I saw this episode ..last night? my wife has become a Friends binge-er during Covid and that show is on, some channel, ALL THE TIME. I guess I didn't catch that moment but you're right. The other day, while watching Friends I was thinking about how generational it is. I was basically the 'Friends' age at the time the show was Must See TV on NBC Thursday but never watched it. Some girls I knew did but I was never a Friends person, only really Seinfeld at that point and wasn't watching a lot of TV right after college.
But the era and the 'issues' on the show were sort of what mid-90's/single life could have been like. the coffee shop thing was a huge trend, starting in the early-90s and started before the Starbucks wave nationally.
Then I found a re-run of All in the Family! I had that on while we were getting ready to eat dinner. The premise of the episode is Archie buying a "hot watch" from some goon down on the docks that he thinks is "worth $300." There's innuendo about the identity of the thief, who Rob Reiner/Meathead pushes back on, along with Sally Struthers.
But by far the funniest part of the episode is when Archie demonstrates the Stopwatch feature on his $300 watch to see how quickly Edith can get dinner on the table. It's a TV comedy classic and so hilarious and so awful at the same time. Clearly Jean Stapleton's character Edith is always the dope, but the way she frantically runs into and out of the kitchen, setting the table, all while Archie, Meathead and Gloria hold a somewhat contentious conversation.
It's TV sitcom genius. My son was sort of blown away watching it and my wife cringed a bit. There we were in 2020 sitting down to dinner as a family, watching All in the Family's depiction of the same thing 49yrs earlier.
I made a joke to my son that the episode aired just before I was born but after Mom.
