Last year when the Internet's collective heart went atwitter over the news that Monica Geller and Rachel Green were meant to share a kiss on Monica's new show Dirt, I could not wrap my mind around the hoopla. I mean, it's not like Monica and Rachel never kissed before. They kissed for a solid minute that one time to get their apartment back from Joey and Chandle. Rachel also kissed Phoebe, and she kissed her coconut-knockin' friend from college named Meli — dammit, I'm doing it again.

Friends has been off the air for four years, and I still can't separate the characters from the actors who played them. That's the problem with inviting someone into your living room every Thursday night for ten years: You expect things will stay a certain way. (It's why sex-with-the-ex is so popular.)

I have rooted for the cast of Friends in each of their post-sitcom projects, but none of them have resonated. Courteney Cox's roles, especially, have been such a departure from her comedic roots that they just have not interested me — until now. Entertainment Weekly reported last week that when Scrubs returns next fall, Cox will play Sacred Heart's new Chief of Medicine. She has signed on for three episodes so far, and it is a brilliant move as far as I'm concerned. … continue reading

We all know the best way to get couch potatoes to turn off their television sets and head out to a movie theatre is by putting their favorite TV shows up on the big screen. How else can you explain a summer of Get Smart, Sex and The City and The X-Files all in feature length?

Well, for a long time now there have been rumors of a Friends flick. Ever since the super successful NBC show ended in 2004, Hollywood hotshots have been trying to figure out a way to get its stars to reunite. The whispers of a movie have come and gone every year, until finally last weekend the internet was abuzz with the news that all six cast members had signed on and the movie was a go. Fans rejoiced! Everything was right in the world! Until Warner Bros., the studio that owns the rights to Friends, issued a statement saying only idiots believe what they read on the internet (I’m paraphrasing) and no Friends movie was in the works.

Well, I can’t take it anymore so I’ve scheduled a meeting with Warner Bros. brass to get to the bottom of this. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna blow it. I’m just gonna ask them: why? If Hollywood can make a movie out of a crummy show like The Dukes Of Hazzard, why can’t we get those Friends kids together? For god’s sake, the Disney people turned one of their freakin’ rides into a blockbuster franchise. (See: Pirates of the Caribbean).

How hard can this be? It’s not like the cast — except for maybe Jennifer Aniston — is busy. Sure, a few of the friends have since starred in their own television shows, but none of those shows made it past a second season (Joey, Dirt, The Comeback). (To be fair, I thought Lisa Kudrow’s brilliant Comeback was only guilty of being too nuanced for TV. It was HBO — maybe she should have whacked someone?)

Only Aniston seems to motivate people to buy tickets to her movies (The Break-Up, Rumor Has It), but she gets more attention for the string of guys she’s gone through since her divorce from the Man Whose Name Is Not Spoken By Friends. She isn’t exactly wowing the critics, either, although her work in the upcoming He’s Just Not That Into You might change this. I’ve seen the previews and, gee, the movie looks like it will be great — for 11-year-old girls. (Seriously, when I saw the cast of this movie, which includes Drew Barrymore, Scarlett Johansson and Ginnifer Goodwin, I thought, “Do all of these women owe their agents a favor?”) … continue reading

So you're watching a scary movie, and the expendable female character, who is probably blonde, is about to die. You know this because of (a) the Psycho-esque shrieking music, (b) the food, either in the microwave or stove, that is beginning to burn, or (c) it is starting to rain outside, and said female is trying to escape from her car but cannot hold onto her keys. The correct answer? Any or all of the above.

Ah, movie and TV clichés. We all know the things that happen only in the movies or on TV. If you've ever lived in a large city, you know that the Sex and the City girls had to be wearing some sort of taxi-attracting pheromone. That is, unless they were in danger, or having a bad day, or needing rescue by a man, in which case no cab would be available. Then they would have to walk, most likely in the rain.

This month, TVsquad.com and its readers have been tracking some favorite clichés. The lists made me chuckle enough that I thought I should share. Here are some of my favorites and my nominations.

Here's one that's bugged me for a while: “In bedroom scenes, men have sheets that reach their waist, but women have L-shaped sheets that come up to their chests.” No kidding! This is especially true on American TV. Heaven forbid we have a wardrobe malfunction and expose the country's children to the evils of the female body. (I know, some of this has to do with actresses who won't do nude or charge for it. But still. Double standard.) … continue reading

Apparently, I harbor an inner redneck. Earlier this week, I blogged about country music, and today I'm blogging about football, both of which I like a great deal. I'm not sure how all of this meshes with my musical theater–loving New York ways, but I guess we all have our contradictions. Happily for me, my girlfriend tolerates the country music (and the showtunes) and embraces football. So we do OK. I'm mentioning all of this right now, of course, because this Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday, and I will be rooting for my hometown Giants. (Although my regular season team is the Pittsburgh Steelers.)

Despite the emergence of numerous women's professional football leagues over the years (you can check out a pretty good history here), football is a guy sport. Women can and do play, but next to nobody pays attention — including me. While I generally like women's sports more than men's, I simply cannot get into women's pro football. But I do like women in football movies when I can find them. Here are the very, very few.

1. Tami Maida — Quarterback Princess (1983)

I'll bet I wasn't the only young adolescent who developed a crush on Helen Hunt in her turn as high school quarterback Tami Maida. I had already seen her on Family, The Facts of Life and that ABC Afterschool Special, Desperate Lives, where she jumps out the window while on angel dust. But in Quarterback Princess, she played some football and crusaded for the rights of girl athletes everywhere. Of course, she also made a point of how straight she was. And how she didn't like other boy things, like logging. But still, both Helen Hunt and the real Tami Maida were pretty cool. … continue reading

This week, instead of posting an episode of Who Thought THAT Was a Good Idea, Lori and I are giving you Part 2 of our Favorite Lesbian Moments from American TV shows with prominent lesbian characters (see Part 1 here).

In this episode, we discuss and show scenes from shows like Heartbeat (1988), Friends (1994-2004), and Out of Practice (2005), as well as Kim and Kerry's relationship on ER and Willow and Kennedy's on the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I do a lot of the talking in this one (for a change), since Lori doesn't know the details of most of these shows or characters. But Lori gets in some good zingers — when she's not letting her eyebrows do all the talking. … continue reading

No, I don't mean that time when she got arrested for shoplifting. But that's the first thing that comes to mind, isn't it? It's true: After a self-imposed hiatus from acting, Winona Ryder is trying to get her career back on track, but first she has to explain herself in public.

I'm only exaggerating a little when I say that Ryder's career is like a scrapbook of my college movie night memories. Even her films without lesbian moments had a queer subtext that we loved. There was this: … continue reading