Friends-Series 4-Volume 3-Episodes 17-23 (1998)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Featurette-Friends Goes To London Featurette-Friends On Location In London Music Video-I'll Be There For You DVD-ROM Extras-Web Links; Events
Rating
Year Of Production	1998
Running Time	169:52 (Case: 176)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Sided	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Michael Lembeck Gail Mancuso Kevin S. Bright Peter Bonerz
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Jennifer Aniston Courtney Cox Lisa Kudrow Matt LeBlanc Matthew Perry David Schwimmer
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$29.95	Music	Michael Skloff

    Friends is an American sitcom revolving around the lives of 6 close friends. It centres around the quirky habits of each character and is primarily filmed within the confines of their two apartments.

    Please see Michael's review of Friends Series 1 - Volume 1 if you would like to read some background information on the main characters of the show. My review of the first 8 Episodes from this series and Episodes 8-16 are also available on-line.

    This disc is the last in a series of three and contains the following episodes;

The One With Free Porn (21:22) - Every red-blooded bloke's dream! Joey is playing with the T.V.'s remote control and accidentally gets free porn displayed 24 hours a day. Naturally, Joey and Chandler become very defensive of their television and won't let anyone turn it off for fear of losing this new feature. Excitement turns into concern when the guys realise that they are becoming desensitised to the porn.

The One With Rachel's New Dress (21:22) - Rachel has a lot of trouble picking a new dress for her first official date with Joshua. Ross is concerned that his girlfriend Emily is getting too close to Susan who is the one that Ross's wife left him for in the first place. Rachel ends up getting caught without her dress.

The One With All The Haste (21:22) - Monica and Rachel are very frustrated with the whole swapped apartments idea. They decide to swap 2 season tickets to the Knicks in trade for swapping the apartments back. They lose twice in a fair game, so the boys get to keep the apartment and the tickets. Naturally, this does not go down too well with the girls, so they change the game rules. This is also the episode where Ross proposes to Emily. Monica and Rachel kiss in this episode for A WHOLE MINUTE but unfortunately we don't get to see it.

The One With All The Wedding Dresses (21:20) - Ross is asked to pick up Emily's wedding dress, but gives the task to Monica so that he doesn't get to see it before the wedding. One thing leads to another and the show ends up with all of the girls dressing in wedding dresses. All the while, there is tension between Rachel and Joshua.

The One With The Invitation (21:12) - Ross & Emily sit down to work out the wedding invitations and who will not be invited. One member of the group decides not to go which causes some tension in the household. This episode is full of flashbacks to past shows.

The One With The Worst Best Man Ever (21:14) - Joey and Chandler fight to be Ross's best man. Joey ends up with the job and they both make terrible speeches at the wedding that are full of jokes that do not go down too well with their predominately British audience. Joey also manages to lose Ross's wedding ring which causes a lot of concern and some ingenious thinking on how to recover it again.

The One With Ross' Wedding (42:00) - This episode is of extra length as it covers the group's trip to London as well as Ross and Emily's wedding. The Extras features that have been on all discs from this series also showed a lot of the footage from this particular episode. You also get to see the mystery guest that has his face masked on the Extra feature in order to hide his identity. It finishes with a cliff-hanger at the wedding . . .

Video

    The video transfers across all 8 episodes were of similar quality and appearance.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and is therefore not 16x9 enhanced.

    Although this transfer is not of reference quality, it is still enjoyable to watch. It still suffers from the slightly grainy appearance that Volume 1 and 2 had. It was, however, of a better quality than the first disc in this series.

    The transfer is clear but is not a crisp sharp image. Shadow detail is acceptable and there is no low level noise.

    The colours were bright and clear at all times throughout all episodes. There were no irregularities with the colour rendition of this transfer, either.

    There were no MPEG artefacts seen. The only aliasing that I noticed was when the camera pans across the room. It seems more noticeable on the white walls than other areas.

    There is a good collection of subtitles to choose from, and the English subtitles that I checked appeared close to the spoken word but were not exact.

    This DVD is presented as a double-sided single-layered DVD and therefore there is no layer change. Instead, you have to flip the disc manually to see the other four episodes. This disc continues the tradition of poor Friends disc labelling. I would like to see the Side A/B information printed more clearly on the disc. At the moment, there is merely the very small 17602.1.A and 17602.1.B to distinguish each of the sides. Why not a simple Side A, Side B?

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is only a single English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track to listen to on this DVD.

    The dialogue was clear and easy to understand at all times and I detected no hiss during any of the episodes. There were no audio sync problems like the one that showed up on the previously-reviewed Episodes 9-16 disc. The canned laughter track was mixed at a more appropriate level than it was on the first disc of this series where it was louder than it should have been and is adjusted to a more comfortable level much like Volume 2.

    The theme and background score was provided by Michael Skloff, and has not changed since the very first Episode of Friends..

    The rears were used for the "canned laughter" and were merely a reproduction of the sound from the front speakers at a slightly lesser volume level.

    The subwoofer was not used by the soundtrack at all.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Music Video

    If you have watched any of the other Friends DVDs then this feature is the same one as on previous DVDs.

Featurette - Friends Goes To London

    This featurette focuses on the Producer and Director explaining why they decided to do a shoot in London. There is also footage of Phoebe, who stayed in the USA because in the storyline she was pregnant and could not join the group in London. The real reason she stayed in the US is that she hates flying, so they found a nice way keep her at home and in the script.

Featurette - Friends On Location In London

    This featurette offers some background information and location shots of the London episode. This is the episode where the gang heads to London to see Ross get married (again). The man selling balloons has all images of his face blotted out on purpose and his identity is only revealed by watching Episode 23 on this disc.

    The volume level of this featurette is lower than that of the rest of this disc, so you will need to increase the volume a notch or two.

DVD-ROM - When the disc is loaded into a DVD-ROM, DVD Friendly is loaded. Two extra menus are available that link to the "Friends Website" and the "Friends Events" site which is really the main Warner Brothers Events site for all of their products.

    These episodes of Friends have quite a few good laughs and make for some nice, light entertainment. It also contains the much anticipated and watched wedding between Ross and Emily. If you were one of the few people to miss it, there is a cliff-hanger at the end.

    I personally like watching Friends on DVD where it is not interrupted by commercials - I think you get more laughs that way.

    The video is the equivalent of a high quality VHS tape, but is still adequate. It is, however, of better video quality than the first DVD in this particular series.

    The audio is fine - and this time they have mixed the laugh track slightly into the surrounds.

    The extras are the same on both sides of the disc, and yes The Rembrandts' song is still there.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall