Could We BE Any More Thankful?!? Spending Thanksgiving With “Friends”

By Michael Lyons

Ah Thanksgiving, the holiday that’s been eclipsed by our zeal to hurtle headlong into Christmas.  But, what’s not to love about a day filled with helium balloon versions of the latest cartoon fads, tables packed with food, gathering with those close to us and sitting in front of the TV in a tryptophan coma?

Just like Christmas, Thanksgiving is a day that we desperately want to be perfect...but sometimes, well...it isn’t.

Few TV shows captured everything about Thanksgiving, and how it can be so imperfect at times, like “Friends.”

One of the ‘90’s most popular sitcoms, centering on a group of twenty somethings in New York City, left its indelible mark on television and pop culture .  “Friends” also had a recurring, annual tradition: a new Thanksgiving episode each year.

This fall marks the 25th anniversary of when “Friends” first debuted on NBC, making this the perfect Holiday Season to look back at each Thanksgiving episode from the blockbuster show’s ten seasons.

Season One: “The One Where Underdog Gets Away.”  The annual episode tradition started off hilariously with the best of the Holiday episodes.  Monica cooks Thanksgiving dinner for the gang, but when they learn that the Underdog balloon has broken loose from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, they all run to the roof, locking themselves out of the apartment.  Dinner, of course, is ruined and they settle for Chandler’s “anti-Thanksgiving dinner” of grilled cheese, but find themselves happy that they’re still all together.

Season Two:  “The One With the List.”  Monica lands a job creating food for a company that’s developed a chocolate substitute and Ross creates a list of his dream celebrity “crushes.”  Thanksgiving happens simply as the backdrop of this one and it’s probably the least Holiday of all of the episodes.

Season Three:  “The One with the Football.”  Monica and Ross’ competitive nature and poor sportsmanship have hilarious results as the gang takes a break from Thanksgiving dinner to play football in a nearby park.

Season Four: “The One with Chandler in a Box.”  Monica, who had just broken up with Richard, the older man she had been dating, invites his son over for Thanksgiving dinner.  Meanwhile, Chandler agrees to spend Thanksgiving in a wooden box, while the gang eats dinner, as punishment for cheating with Joey’s girlfriend.  There’s great Chandler/Joey dialogue and dynamic here, with a surprisingy sweet and poignant ending.

Season Five: “The One With All the Thanksgivings.”  We “flashback” to the friends’ Thanksgivings past - many of them in the ‘80’s, filled with Flock of Seagulls haircuts, “Miami Vice” suits, Rachel’s original nose, Monica before her weight loss and hilarious results.

Season Six: “The One Where Ross Gets High.”  Ross and Monica’s parents join the friends for this Thanksgiving, where past secrets are revealed and Rachel creates the world’s most disgusting trifle.  Filled with non-stop, dizzying and interwoven stories, this episode plays like and ingenious screwball comedy.

Season Seven: “The One Where Chandler Doesn’t Like Dogs.”  During Thanksgiving, we learn that Phoebe has been sneaking a dog into the apartment and that Rachel has feelings for her much younger assistant.  There’s also classic Joey dialogue here, as he names “all 56 states,” during a challenge by Chandler.

Season Eight: “The One With The Rumor.”  Brad Pitt (Jennifer Anniston’s real-life husband at the time) guest stars as an old high school friend who Monica invites to Thanksgiving dinner.  The gang learns that he hated Rachel in high school, started a “I Hate Rachel Green Club” and also started a rumor about her that is too hilarious to be spoiled here.

Season Nine: “The One With Rachel’s Other Sister.”  Christina Applegate is very funny, guest starring as Rachel’s sister Amy, who shows up for Thanksgiving dinner and winds up insulating every single friend with some hysterical interactions with Phoebe.

Season Ten: “The One With the Late Thanksgiving.”  “Friends” went out with a Thanksgiving bang in their last season.  Phoebe and Rachel sneak out to enter Rachel’s daughter Emma in a baby beauty pageant, while Ross and Joey sneak out to a Rangers game.  When they all show up late to Thanksgiving dinner, Monica refuses to let them into the apartment.

Just as tensions run high, Monica and Chandler learn that they are expecting a baby through the adoption agency, in a very sweet finale.

While “Friends” may have ended their run almost fifteen years ago, it lives on in rerun heaven.  Many fans have a tradition of their own where, on or around Thanksgiving Day, they will binge all of the Holiday’s episodes.

So, when it comes to Thanksgiving, “Friends” will “Be There For You!”

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Sources:

IMDb

Parade Magazine: “Our Ultimate Ranking of Friends Thanksgiving Episodes”

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Drawn Together: A Look Back at Disney’s Competition During Animation’s Second Golden Age

By Michael Lyons

They say that competition is healthy.  If that’s the case, then the animation industry was a VERY healthy place in the 1990’s.

Walt Disney Feature Animation was in the midst of a comeback, the likes of which have rarely been seen in Hollywood.  Blockbuster hits, many compared to the Studio’s animated masterpieces from their original Golden Age like “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and “Pinocchio” (1940), were reigning at the box office.

This Second Golden Age kicked off with 1989’s “The Little Mermaid,” which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year and hit a zenith point with 1994’s “The Lion King,” which now marks its 25th year.

Other Studios couldn’t help but take notice and they also decided to jump aboard this animated train.  Almost every major player in Hollywood opened up their own animation studio, releasing their own full-length feature films, many of which not only blatantly copied the Disney story and song model, but the marketing model, as well (the path of the ‘90’s is liberally littered with fast food toys from these films).

Several of these non-Disney competitors for the animated crown of Toon Town are also celebrating anniversaries this year.  While they may not have had the lasting, cultural, classic impact of Disney’s films and may not see their own live-action remake soon, for a generation, they are all fondly remembered and worth looking back on.

“All Dogs Go To Heaven,” released November 17, 1989, celebrating 30 years.

With the success of films like 1986’s “An American Tail” and “The Land Before Time,” two years later, director Don Bluth (who led a much publicized walk out of Disney artists in the early ‘80’s) also played a major role in the start of the Second Golden Age.

Unfortunately, “All Dogs Go to Heaven,” started a string of financial and creative disappointments for Bluth.  

Telling a decidedly different and edgier story it tells the tale of Charlie B. Barkin (voiced by Burt Reynolds) a German Shepherd that is murdered by a canine mobster Carface but leaves Heaven and returns to Earth, and joins up with his best friend, Itchy (Dom DeLuise) as they team up to help a young orphan girl.

Filled with lush, full animation, great character design and the marquee “hook” of Reynolds and DeLuise, “All Dogs” couldn’t overcome a somewhat morbid and muddy story.

The film quickly sank at the box office, from a tidal wave caused by Ariel, as “All Dogs” had the additional misfortune of opening the same day as “The Little Mermaid.”

“The Swan Princess,” released November 18, 1994, celebrating 25 years

Based on the ballet “Swan Lake,” the films tells the story of a princess who is transformed into a swan by an evil sorcerer.  “The Swan Princess,” directed by Richard Rich (another Disney defector) completely swipes the Disney story paradigm, musical numbers and all.  In fact, David Zippel, who would later create the songs for Disney’s “Hercules,” penned the songs for “The Swan Princess.”

While the budget, and therefore the animation, isn’t as full as other films, “The Swan Princess” is likable enough, thanks to entertaining supporting characters and an entertaining villain (voiced by Jack Palance).

In what many consider a controversial move, Disney re-issued its box-office behemoth from that summer, “The Lion King” that November, opening the same day as “The Swan Princess” and Simba reigned again at the box-office.

“The Pagemaster,” released on November 24, 1994, celebrating 25 years

Touted by a teaser trailer as “The most magical film of 1994,“ this was a unique offering: a full-length animated feature, bookended by a live-action opening and conclusion, “The Pagemaster” tells the tale of a timid young boy named Richard (played by 90’s wonderboy Macaulay Culkin) who ventures into his local library on a stormy night and, thanks to the magic of the Pagemaster (Christopher Lloyd), Richard finds himself thrust into the worlds of history’s most famous stories.

This is where the film transitions to animation, creating fun and creative takes on stories like “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and “Treasure Island.”  Richard travels through these tales with his guides, three anthropomorphic books, Fantasy (voice of Whoopi Goldberg), Adventure (Patrick Stewart) and Horror (voice acting veteran Frank Welker) each one a marvel of creative character design and personality.

This, however, isn’t enough to carry the story, which is very stop and go and episodic and the live-action sequences water down the open and close of the film.

Still, kudos to “The Pagemaster,” for celebrating the power of reading and introducing classic works of literature to an impressionable audience.

While these three films never reached the heights of Disney’s successful run during this decade, they did, like many other films, provide a healthy offering for audiences.  

Long before computers eclipsed 2-D animation, this era was a veritable period of creative growth, during which the debut of a new animated film was eagerly awaited by young audiences.

Today, with technology providing the ability for animated films to be released at a breakneck pace and this genre contributing so much to the movie industry, we have much to thank these and other “Disney competitors” for.  Competition continues to be VERY healthy.

Sources:

Wikipedia

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Time After Time: The 30th Anniversary of “Back to the Future, Part II”

By Michael Lyons

Ok, so we never got a future filled with flying cars, hover boards and “Jaws 19,” but there is something that “Back to the Future, Part II” got right: it showed us what a creative, inventive and original sequel should look like.

Dismissed as “too confusing” and “just an excuse to make Part III,” on its initial release, this second installment of the time traveling adventures of Marty McFly  (Michael J. Fox) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) has gained quite the following through the years and many count it as one of film’s best sequels.

Released on November 22, 1989, this month marks 30 years since “Back to the Future Part II” debuted and like time itself, so fleeting in these films, it’s hard to believe that the time from this sequel to now is the same span of time Marty time travelled back to in the original film!

The anniversary is also the perfect time to look back at wizardly director Robert Zemeckis’ imaginative sequel.

“Back to the Future, Part II” picks up exactly where the original leaves off with Doc Brown picking up Marty and his girlfriend Jennifer (Elizabeth Shue, taking over for Claudia Wells, who originated the role) and taking them into the future (all the way to 2015, which is now in the past - “heavy!”).

Here among the flying cars, self fitting clothing and the “retro” Cafe ‘80’s, Marty and Jennifer see the reason they’re there: their kids are in trouble and may wind up going to jail.  With Doc’s help, Marty is able to prevent his kids from going to prison and changes their future path.

After this, Marty buys a Sports Almanac at an Antique Shop and with sports scores through the years, he figures he can make a killing through betting.  But, unbeknownst to him, Biff, (Thomas F. Wilson) now an old man, steals the Almanac and the DeLorean, going back in time to give the Almanac to his younger self in 1955.

Old Biff sneaks back the DeLorean and Marty and Doc return to 1985, only to find that they’ve returned to an “alternate time line,” where the town of Hill Valley is a slum and Biff has become a Donald Trump-like billionaire (talk about foreshadowing) who owns a high-rise casino, thanks to his Almanac sports wins.

Here, “Part II” becomes like an eerie “It’s a Wonderful Life”-like version of the original film, with Marty stumbling through nightmarish versions of familiar settings.

It’s also here that Doc explains to Marty (and to the audience) why 1985 now looks so different.  Using a chalkboard and drawing time lines, Doc explains that Biff having the Almanac has changed all that they knew about 1985.

It’s a smart moment of “story exposition dump,” as Marty and Doc realize that they need to go back to 1955 and get the Almanac away from young Biff, which they do.

And, if the story so far hasn’t seemed like such a labyrinth, Zemeckis once again breaks the boundaries of special effects with Fox and Lloyd inserted into scenes from the original film.

This is a major way that “Part II” pushes limits, with actors not just acting in the same scenes as themselves, but also interacting, as well (gone are the “split screen double” days of Disney’s “The Parent Trap”).  This earned the film a well-deserved Oscar Nomination for Visual Effects.

More than just effects, “Part II” pushes limits with its dizzying maze of a story.  It would have been easy for Zemeckis and his co-writer Bob Gale, to have Marty and Doc travel to another time period or set the entire story in the future, but with this, they decided to take a chance and do something different, at a time when most sequels were content with just repeating the original.

In many ways, “Back to the Future, Part II,” (which was filmed back-to-back with “Part III”) was one of the first film franchises, attempting to build an entire “world.”  If all involved wanted to, the series could have kept going.

The film also has a thoughtful message, attempting to make a statement of how our actions, right or wrong, can have ripple effects for many and for years after.  And that, more than effects or a vision of future shock, is probably why “Back to the Future, Part II” is still discussed thirty years later.

Now, if we could only get that 19th sequel to “Jaws”...

Sources:

Wikipedia

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