There are three distinct story lines running through “The One with the Butt”, and all involve moving outside of the comfort zones established in Friends‘s earliest hours: Joey as a butt model, Monica not being neurotic, and of course, Chandler dating a married woman. There’s never really any connective line drawn through these three, except for one truth that holds universal, both in the show’s timeline and in our lives: change is hard, and many times, its much easier to run back to the person we used to be. Friends was never a show about personal growth – despite the various successes and failures professionally in the group, the idea of personal maturity isn’t really handled much, outside of Chandler’s character – and because of that, ‘The One with the Butt’ can be an entertaining episode, but ultimately feels a little empty by the end.
I think a lot of that has to do with the Chandler plot, which features one of the worst female characters I can remember. Not only is she a mysteriously sexy Middle Eastern woman, she’s also hypersexualized to the point she has a husband, a boyfriend, Chandler – and by the end of the episode, a “new” guy as well. Obviously her character isn’t important to the canon of the show, but it’s a very poor attempt at integrating an international presence to the show – even if its trying to be ‘progressive’ by having an anti-traditional Israeli woman, it never feels like anything more than ‘former army woman is kind of slutty’. There’s no reason given to her open sexuality, except for a quintessential 90s attitude of “why can’t we just have sex, and not worry about obligation?’
More importantly, it glazes over a very important piece of Chandler’s masculinity: instead of being the normal guy (like Joey) who constantly plays the field, Chandler feels like less of a man for not being able to be the only one pleasing Aurora. It’s a wise flip of gender roles, but in the episode, it culminates with him figuratively shaking a fist in the air and saying “I’m so conflicted!” It’s almost like the writers weren’t willing to admit Chandler’s vulnerabilities, ending the whole plot with Ross questioning Chandler on why he’d leave such a beautiful woman, to which Chandler doesn’t really have an answer. For arguably the show’s deepest character, his plot (and the amount of screen time dedicated to it) in ‘TOW the Butt’ ends on a disappointingly empty note.
The rest of the episode establishes two of the show’s favorite go-to storylines: Joey’s bad acting and Monica’s neuroses. The highlight among these is of course the opening – one of the show’s most famous early moments – with Joey starring in Freud!, an ill-designed musical about the life of the famous psychologist. What makes the scene so funny is the song in the play itself, where Freud sings about penis envy to a female patient – a joke that would NEVER play anywhere on TV these days, except maybe is some poorly-constructed joke on 2 Broke Girls about strap-ons. “A thing with which you can tinkle” is still one of my favorite Joey lines of the entire series, and seeing him belt it out in his full-bearded glory is always great to watch. The shower scene later in the episode where Joey is failing at being Al Pacino’s butt pales heavily in comparison, even with his line about “going for quiet desperation.”
For me, Monica’s OCD tendencies can be some of the funniest – her thoughts in bed about the shoes – to some of the most grating material – pretty much anything she worries about after getting married – Friends has to offer. It’s odd how the show always played it off as an endearing quality, especially towards the end of the show’s run, when her tendencies become counter-productive to her life, feeling less quirky and more typical ‘females on TV who are over dramatic about everything’ (which is something the writers of Cougar Town still struggle with at times to this day with Cox’s character, who is basically a boozier version of Monica with a kid). Here, though, it gives us enough insight without going too far into the ‘let’s have Monica act like a wacko’ rabbit hole. Phoebe’s physical demonstration of Monica’s steamrolling personality is a hilarious example of when Monica’s personality works: when its being talked about, and not being acted out on-screen.
Overall, “The One with the Butt” is a fairly average first season episode of Friends: it has some good jokes like Freud! and Ross’s attempts at talking anthropology, but it doesn’t do enough to get past the obvious jokes about Chandler being third fiddle to a woman or Monica’s need to have a clean house all the time.
Other thoughts/observations:
- why are the characters more willing to be honest with Monica about her shortcomings personally, than Joey’s professionally? Is it just easier to talk down to a woman? I don’t understand why the group handles those two so differently in the episode.
- ‘sex without obligations’ wasn’t a tired TV trope back in 1994, but boy, is it sure overused now.
- after watching the play: “I feel violated.” – Rachel
- the idea of professional failure is always ingrained in Friends: mostly around Joey for comedic effect, it also comes into play with every other character on the show over time, save for Phoebe (who doesn’t get much of anything on the show, until they decided to marry her in the last season).
- the show at least gives reason to why woman are attracted to Chandler: underneath the awkwardness and bad flannel shirts is some real charm and personality, something we see briefly when he’s cuddling in bed with Aurora.
- I always hated it when Friends had to sync up characters clapping with the digital clap in the theme song… seeing it again today, it still annoys the hell out of me for some reason.
- Chandler and Ross hugging it out for no reason after Phoebe/Joey have a moment is one of my favorite moments in the whole series. Totally unforced, genuine ‘man love’ right there.
- Up next: Friends‘s offers up its strongest entry yet with “The One with the Blackout”.
TOW The Blackout is, to me, the first truly great Friends episode. This was where the characters finally began to seem more like real people than cartoons, the humor was spot on, the “Friend Zone” bit was brilliantly observational (and coming from Joey, no less!), etc. Excellent episode, all around.
As for TOW The Butt, the main problem with the Joey plot was IMO how straightforwardly it played out, in spite of its silly premise. It would be a while before the writers really figured out how to make good work-related plots involving Joey, mainly because LeBlanc himself wouldn’t begin to develop his comedic chops until much later in the series. So, for the first season or two, his work plots are mostly carried by funny extras or (in this case) a goofy premise rather than the character himself.