{"id":329385,"date":"2021-08-24T01:00:04","date_gmt":"2021-08-23T22:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/remembering-joey-15-years-after-the-maligned-friends-spinoff-ended\/"},"modified":"2021-08-24T01:00:04","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T22:00:04","slug":"remembering-joey-15-years-after-the-maligned-friends-spinoff-ended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/remembering-joey-15-years-after-the-maligned-friends-spinoff-ended\/","title":{"rendered":"#Remembering ‘Joey,’ 15 Years After the Maligned ‘Friends’ Spinoff Ended"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Remembering ‘Joey,’ 15 Years After the Maligned ‘Friends’ Spinoff Ended<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

TV producers often talk about not wanting to sully the legacy of their TV shows with spinoffs, reunions, and revivals, and NBC\u2019s Joey<\/em> provides a compelling cautionary tale. The Friends<\/em> spinoff, created by Shana Goldberg-Meehan and Scott Silveri, ended with a whimper 15 years ago as Latin America\u2019s WBTV aired the final eight episodes, which NBC opted not to air stateside, in the summer of 2006.<\/p>\n

The story of Joey<\/em> started three years prior, in July 2003, before the final season of Friends<\/em> started airing. That\u2019s when Jeff Zucker, then the president of NBC Entertainment, announced that Joey Tribbiani, Matt LeBlanc\u2019s fan-favorite Friends<\/em> character, would be getting his own spinoff.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou probably would never have predicted this when it began, but over the evolution of that show, Joey has emerged as the character that America roots for and loves,\u201d Zucker told the Television Critics Association at the time, per the Associated Press<\/a><\/em>. \u201c[Viewers want] to see what happ<\/a>ens to him as his life goes on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marta Kauffman and David Crane created Friends<\/em> in collaboration with executive producer Kevin Bright, but Zucker told reporters that Bright was the only one of the trio who would be an executive producer for Joey<\/em>\u2014which, looking back, wasn\u2019t a good sign. Still, Zucker said that Kauffman and Crane had given Joey<\/em> their blessing, likening the situation to Frasier<\/em> spinning off from Cheers<\/em> with only some of Cheers<\/em>\u2019 producers on board.<\/p>\n

Zucker also said that LeBlanc was the only Friends<\/em> star approached for a spinoff\u2014effectively spoiling the yet-to-be-aired breakup between Joey and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), who had gotten together at the end of the penultimate season.<\/p>\n

\"Matt<\/p>\n

Paul Drinkwater\/NBCU Photo Bank<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

But behind the scenes, the Powers That Be had actually approached three other Friends<\/em> stars about the prospect of reprising their parts on a spinoff, according to Bright. \u201cAt first it was the obvious choices of who they wanted to do a series<\/a> with and Jennifer was up there first, but she wanted to do movies and she wasn\u2019t interested in television,\u201d Bright told Metro.co.uk<\/a><\/em> in 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we liked the idea of a Monica (Courteney Cox) and Chandler (Matthew Perry) series, but everyone at the end, strangely enough, while they were grateful for doing the show, they didn\u2019t want to play those parts anymore,\u201d Bright added.<\/p>\n

So the spinoff went to LeBlanc. \u201cMatt loved Joey and he didn\u2019t mind playing Joey,\u201d said Bright.<\/p>\n

And so Joey<\/em> was born, premiering on September 9, 2004, in its predecessor\u2019s old Thursday-night time slot. In the show, Joey moved to Los Angeles to advance his acting career, moving in with his nerdy nephew Michael (Paulo Costanzo<\/a>). Also on hand were Joey\u2019s older sister and Michael\u2019s mom, Gina (Drea de Matteo); Joey\u2019s landlord and eventual love interest, Alex (Andrea Anders<\/a>); and his Hollywood agent, Bobbie, played by Jennifer Coolidge. (The New York Times<\/a><\/em> reported in 2004 that Coolidge\u2019s Joey<\/em> part was \u201csomething of a consolation prize\u201d after NBC shelved a starring vehicle for her.)<\/p>\n

\"Matt<\/p>\n

Mitch Haddad\/NBC\/NBCU Photo Bank<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When the show premiered, many critics were underwhelmed, to put it mildly. Los Angeles Times<\/a><\/em>\u2019 Paul Brownfield said Joey<\/em> felt \u201ckind of bereft\u2014a subplot cast into the world and left searching for its main story.\u201d The Washington Post<\/a><\/em>\u2019s Tom Shales said that Joey Tribbiani was \u201cstill a lovable dummy,\u201d but noted that \u201cthe ratio of lovable to dumb appears to have changed for the worse\u201d since the end of Friends<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And as Zucker had done a year prior, The Globe and Mail<\/a><\/em>\u2019s John Doyle compared Joey<\/em> to Frasier<\/em>, though far less favorably. \u201cJoey<\/em> is a lame, hollow and utterly unoriginal show, and it shouldn\u2019t be,\u201d Doyle wrote. \u201cYears ago, when Cheers<\/em> ended after a long and successful run, NBC took one character, Frasier Crane, and launched a show about him. The first episode of Frasier<\/em> was beautifully done \u2026 The relevant difference is that [the] Frasier Crane character was obviously a grownup. Nobody on Friends<\/em> actually grew up. Oh, they got married and had kids but they were all adolescents, really. Joey<\/em> continues the theme.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=cwwKwkvOihE<\/a><\/iframe><\/p>\n

Joey<\/em> aired a full first season, but NBC only gave the show\u2019s second season 13 episodes before pulling it from the schedule. The network brought the show back in March 2006, but that return episode snagged only 4 million viewers, almost a 50-percent drop in viewership since the prior episode and a small fraction of the 18.5 million viewers who turned in for the series premiere. After that one March episode, NBC canceled the show for good.<\/p>\n

Now, 15 years later, it seems Joey<\/em> is disappearing from our cultural consciousness. Fans general<\/a>ly don\u2019t consider Joey<\/em> to be part of the Friends<\/em> canon, Vulture<\/a><\/em> observes. The show wasn\u2019t available on Netflix while Friends<\/em> was streaming there, and it\u2019s not currently available on HBO Max, Friends<\/em>\u2019 new streaming home.<\/p>\n