We have to do something, OK.
Something huge.
We could climb Mount Everest.
No, no.
Not something stupid, something huge.
This scene from Friends feels like it's
the start of a really great episode.
Sadly, it's not.
It's hard to talk about entertainment in the 90s
without mentioning Friends.
The show was truly a cultural phenomenon,
and it's a great example of a studio producing the right show
at the right time.
Generation X was rapidly maturing.
The MTV generation was moving away from late night hangouts,
and moving toward building careers and families
for themselves.
Friends was a perfect companion for that process.
Needless to say, Friends was a major hit.
In the show's run of over 10 years and 236 episodes,
Friends retained an average viewership of over 20 million
viewers and was nominated for-- wait for it--
62 Emmy Awards.
Despite the show's critical success--
and inherent ability to get Rembrandt's song stuck
in your head for a week and a half--
not every episode of Friends is a classic.
And, today, we're going to be talking about two of them.
"The One with the Invitation", the 21st episode
of season four, and "The One with the Vows",
the 21st episode of season seven.
These are the two lowest rated episodes of Friends
by a long shot.
Each began like any normal, fun episode of Friends.
In "The One with the Vows", we see Chandler and Monica
preparing for their wedding, and in "The One
with the Invitation", we see Chandler and Joey
talking about climbing Mount Everest and watching die hard.
It's the same fun, light, snarky energy
that keeps fans coming back for more every week.
However, there's a turning point in each one of these episodes
where a character is presented with a problem and, oddly
enough, these problems both involved
two of the show's weddings.
In "The One with the Vows", it's Chandler and Monica's dilemma
over writing wedding vows, and in "The One
with the Invitation", It's Ross and Emily
in a dilemma over inviting Rachel to their wedding.
Once these problems are introduced,
the shows veer off into their normal formulas,
and into an extended flashback montage
of clips from previous seasons.
These flashback episodes of television
are called clip shows, and we see them all the time.
Most long-running shows have either clip
show episodes, or end up portraying some pastiche
of a clip show episode.
We've seen it in shows like Three's Company and Cheers.
And the clip show format has been parodied in shows
like It's Always Sunny and Community.
Clip show episodes have a tendency
to feel like a major hiccup in the show's momentum.
They're often pieced together in kind of slapdash way.
And, more importantly, nothing really happens in them.
They just feel like kind of a waste of time.
To understand how the clip show format became commonplace
in the television industry, we'll
have to hop in our time machine and go all the way back
to 1936, to take a look at a television serial produced
by Republic Pictures titled Robinson Crusoe of Clipper
Island.
Production of Robinson Crusoe was
running long, due to adverse weather conditions.
And a longer production time means
the studio spent more money.
Wanting to subsidize the cost of the delayed production,
Republic Pictures sought to add two episodes
to make up for the cost.
Screenwriter Barry Shipman came up
with the idea of writing some short scenes where characters
reminisce about previous events and then utilize old stock
footage to fill in the rest of the episode and save money.
Before we go in there I'd like a brief account of what
you found on Clipper Island.
The result was that it worked.
These clip show episodes allow studios, like Republic
Pictures, to minimize production costs by only needing
to shoot a few minutes of new footage,
and then they'd stuff the episode full of footage
that they've already paid for.
They could market these episodes as new.
Audiences loved these episodes too.
In 1936, there were only a handful of television channels
with very little syndication.
In fact, the United States only had about four fully functional
television channels at this time.
So syndication wasn't really a thing.
Having these recap episodes helped fans of these shows,
who might have missed an episode or two, catch up on plot lines
before continuing the story.
It's a win-win situation, and the inclusion
of clip show episodes soon became commonplace
across the television landscape.
Now in the 90s, there was at least one television
in every home and cable subscriptions were on the rise.
There was more than enough room, and time,
for shows to syndicate.
And syndicate Friends did.
Friends reruns were pretty accessible to fans,
so the need to watch clip show episodes
was rapidly dissipating.
These episodes don't feel like delightful recaps that fill us
with anticipation of what's coming up in the show's plot
line.
They actively fill us with frustration
because we just want to get to the next moment.
And these aren't like a speed bump.
They're our 22 minute long red light
that keep us from the story.
The clip show format is still used today.
And when they're done well they can really
work to a show's advantage.
I mean, sure, they might not be the strongest, or most active,
way to write an episode of television,
but it's not like there isn't value to producing them.
See from a monetary standpoint, clip shows
do nothing but increase the profitability of a show.
But from a viewer standpoint, a clip show episode
plays to our nostalgia.
We're basically watching a timeline of greatest hits,
of some of our favorite moments, from some
of our favorite shows.
We don't have to stress over tracking a complicated story,
or pay attention to every little detail.
Clip shows are sort of like television's lazy river,
I guess.
When we watch them, we can just sit back, relax,
and enjoy a nice little float down memory lane.
These two episodes of Friends however,
they sort of missed that mark.
Mostly because they're kind of confusing.
Sometimes shows use a blurring effect, or a sound effect,
to indicate the flashbacks are imminent.
At the very least, they'll utilize a line of dialogue
to facilitate an incoming cutaway.
I hate shows that cut away from the story for some bull crap.
In "The One with the Invitation",
we don't even get a warning that a flashback sequence is coming.
They just sort of zoom in on Ross's face
and begin flashbacks without prepping us in any way for it.
"The One with the Vows", has a slightly better structure,
but it's still plagued with the same problems as "The One
with the Invitation".
"The Vows" offers cutaways to two perspectives surrounding
Monica and Chandler writing their respective vows
for their upcoming wedding, while filling
the rest of the episode with another smattering of clips
from previous seasons.
The alternative perspectives provide a little more
cohesiveness, and it does at least
give the episode enough structure
to feel like there's a plot to be followed.
However, the episode abandons the structure
that makes it come within a stone's throw of being
coherent, in favor of flashback clips of things
that fans of Friends have already seen repeatedly.
This episode feels more like a greatest hits reel of Monica
and Chandler's relationship told through a thin veneer
of stereotypical wedding drama than it feels
like a full episode of Friends.
Both of these episodes leave us wanting more,
but for the wrong reasons.
Clip show episodes have become fairly obsolete.
While they may have been really popular, and helpful,
at one point in time, the need for them
has all but completely disappeared.
We've reached a point as consumers
of televised entertainment where we no longer need
studios or shows to spell things out for us.
We get extremely efficient recaps
at the start of the episode as a brief reminder
to get us back into the tone of the show
and then we're good to go.
When a show starts to take steps backward
without taking any steps forward it
can be frustrating or, at best, slightly boring.
Sure, but clip show episodes save the studio a few hundred
thousand dollars, but sometimes they
can feel completely unnecessary.
We want to move forward with our stories,
we want to grow with our characters.
Thankfully, the clip show format seems to be dying off in favor
of telling deeper and richer stories, which-- hey--
is always a good thing.
All right, well, folks, I think that's it for today's episode.
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