In honor of the episode’s 25th anniversary, ‘Friends’ creators, writers and some of its iconic guest stars recount the touchdowns and fumbles associated with the 1996 two-parter, “The One After the Superbowl.”
We were on a break. Regina Phalange and Ms. Chanandler Bong. The Trifle. The Routine. When it comes to the lore of Friends, the season-two episode “The One After the Superbowl” features absolutely none of the iconic sitcom’s most classic jokes and moments. And yet, it’s arguably the most significant episode in its decade-long history — and a TV game-changer.
To understand why, you must go back to the summer of 1995 when NBC executives started batting around ideas of what to schedule after the biggest, most popular TV event of the year. An ABC Melrose Place-in-the-mountains drama titled Extreme had just aired in the coveted slot, only to crash and burn after six episodes. Two years earlier, NBC ran with the pilot of the sitcom The Good Life (featuring a then-unknown comic named Drew Carey) followed by an installment of the fledging The John Larroquette Show. Neither made headway. Could it be any more obvious where this story is heading?
“We decided to flip the script,” says then-NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield. “Instead of trying a new show, we asked ourselves, ‘Why don’t we just give people what they want?’ There was nothing hotter than Friends.”
Airing on Jan. 28, 1996 — just minutes after the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers — the hourlong Friends extravaganza highlighted big-time guests mixing it up with the six congenial stars. Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and Monica (Courteney Cox) fight over the chance to date Jean-Claude Van Damme; Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) sings inappropriate ditties for kids, much to the shock of a librarian (Chris Isaak); Joey (Matt LeBlanc) falls for a crazed fan (Brooke Shields); Chandler (Matthew Perry) flirts with a former classmate (Julia Roberts) who secretly seeks revenge; and Ross (David Schwimmer) reunites with his pet monkey, Marcel, on the set of the retrospectively ominous movie, Outbreak 2: The Virus Takes New York.
