go ahead. go ahead. go ahead. ooh. oh, no, no don t. stop cleansing my aura. pilots are difficult because your job is to give a lot of exposition and background. everybody, this is rachel. another lincoln high survivor. this is everybody. chandler, phoebe, joey. you remember my brother ross? sure. hi. and you re also doing kind of a sell job on an audience about why they re supposed to like these people and possibly tune in next week. you okay, sweetie? i just feel like someone reached down my throat, grabbed my small intestine, pulled it out of my mouth, and tied it around my neck. cookie? you come up with ideas, characters. you don t know what s going to hit. you just the dream was let s not get canceled after six episodes. that was our goal. you re the only person i know who lived here in the city who wasn t invited to the wedding.
no sex. bad jobs. hit show. go figure. go figure. why do you think it s a hit? the writing. it begins with the writing, right? oh, yeah. shut up. the camera adds ten pounds. so how many cameras are actually on you? writing was the best i ve ever worked on in a sitcom. first they go up one side. they move it over. then they go up the other side. they move it back. then they do the rear. what? ross, will you tell them? isn t that how a tailor measures pants? yes, yes it is. in prison! we loved what was coming out of their type writers.
like everybody basically knew ross and rachel were going to have to end up together. we just had to figure out how that was surprising. oh, my god. did she get off the plane? did she get off the plane? i got off the she got off the plane. it was one thing that finally appeared in the last episode. it was the reveal of how they got the apartment. there was always a lot of talk about, oh, that s too good an apartment, how did they afford it? it s television, leave me alone. we thought sooner or later we might have to get to that. look around, you guys. this was your first home.
make this work, we ll, you know, all work together and try to figure out some other line or the best way to do it. matthew perry, he brings his own spin to everything. when we write a line we hear it in our heads a certain way. he will deliberately pick another word in that sentence to emphasize. have you seen joey? what s the matter? oh, just this. a joke doesn t get a big laugh with the actual studio audience, we would sort of huddle and all the writers would put our heads together and try to come up with a better joke. it was worth it because that s what s going on television. joey, i m a little shy. that s okay, ross. you can ask me. what? let s talk about one of the episodes. the one with all the poker. what was it about that particular episode? the people who make friends
brothers one day and i just turned on the radio. there was the theme song. to me, that was, wow. this is big. this is huge. when we started the second season we were the number one show on television. ah! we had hit the home run. the grand slam home run. we were on everyone s lips. we were in their hearts. oh, my god, ross, no. hang up the phone. give me the phone, ross. give me the phone. give me the phone! is that when nbc started to try to capitalize on them and their success? there was this opportunity to do a diet coke commercial and for some reason we all said, yes. buy specially marked packages of diet coke. watch the diet coke commercial during friends. there was this diet coke commercial that people did not seem to like. who s going to drifrmg the