwhile, as Chandler and Monica prepare to complete their move to the suburbs, Chandler begins wearing belligerent pants and the couple has a hilarious argument about buying a mini-van. Joey announces he’s moving to Hollywood because he’s been offered the lead in an NBC Thursday night sitcom, a spinoff of an established show; the joke’s on him, though, because he’s too dumb to realize that 95 percent of NBC’s Thursday sitcom tries, the spinoffs especially, are absolute bombs.
Phoebe does several determinedly nutty things too tedious and grating to be recounted here, yet the guy she married during February sweeps keeps pretending not to notice.
In the final, farewell hug on a New York street, the tears of the whole gang, minus Rachel but plus the guy Phoebe married, stop when two Latinos and an African-American walk by. The “Friends” are shocked to discover the city is so diverse — and they get a little excited by this. Chandler tries to talk “jive” in a comical manner and gets punched in the nose.
Donald Trump, who happens to be walking by, offers him his black-and-gold silk pocket square imprinted with the Trump family crest to stanch the bleeding. Then, as the credits roll, the sixsome pledge to reunite every year at the Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center.
FRASIER
“IN THE CLOSET”
Frasier and Niles are planning a surprise bachelor party for their dad, Martin. Martin comes home unexpectedly, though, and in their hurry to hide the evidence (chess board, wheel of cheese, can of paint stripper as a little joke), the brothers scoop it all up and jump into the coat closet. Lucky for them, Martin, seeing an empty apartment and no fussy sons to scold him, just tosses his jacket on the couch. Then he sits down in his ratty old chair and enjoys a private bodily moment that makes the brothers cringe frantically. Frasier and Niles spend the first half of the episode in the closet, having an erudite conversation about whether they should come out. They talk about it in terms of when it is right to uncork a noble old red wine.
After Martin leaves to buy a power tool, they exit too. Niles promptly goes home and breaks up with Daphne. Then they get back together. Then they break up. Then they get back together. Then they break up. And so on in a near-endless cycle, played like that breed of classic bedroom farce that makes viewers classically impatient.
Frasier decides he’s going to propose to Charlotte (guest-star Laura Linney) on a dinner date. But sitting at an open-air restaurant, he becomes so enraged by the man smoking a cigar at an adjacent table that he gets thrown off of his plan. Frasier decides to confront the man. He is taken aback to discover that it is Donald Trump, and they have an amiable discussion about the splendidness of all the things Donald owns and how wonderful Donald’s entree choice was that night. Charlotte, who has been unusually emotional all night, leaves, alone. Roz, dissatisfied with her radio-producer job, in love with Frasier, but unable to convey the necessary emotions to tell him so, enrolls in acting school. She promptly sleeps with her instructor, who turns out to be Frasier’s old drinking buddy, Cliff Clavin (guest-star John Ratzenberger). She admires his wide body of knowledge and makes plans for a long-term relationship and a career in regional theater.
Frasier chases down Charlotte and, in the opposite of his careful plan, bumbles out a marriage proposal. She says yes, on the condition that he’ll agree to raise as their own, ex-boyfriend Frank’s baby, which she just found out before dinner she is carrying. Frasier quickly agrees. She has one more condition: He has to agree to wear jeans once in a while. Frasier mulls this over, tugs at his chin, offers a discourse on the checkered history of denim (“from a town in France, Nimes, as in de Nimes, do you see?”), but, in the end, agrees to this too.
Martin and fiance Ronee (guest-star Wendie Malick) and Frasier and Charlotte have a simple but jubilant double wedding. In Niles’ toast, he compares the happy couples to perfectly matched bed linens and, once again, breaks up with Daphne.
Thursday night shuffle
Since “Frasier” debuted in 1993 and “Friends” began a year later, NBC has launched at least 14 new fall comedies in its two-hour Thursday bloc. It’s a sad, sad story of single people, mostly rich, mostly in New York, almost exclusively Caucasian, virtually unable to make the American public laugh. Only a couple of happy exceptions keep this list from being more musty than must-see. No wonder the network has finally given up and turned one of those hours, half of that bloc, over to The Donald.
CANCELED (RED)
STILL AIRING (GREEN)
(RED) “Madman of the People” (1994): With Dabney Coleman as a curmudgeonly New York newspaper columnist, this was “Buffalo Bill” lite. One season.
(RED) “The Single Guy” (1995): Jonathan Silverman, as an unmarried New Yorker, fails to make people forget “Weekend at Bernie’s.” Two seasons.
(RED) “Caroline in the City” (1995): Or you could call it, “The Single Gal,” with Lea Thompson as a lovelorn Manhattan cartoonist. Surprisingly, four seasons.
(RED) “Suddenly Susan” (1996): Or you could call this one “The Single Gal,” with Brooke Shields as a magazine writer in — believe it or not — San Francisco. Even more surprising, four seasons.
(RED) “Union Square” (1997): Nevermind the coast. NBC scurries back to New York City for this group of friends and their favorite diner of the title. One season.
(RED) “Veronica’s Closet” (1997): Kirstie Alley runs America’s dullest lingerie empire. Three seasons.
(RED) “Jesse” (1998): Christina Applegate is a single mom in New York, yes, but Buffalo, and she’s actually working class. Still not funny, though. Two seasons.
(RED) “Stark Raving Mad” (1999): Fussy editor Neil Patrick Harris moves in with creepy horror novelist Tony Shalhoub, in New York City. One season.
(RED) “Cursed” (2000): a.k.a. “The Weber Show,” it starred Steven Weber as a Chicago (!) single yuppie with preternaturally bad dating luck. One season.
(GREEN) “Will & Grace” (2000): Single gal and her gay best pal, this one, of course, was an actual quality effort.
(RED) “Inside Schwartz” (2001): Sandwich-shop executive imagines self as sportscaster, his life as sporting event. One season.
(GREEN) “Scrubs” (2002): Another rare gem, about young doctors at a quirky hospital.
(RED) “Good Morning, Miami” (2002): Hotshot morning TV producer takes job in Miami because he falls for lissome staffer. Head of NBC programming is former hotshot morning-TV producer Jeff Zucker. Two seasons.
(RED) “Coupling” (2003): Putrid American knockoff of British hit that knocked off “Friends” survives just a handful of episodes. One season.
“Joey” (coming in fall, 2004): Likely to appear in the Thursday time slot, Matt LeBlanc spins off his “Friends” character, in Los Angeles.
— Steve Johnson
