(Editor’s note: Seasons 1 and 2 were reviewed under an earlier editorial standard and format. They’ll be revisited in the Second Look Remastered series, running January – June 2027. Subscribe to Processed Media (it’s free!) so you don’t miss the updates.)
There’s good material in “The One Where Old Yeller Dies”, but none of it really adds up to much. What begins as a Friends episode with serious potential – Ross and Rachel’s relationship, Richard ‘fitting in’, and Phoebe dealing with reality – but the way each of the situations are introduced and resolved are questionable… and in the end, inconsequential, an episode of filler material that just so happens to be grounded in intriguing material.
The biggest swing and miss comes with Ross and Rachel; and while a lot of it is amusing (like Rachel holding Ben: “this IS how I would hold a football”), the climatic scene is one that accidentally reveals a disturbing truth about their relationship. After Ross tells Rachel that he’s planned out the next decade of their lives (not surprising; he had all of college to think about it), Rachel points out that Barry and her father’s constant planning for her life drove her away from them. She tells him that she’s comfortable with not knowing what tomorrow might bring, and doesn’t want to live in a world where a man neatly lays out her adult life in front of her (especially after seeing her mom’s delayed reaction to it all earlier this season).
Ross’s response is essentially “That’s cool, but I do what I want, so I’ll keep planning that because we’re destined to be together.” And how does Rachel react to her boyfriend telling her that her values and philosophies don’t matter to him – she swoons over him saying “I love you” and they yell some more and then embrace. It’s really a shocking moment: it clearly was accidental on the part of the writers, but it’s a major bit of foreshadowing as to why the Ross and Rachel relationship ends (and also the reason they were shoved back together a handful of times afterward: “destiny”). Ross doesn’t listen to Rachel – and although he loves her dearly, he can’t look past what it means to him and how he’s beginning to hold her back from her own life.
I don’t want to get into material from later seasons – but a moment the show tries to present as a tender moment, just feels like forced wish fulfillment, building a relationship based on Rachel’s ignorance of Ross’s selfishness and trying to pass it off as cute and heartwarming. It sticks out like a sore thumb – and as a moment designed to be part of the handful of clip episodes coming in following years, it’s cheesy and ineffective at pushing their relationship forward.
Phoebe’s plot in “The One Where Old Yeller Dies” finds itself in similar waters, a completely unresolved story built on an irony I find more sickening than amusing (there is a punchline built around the fact that Phoebe’s mother guarded her children from sad endings in movies, only to later kill herself). Not only does it undermine Phoebe’s mother even more (a character that’s only been a few jokes up to this point), but it tries to make light of a huge tragedy in Phoebe’s life, and literally goes nowhere with it all.
I had to watch the end of the episode a few times to see if I missed a scene or something: after Phoebe complains to Monica that she stopped watching It’s a Wonderful Life because it was too depressing, she isn’t seen again until the closing tag of the episode. Nothing is resolved about her inability to deal with the tragedies in her own life, or an attempt to draw catharsis out of Phoebe’s experience with It’s a Wonderful Life and her outlook on the world. Nothing at all – it’s completely forgotten until she shows up with Ben at the end to warn him about a Sesame Street scene where Ernie loses Bert on the beach.
Like the Ross/Rachel material, Phoebe’s plot comes out of a really weird place, and how it’s handled is downright off-putting: both Rachel and Phoebe are undersold as intelligent women, the former presented as the girl who doesn’t care about being disrespected (because she’s loved), the latter a woman who can’t face the tragedies of her past, and deals with it by sheltering the next generation from some of the simplest realities of the world (sometimes you get lost, whether it’s on the beach or in life).
The material with the rest of the characters is really front and center through the episode (why the title is “The One Where Old Yeller Dies” is beyond me), and has so much potential that it can’t realize because of the screen time given to the other two plots. There’s a ton of comedic material to be mined out of it: Monica falling into the role of mother with Joey and Chandler as her children, Chandler’s mustache, Richard feeling youthful – and while the jokes in the plot are great, they barely scratch the surface of the true potential of this little throwaway plot.
But that’s the story of “The One Where Old Yeller Dies”: stories with ceiling-high potential that barely get off the floor for various reasons, mostly stemming from a poor balance between the three, spending time to set up plots that go nowhere, or those that don’t really seem to have much of a point except easy jokes or forced emotional moments.
Other thoughts/observations:
- the Ross/Ben material is admittedly, pretty good (and saves the episode from being equally bad from the previous). Ross is kind of on the outside of his child’s development, and seeing him struggle with that and cling onto every little moment he gets from him is pretty easy to enjoy.
- Carol and Susan are going to see the first female blacksmith in Williamsburg… because, you know, butch lesbian jokes.
- Ross, after hearing Ben’s waved already: “Does he have a favorite liqueur?”
- Chandler + mustache = Aunt Sylvia.
- Monica still isn’t allowed to play foosball, a combination of her skills and uncomfortable competitive spirit.
- Monica: “I’ve got a leg, three breasts, and a wing.” Chandler: “How do you find clothes?”
- Up next: Monica gets a new job in “The One with the Bullies”.