I Watched Those Eight Unreleased Episodes of ‘Joey,’ Despite Never Watching ‘Friends’ — and It’s Terrible

I have never seen an episode of “Friends.” I realize this is a borderline blasphemous thing to admit, especially for a TV critic. Obviously, the iconic NBC sitcom is such a cultural juggernaut that I know all the main characters, the love triangles and the show’s beats. For example, I’ve been told Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) end up together; Cole Sprouse played Ross’s son, Ben; and there was a major debate over relationship “breaks” and cheating. Still, I’ve gone out of my way to ignore “Friends.” I’ve fled the room if it was playing on the TV or quickly changed the channel if I came across a rerun. But with the news that the final eight unaired episodes of “Joey,” the beloved show’s short-lived spinoff, are now available to stream on the “Friends” YouTube channel, I have taken my first-ever dive into the “Friends” universe by binge-watching those lost “Joey” episodes. Twenty years too late and with zero context, I began my foray into “Joey” with Season 2, Episode 15 (“Joey and the Dad”), the first of the unaired eight. I was able to get up to speed quickly. After leaving the Big Apple and settling on the West Coast, Joey has done well in Los Angeles and gained some decent traction in his acting career. He’s closer to his family, which includes his brash older sister Gina (Drea de Matteo) and his nerdy adult nephew, Michael (Paulo Costanzo). And for the purpose of this episode, we see that Joey has also continued his womanizing ways. In “Joey and the Dad,” he has a hot date with Carmen Electra (who plays herself), but he’s jealous of her sexy, attention-grabbing billboard. I was delighted to see Jennifer Coolidge appear in the first scene as Joey’s ditzy, absurd agent, Bobbie. Unfortunately, she’s criminally underutilized in the episodes I saw, so I often forgot about the character until she appeared again. From what I know about “Friends,” Joey was a ladies’ man who did his best work as a likable sidekick to the other five. After screening these concluding episodes of “Joey,” it seems he should have remained right where he was. LeBlanc is affable in his role, but he’s surrounded by dull characters all trying their best to wrangle a script riddled with misogyny and stale plot points alarming even for the early 2000s. The two hours and forty minutes of the sitcom that I screened were bursting with horrendous one-liners. At one point, Gina’s fiancé Jimmy (Adam Goldberg)”jokingly” calls her a bitch and says he’ll kill her. In another episode, Gina screams at Michael’s Indian roommate for speaking Hindi in his own home. It was like a bizarre “Twilight Zone” (though perhaps accurate to today’s America). In Season 2, Episode 16, “Joey and the Party for Alex,” Joey realizes that he has a crush on his friend/landlord Alex (Andrea Anders), which leads him to ruin her 30th birthday party. After that and for the remainder of the series, he tries to convince her that he’s finally ready for an honest, long-term, committed relationship despite his rather sordid romantic past. The final episodes are par for the course. Gina and Jimmy yell at each other, though they do eventually get married in the series finale, “Joey and the Wedding.” Michael learns that Jimmy is his biological father. Yet, he fails to find a real friend group or love interest of his own. And finally, Joey and Alex do become a couple, but given Joey’s track record in the episodes I watched, I doubt they would have made it past a third season. The ending, it seems, was as unceremonious as the other unaired episodes, making “Joey” another spinoff that should’ve remained an idea. But that’s just my opinion, as someone who has actively avoided “Friends” with a determined and steadfast vigor for the past three decades. So, why have I, a 30-something-year-old Black woman from the South Side of Chicago who has lived in New York City half my life, steered clear of Phoebe, Rachel, Monica and the rest? Honestly, I found “Friends” to be highly unrelatable. I grew up watching “Living Single” and “Moesha,” so nothing concerning “Friends” ever seemed appealing or groundbreaking to me. I had already seen all of these themes and tropes, but with characters who actually looked like me, boasting a cultural familiarity I could touch. Those Manhattan-dwelling friends and their beloved Central Perk always seemed generic and uninspiring, unable to pull me in the way similar shows like “Will & Grace” or “Sex and the City” did. It was the same reason I stopped watching “Girls” after Season 1 in my early 20s; nothing about it rang authentic or felt relatable to my personal experiences. “Friends” may offer a lot more than “Joey,” but I’ll likely never know. I do know that the LA-based series was yanked off the air before its entire Season 2 had aired due to plummeting ratings. From what I just watched, the NBC executives at the time made the right choice.
https://variety.com/2025/tv/columns/friends-spinoff-joey-unaired-episodes-review-1236587261/