Customer Reviews

Friends - The Complete Eighth Season

5 star:		(75)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have to start out by saying that, yes, I'm an obsessive fan of Friends. I have been checking this website EVERY single day since season 7 was released hoping and praying that season 8 would show up, and after what has seemed like eternity, I just turned on the computer and found out that season 8 of Friends will be released on November 9th!!! I have to admit that season 7 is one of the worst seasons of Friends. It's pretty much just a long, drawn-out planning of Chandler and Monica's wedding. Season 8 is much better, where we start out by finding out that Rachel is pregnant and end with the birth of baby Emma, while following the first year of Monica and Chandler's marriage. Let me give you a quick run down of season 8:

The One After "I Do" - The group finds out Rachel is pregnant and Chandler reveals his two left feet.

The One With The Red Sweater - Everyone finds out that Ross is the father of Rachel's baby, except Ross himself.

The One Where Rachel Tells - Ross Finds out he's the father

The One With The Video Tape - Ross shows the gang the videotape of him and Rachel having sex to determine who pursued whom.

The One With Rachel's Date - Ross is uneasy finding out Rachel is going on a date while pregnant with his baby.

The One With The Halloween Party - Pheobe meets Ursula's fiance (Sean Penn)and ross dresses up as "Spudnik"

The One With The Stain - Sean Penn leaves Ursula for Pheobe and Joey puts up a nursery so Rachel will stay at his place.

The One With The Stripper - Monica orders a stripper for Chandler's belated b-day and she turns out to be a hooker.

The One With The Rumor - Brad Pitt guest stars on the thanksgiving episode with the "I hate Rachel" club from HS.

The One With Monica's Boots - Chandler is upset when Monica buys an expensive pair of boots that hurt her feet.

The One With Ross' Step Forward - Rachel ponders sleeping with Joey after feeling the hormonal changes in her pregnancy.

The One Where Joey Dates Rachel - Joey dates Rachel (duh!)

The One Where Chandler Take A Bath - Rachel and Ross decide not to learn the sex of their unborn child until Rachel peeks.

The One With The Secret Closet - Chandler discovers Monica's secret closet that is insanely messy.

The One With The Birthing Video - Chandler loses his romantic mood on Valentines day after seeing a birthing video meant for Rachel.

The One Where Joey Tells Rachel - Joey tells Rachel how he feels

The One With The Tea Leaves - Joey feels akward about confessing his love to Rachel so he tries to avoid her, Ross tries to get his pink t-shirt back from girlfriend Mona's apartment.

The One in Massapequa - Monica regrets giving a toast at her parents 35th anniversary and Pheobe's new boyfriend (Alec Baldwin) drive everyone crazy.

The One With Joey's Interview - Joey get another interview with Soap Opera Digest but he insists his friends be there so he doesn't mess it all up like he did the last time (when he lost his first role on Days of Our Lives)

The One With The Baby Shower - Rachel feels unprepared about being a mother and agrees to let her mother move in to help her

The One With The Cooking Class - After being criticized in the paper, Monica attends a cooking class where she is considered a cullinary genius.

The One Where Rachel is Late - Rachel is past her due date and gets more irritable, and is willing to try anything that might make the baby come.

The One Where Rachel Has A Baby - In the season finale, Rachel is in pain while other women get rolled into hospital rooms before her. Monica and Chandler find an empty room to make love in so they can have their own baby, and Rachel runs into Janice when she is rolled into the same hospital room.

Great stuff here in Friends season 8, you won't be disappointed!

The Friends season-by-season collections on DVD have been fantastic! Season 8 showed a natural and very realistic progression in the lives of Monica, Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Joey and Phoebe. Episodes 171-194 covered the first year of Monica and Chandler's married life together, Rachel finding out she was pregnant with Ross's baby, Joey showing some maturity as he deals with his deepening feelings for Rachel, and Phoebe still trying to find her true love (boyfriends included guest stars Sean Penn and Alec Baldwin).

We had watched our "Friends" transition from their 20's into their 30's and came to know and love them even more in Season 8. We could sense the end was coming though--we thought it would be Season 9 but were treated to an additional (although shortened) Season 10.

Season 8 wasn't all just growing up and getting serious though. Hysterical highlights from this year included Rachel crying out "I don't see it!" when trying to spot her baby on the sonogram, Chandler's claw hand after playing Ms. Pac-Man for hours, finding out Monica's secret - her closest full of junk in her otherwise obsessively-clean apartment, and Chandler discovering the joys of a scented bubble bath.

Seasons 5, 6, and 7 were released just a few months apart from each other, and I was hoping Warner Bros. would continue on the fast-track with seasons 8, 9, and 10 so I could finally complete my collection. It's been an agonizing summer of waiting for news of Season 8's release date (checking Amazon every day waiting for the announcement). Can't believe we still have to wait until November, but hopefully we'll get a Christmas treat and be able to buy Seasons 9 and 10 before 2005 arrives.

The eighth season of Friends finds the series rebounding strongly from a couple of good, but not great years. The series started picking up near the end of season seven with Monica (Courtney Cox) & Chandler's (Matthew Perry) wedding and the cliffhanger of one of the girls being pregnant. Season eight opens with the wedding reception in progress and it is discovered that Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) is the one pregnant. Rachel's pregnancy is the main storyline for the season. It is determined that Ross (David Schwimmer) is the father and this creates complications with Joey (Matt Le Blanc) who after living with Rachel develops feelings for her. The season's finale episode where Rachel finally has the baby has gone down as one of the best, if not the best episode, in the series' history. There are other hilarious episodes along the way including one where Chandler finds the soothing qualities of a bath with scented oils, one where Rachel tells Joey her boss is trying to buy her baby and Ross tries to retrieve his favorite shirt from his ex-girlfriend's apartment, the one where Joey & Rachel go on a date and Monica gets Chandler a Ms. Pac Man machine and the annual Thanksgiving episode in which Ms. Aniston's real life husband Brad Pitt guest stars as a fellow classmate and friend of Ross' from high school who started the We Hate Rachel club in high school. Other big guest stars include Sean Penn & Alec Baldwin. This was the only year that Friends would win the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series and Ms. Aniston won the Best Actress Emmy for her work.

It's finally coming : the next season of Friends on DVD !! And this November will see the 8th Season release !

I'm a fan of the show and to be honest, season 8 is not my favorite season, but it's still a very good one because.... come on... it's Friends we're talking about !

Not my favorite season, nevertheless a season of the growing up mechanism for the 6 Friends (season 8 is truly the first season where all the Friends start to grow up and the situations start to change and evolve) : Rachel's pregnancy makes her evolve and we're getting far away from the 1st season spoiled Rachel; Monica and Chander experience their 1st year as a married couple, an important step in a couple's life; Ross change his behavior towards Rachel when he learns he's the father of her child and a Ross / Rachel reunion is evoked... Weird because, at the same time, episode 12 of the season features a storylyne involving a brand new, surprising couple : Rachel and Joey. A relationship that will become the key to this season's cliffhanger as well as the whole season 9, including its cliffganger and that will eventually end at the beginning of the 10th [and final] season.
This relationship truly marks Joey and makes his character really evolve as well, and for the first time ever, we discover a Joey really in love with somebody.
Although a lot of fans were against this unexpected relationship and feelings betwen Rachel and Joey (mostly the Ross/Rachel fans), I'm a fan that found this storyline really interresting and it's a plot that showed us that the writers were really inventing, plus they really well succeeded to include that in the show.

About the DVD set; sounds really nice (will be equally the same quality as the other seasons's sets). I just hope we'll have a wiewing option for the episode 8.03 "The One Where Rachel Tells" and that we'll be able to see the orignal Monica and Chandler airport storyline, cut, reshot and changed in the broadcast episode after the 9/11 tragedy. The UK sets displayed this scene well at the end of the episode with a note from the producers.

Can't wait to hold this set in my hands and can't wait either to own the DVDs of the 9th and 10th seasons, whose releases are expected in 2005.

My review in one word : this set is part of the Friends collection, a wonderfull collection for the best comedy series ever ! So, whatever season you prefer, season 8 is a must for any DVD library, so just get it !

Lets face it, there are two kinds of people in the world, those who like Friends and those who hate it. I have grown up with this series on TV and have remained loyal even through the most mediocre of seasons (6,9 and parts of 10 spring to mind) but after watching the finale of season 8, I was just floored by how good the season had been. It was funny again, not just the kind of funny that makes you smile but makes you laugh out loud. My favorite episode from this season, other than the finale, has to be the one where Ross and Rachel pretend to be married. It not only provided us with some of the funniest moments of the season, but this episode like most others really delved into the relationship between Ross and Rachel. I think that relationship was the key ingredient to the season and it was really bittersweet. All that 'we were on a break' stuff was water under the bridge and all was good in Ross and Rachel Land again.
I will be at the store when it opens on Nov. 9 to buy this classic season. Could I be more into this show?

I own all seven seasons of Friends on dvd and it's totally worth the 40 bux or whatever. They air Friends reruns here all the time but they cut out at least 5 minutes worth of jokes in every episode. Plus with season 6 and 7 you get the blooper reel, which if possible, is funnier than the show. AND I maybe a loser saying this but the commentary that you get from Marta Kauffman, David Crane and Kevin Bright on some episodes is good. It gives some input on what goes on behind the scenes etc. I can't wait to get season 8 (already pre-ordered) because I haven't seen much of it and it's defintely one of the funniest seasons. Seasons 9 and 10 were amazing..and I cant believe its over. But it really is worth spending the 45 bucks on the DVDS.

FINALLY- After a long period between the release of season 7, the end of friends and finally we can move on the next set of DVDs - the long awaited season 8! I will admit I absolutely love EVERY single episode of friends and it will forever be my fave show but season 8 is truly great. Many people think friends was losing its touch around season 7, as it wasnt the greatest and some thought plots were getting stale- but the dynamic group came back full force in season 8 with great new storylines and the magic and freshness that dominated the first few seasons. This was the season that debuted after the unfortunate events of 9/11 in New York and it was at this time that Friends' ratings once again shot through the roof as people found comfort in their favorite show. Now that it has finally been released on DVD we too can find comfort in watching our favorite six over and over on disc now that the show is over forever :(!!

Usually when a person provides such criticism it is because something has actually touched a nerve, and they respond with emotions rather than sense. This is no exception. Friends may not have appealed to every single person on the planet, but it appealed to me. To criticise it for things it never promised to deliver is as stupid as to criticise the Cosby Show for not having any White members in the family, or to call the Golden Girls ageist. Tokenism does not make a show great. The absence of something does not reflect the presence of racism and to assume that it does is to make an ass out of yourself in an international forum.

Friends was one of the best sitcoms TV has ever produced, and there are many of us who will buy all the DVDs, and watch them until they disintegrate, enjoying each 30mins of pure escapism.

During the seventh season, many people thought that Friends was near the end. The comedy that existed in the beginning seemed to be a little stale, yet it was still one of the best shows on television. There was talk that season eight would be the final one for the six friends.

Then came Sept. 11.

Following the horrific events of that day, people began turning to comfort items and Friends was certainly that. Rejuvenated by higher ratings the show took off again and enjoyed quite possibly one of the finest years in the ten year run.

The eighth season journeyed down a number of roads, with the two predominant ones being Ross and Rachel's baby and Chandler and Monica as newlyweds.

Matthew Perry's Chandler went through a lot of changes during the course of the show, probably the most of any of the characters. Seeing him as a newlywed brings a whole new side to his comedy. He was certainly funny as a single guy living with Joey, but this newlywed Chandler is a different kind of funny.

Courtney Cox Arquette is great as the neurotic Monica, finally in a marriage, but with someone she may never have guessed only a few short years ago, before the whole London thing. In this season she attempts to stick it to a reviewer who disses her restaurant, talks Chandler into taking baths and tries to impress her parents with a toast involving a dead dog. Once again, her comedy with Chandler takes on a whole new level.

The storyline involving Ross and Rachel's baby is a great one and the episode where everyone finds out exactly how it "happened" is one of the best of the season. As a viewer, most people have been rooting for the two to get together, and this season does that, but at the same time begins to pull them apart.

The very beautiful Jennifer Aniston pulls off a pregnant Rachel very well. The nerves, the mood swings, the food aversions, and the actual birth itself are all well done. This is her moment to shine on this show and she takes it and runs with it.

As Ross, David Schwimmer continues to be the "divorced guy." He meets Mona at Monica and Chandler's wedding and begins dating her then tries to explain the whole Rachel pregnancy thing to her. He talks himself into many ridiculous situations throughout the course of the season.

Matt LeBlanc's Joey gets a great storyline in the season as well, as he realizes he is falling in love with Rachel. This plays out through the season as Rachel moves in with Ross, then after having the baby, says yes to Joey's "proposal", leaving the viewer hanging until the start of season nine.

As Phoebe, Lisa Kudrow is often on the outside, but she presents a unique angle on many of the situations. Her stories this year include dating her twin sister's fiancee (Sean Penn), giving Monica a massage and a variety of other strange situations.

This season featured some great episodes, as mentioned. One of the great episodes of the ten seasons was the Thanksgiving episode featuring Brad Pitt. He plays a high school friend of Ross who was a founding member of the "I Hate Rachel Green Club". His loathing of her makes for an interesting Thanksgiving for everyone. And it is actually kind of funny to watch him despise his real life wife.

All in all, this season was one of the best seasons of the show. Viewers got to see new sides to many of the characters, yet the old back stories that made them who they are still are relevant. The ending to the season was a great one, leaving a viewer hanging on until season nine (Which is due out in a few months).

Obviously any fan of Friends is going to want this set, but anyone who is a fan of the sitcom in general and wants to see what good writing and good acting look like, this, or any set from the Friends series, is a good bet. NBC sure misses this show.

Friends is one of my favorite shows because it gets better with repeat viewings. A few years ago when this season was on it was obvious that it would wind up being the best season of the show and several years later after repeat viewings that assumption rings true.

At the end of the seventh season, the Friends writers revealed a twist that blew everyone away: Rachel was pregnant. The eighth season is pretty much all about that, but the ways the writers keep this SL from becoming cliched is truly amazing. Although at the time it was frustrating that they just wouldn't put Ross and Rachel back together, watching now it's cool to realize that Ross and Rachel were only a couple for a short period of time and spent the rest of the series apart even though fans wanted them together. The writers did this because it's what kept most people watching.

Not surprisingly, most of the best episodes revolve around the aftermath of Rachel's discovery. I especially like the episode where we get to see the videotape of Ross and Rachel's fateful night. More strong episodes come when Joey ends up falling for Rachel. Even though I didn't want them to get together, it was still great to see Matt LeBlanc do some very good acting. The only thing I didn't like was Mona, but that was probably because the actress had the thankless job of trying to come between Ross and Rachel, a role very similar to that of Julie in Season 2.

Another thing that works about this season is the minimum of big guest stars. The fact that they didn't overdo it makes the few guest spots work very well.

I highly recommend this DVD set. Friends found the perfect balance of drama and comedy once again and almost all of the episodes are fun to watch over and over. This was the year Friends started to get the respect it deserved. It's no surprise it won all those Emmys for this season, so do yourself a favor and get the greatest season of one of the best shows you could ever hope to watch.