You Can't Do That on Television

First, we won't even mention the three points that cost us the Cowboys game.

Everyone's always talking about jump the shark this and jump the shark that. This, of course, refers to Fonzie on Happy Days leaping over a shark while water skiing. It's a sign a television show has gone downhill, and the writers are desperate because they're running out of ideas or viewers are running out on the show. It is with sad news, that after only one season, I can report Joey has already jumped the shark.

Jumping the shark includes replacing a character with a different actor and acting like the audience won't notice. You know, Dick York to Dick Sargent. I'm broadening this category, and including an exception. When a series brings in a guest star that has already appeared in the same series as a certain character and then that same star is brought in later to play a different character.

Now Joey is an off-shoot of Friends, so it's not technically the same show. But it perhaps shows us what would've happened had Friends stayed on the air and continued on past it's tenth season.

Let's head back to the Golden Age of television, circa Ross and Rachel's first get together. The writers realized they had lost the tension created by the "will they won't they" of Ross and Rachel. So they needed to break-up another couple, Chandler and Joey. Joey moves out into his apartment filled with muppet pillows and Chandler moves on with a new roommate Eddie, played by Adam Goldberg. He was a freaky character, and appeared in three episodes. Eddie watched Chandler as he slept, shrunk melons with a dehumidifier and carried around mannequins for who knows what. Joey and Chandler finally got back together, but poor Joey couldn't move home. Chandler was too scared to tell crazy Eddie he had to go. So they schemed and tricked Eddie into thinking Joey had never moved out and he disappeared. Not award winning television, but Adam Goldberg was memorable. So memorable that when he appeared in Saving Private Ryan I yelled, "Hey, that's that guy from Friends."

Let's flash forward to a season and a half into the Joey series. It sucks. Yet, I still watch hoping for a Friends guest appearance. Imagine how delighted I was when NBC teased all week that a special "Friend" comes to visit. So I watched. A sucker to the end. It was Adam Goldberg, and no, he was not playing Eddie. He was not playing some random guy on the street. He was not playing a fellow actor. He was playing Joey's best friend of 20 years!! How do you put a guy in a role like that and ask the audience to completely forget that he ever played Chandler's crazy roommate? It makes no sense! It's like having the actress who played Woody's wife on Cheers show up on Fraiser as his sister. You're not going to forget that stupid song Woody sang about Kelly and believe her in that role. K-E-L-L-Y... Why? Because it's dumb!

Now the only exception to this rule is Law & Order. That show has been on for so long that they can't help but bring on the same actors to play different characters. For example, Jerry Orbach played defense lawyer, Frank Lehrman, in the second season before playing Detective Lennie Briscoe. S. Epatha Merkerson played a mom whose son was killed before she was Lt. Anita Van Buren. This, I can overlook because the show is too good to care. Plus, they've won emmys. Joey has not.

That is the exception. Law & Order can put as many actors in as many roles as they want. Joey, I just want them to put one good Friend in one good episode and I can stop watching that stupid show! Until then, I'll pathetically be sitting on my couch every Thursday night holding out that little bit of hope that this week, against all odds, someone will schedule a real Friend.