Post making contest 6.0

NINE: The One Where They Escape The Matrix.

Friends has had a strange history of crossing over with other popular franchises dating right back to 1995, during the very second season of the show. Everyone remembers that season, it was the season where Phoebe first started carrying around a Buzz Lightyear toy with her. At first this seemed like simple cross promotion, a way to generate buzz (so to speak) for the upcoming Toy Story movie. Nobody was prepared for episode 9 (the christmas special of that season) which revealed that just like in the Toy Story universe, Phoebe's Buzz Lightyear was alive and sentient and dedicated to only moving when not observed by humans. It further revealed, by way of a series of flashbacks to the events of previous episodes as seen from Buzz's perspective, that Phoebe had quickly discovered the toy's secret and become good friends with him, getting into all manner of hijinks behind the other friends' backs.

Ever since then crossovers with popular movies have been fairly standard for Friends, some of them more well received than others. The One Where Ross Commits A Precrime, an episode which was a crossover with Tom Cruise movie Minority Report was especially poorly received with many viewers disappointed that Ross continued to get away with his ghastly crimes.

The best of these crossover episodes, in my opinion, was the season 5 episode The One Where They Escape The Matrix. The episode opens with Gunther desperately wanting to talk to Rachel. The other friends guess that as usual it's because of his massive infatuation with her, but once he manages to get her alone he divulges the truth about the Matrix, about how he got out and has been for some years now acting as a recruitment agent to determine who is trustworthy enough to entrust this information with, and furthermore who is capable enough to be of use to the human resistance in the real world. He insists that this is the reason he has been so seemingly infatuated with her, it was all because he was trying to assess her as a recruit. He insists this for approximately five uninterrupted minutes of the episode.

When he's finally done he offers Rachel a choice, take the red pill and awake in the real world, or take the blue pill and forget this whole thing ever happened. Rachel is kind of reluctant to take any pills from this guy, but she's still pissed that Ross said her name at his wedding so she thinks what the heck and takes the red pill. She awakens in the real world and the story follows her as she finds her place aboard a resistance ship piloted by Janice Goralnik, Chandler's ex girlfriend, while in a sideplot back in the Matrix Joey tries to cook and eat the world's largest pizza.

Eventually Rachel begins to miss her friends, and after a particularly hard fought battle against the machines, the ship on which she serves has five open spots. Rachel goes back into the Matrix to explain the reality of the situation to her friends. Though they are at first skeptical, agents attack and they are forced to flee towards the nearest exit point. Somehow they manage to lose the agents and it seems as though they are going to make their escape through a payphone located outside Central Perk, that is until Monica blocks the path. She laughs maniacally as her casual jacket metamorphoses into a suit and suddenly everyone in the street is a duplicate of her. The Monica copies swarm the other friends, who are too surprised to put up a meaningful resistance and within moments they are helpless to Monica's clone army.

Entirely unprompted Monica begins explaining that she was the Queen of the Matrix this whole time, that she had been staking out Rachel who she knew to be the chosen one just waiting for the moment that she would lead her to all the other resistance fighters. Monica laughs maniacally and explains that while she should kill them all now, for they have served their purpose, she has somehow grown fond of the other friends, and she will allow them to live, but erase their memories of this whole incident so that they will never escape her grasp again. Monica then turns, answers the phone, and disappears presumably into the real world to destroy the last vestiges of the human resistance. The screen fades to white and then fades back in with the resolution of the Joey eats the worlds biggest pizza subplot. Everyone is at Central Perk, cheering him on as he eats the final bite of the pizza and confetti showers down on them.

"I wish Gunther could have been here to see this." says Rachel absently.

"Who's Gunther?" ask all the other friends in unison. Rachel scratches her head and admits she doesn't know anybody called Gunther. The friends all laugh and the credits play.