Ladies and gentlemen there are alot of TV shows that I want to base reviews n and alot of them I simply haven't gotten around to covering. One of those can now be ticked of since as you can see by the title i'm doing a review based of the first episode of a show that I loved growing up and I have to say going back to this first episode felt weird since i'm used to seeing these characters looking older and not younger and so here is my review of the pilot episode of Friends which is known by many names but i'm just calling it "The Pilot" enjoy.
Now here I would normally disclose what the plot of the episode is and give you my thoughts on the plot but the episode did me a favour and didn't include a plot. Instead all the pilot episode is is just a bunch of scenes whose sole purpose is to tell jokes which since this is a comedy show it makes alot of sense that the scenes are there jus to lead up to a joke but at the same time it would have been nice if there was a story being told since it would then give your show a reason to exist even if the story is just about Rachel who meets the gang in this episode is just trying to get to know the gang even a story as simple as that would still work because it's still a good and simple story and doing simple stores is what this show is good at doing in my opinion.
Starring in the episode is future A list actresses Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Greene , future Scream franchise star Courteney Cox as Monica Geller and Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay. Also starring in the episode is Matt Le Blanc as Joey Tribbiani , Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing , David Schwimmer as Ross Geller , John Allen Nelson as Paul the Wine Guy , Clea Lewis as Franny and Cynthia Mann as Jasmine.
For their first episode the cast really do knock it out of the park in my opinion with all of the main six actors giving some really funny performances. Honestly I can't really find that much wrong with the episode when it comes to the acting since the acting is exactly what you expect from a pilot episode in that it's good but there's clearly room to grow which for me at least is a good thing because it would be hard for anyone to keep on delivering great acting on a weekly basis but here the six main actors have room to grow and improve and they do improve over the shows ten years.
One of the things that i'd say this show is famous for it's the dance that the main six actors do in the show's opening. However what I didn't know is that this pilot episode is the only episode in the show's entire run to feature the full dance and while I do like the opening to this show alot I can see why it was trimmed down a bit since it does take a while for the intro to end which given this show isn't that long you need all the running time that you can get.
Now I could be mistaken but I do believe that this episode uses a laugh track but like I said I could be very well be wrong. If it does use a laugh track I have to wonder why they used a laugh track because alot of the jokes are genuinely funny on there own and if they didn't use a laugh track then I have to give them credit because they had a lot of funny jokes in this episode and yes I will be talking about the jokes later on in this review.
This episode has a running time of twenty two minuets and forty nine seconds so let's round that up to twenty two minuets and fifty seconds. Which oddly feels about right for this episode since there's not story going on at all but at the same time it feels alot longer then that because of the fact that there's no story going on and so that does make the episode feel a bit boring at times which is never a good thing since if your a film , TV show / episode / book / video game / comic book or whatever you always want your auidence to be entertained and the only way that you can do that is by having a story which as i've mentioned is something that this episode lacks.
Now i'm not kidding when I say this but this is a show that I grew up with and I mean that in the literal sense since I was four when this show started airing. This is one show that I can never escape since even now sixteen years after the show ended I still cannot escape the show since it's repeated a lot on a lot of various different channels / networks and honestly I love that fact since this show is lighthearted fun and given that it's 2020 we need a bit of light hearted fun right now due to everything that's going on in the world.
Now then boys and girls this is a comedy and so that means that I have to talk about the jokes that are in the episode itself. If i'm being honest the jokes in this episode are were the episode shines best in my opinion simply because the jokes in this episode are freaking funny while yes there are some jokes that didn't get a laugh they were few and far between and they very quickly followed up those unfunny jokes with jokes that were really funny or at least least I thought that the jokes in this episode were funny and like I say all comedy is subjective and so what I found funny you guys might not find funny and what I didn't find funny you guys might find to be really freaking funny.
Overall this was honestly a really solid episode in my opinion and like I said at the start of the review it was weird seeing the cast so young since i'm so used to seeing the cast a bit older. I'm not going to say that this episode is perfect because it's honestly not and all the issues that i've had with the episode i've covered in this review but at the same time there are alot of good things in the episode and just like all the things that I didn't like about the episode all the things that I did like about the episode i've also talked about in this review as such this episode gets a 7.5 out of 10 from me.
All of the images that I used in this review were gathered from either the official Friends fandom wiki page or Google Images. Since I got the vast majority of the images that I used in this review from the official Friends fandom wiki page I have no choice but to recommend that you guys use the official Friends fandom wiki page since even tho there aren't that many images either from this episode or from the either the show or it's spin off show called "Joey" the images that they do have are fairly high quality which for me at least is an important thing when i'm creating a review with the other being if i'm reviewing a TV episode (like with this review) then is there an episode by episode cast list but that's only important if i'm reviewing a TV episode and it isn't important if i'm reviewing a movie.