Friends Fans Can Finally Get Closure on Joey
For years, the machinations of one depraved “playboy” have been shrouded in secrecy. What did he know? Who were his friends? Why’d he get so little time? On the air, that is. Now we no longer have to wonder. The final eight episodes of NBC’s short-lived Friends spinoff Joey, starring Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani, have finally been declassified in the United States. The Friends YouTube channel has been dropping two episodes every Tuesday since this March. As of this week, all 46 episodes — including the never-released-in-the-U.S. episodes “Joey and the Dad,” “Joey and the Party for Alex,” “Joey and the Big Move,” “Joey and the Beard,” “Joey and the Critic,” “Joey and the Actor’s Studio,” “Joey and the Holding Hands,” and “Joey and the Wedding” — are available to stream for free in a helpfully organized playlist.
LeBlanc won a People’s Choice Award for his performance in the first season of Joey, which premiered in 2004. In his acceptance speech, he reportedly promised, “We’ll stick around as long as you’ll have us.” But that turned out to be not very long at all. The show — which also starred Jennifer Coolidge, Andrea Anders Paulo Costanzo, Drea de Matteo, and Miguel A. Núñez Jr. — was canceled after two seasons, in a rather meta turn events for a show that starts with Joey moving to L.A. and finding out that his sitcom has been canceled. The last eight episodes of Joey never ended up airing on TV in the U.S., and following poor domestic sales of season one on DVD, Stateside fans didn’t even get the opportunity to buy the physical version of season two. It took two decades for American fans to finally get the conclusion to the show. No one told us life was gonna be this way, but it all worked out.
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