Shark Bytes

I was in the audience when NBC previewed 'Joey' as the flagship new show in their upcoming season for their advertisers at Radio City. They showed the whole first episode sans commercials. There was rousing applause when the lights went down and the show started. But five minutes into the show you could feel the audience's disappointment. The tepid, polite applause when the lights went back up said volumes! The 'Uh Oh' reaction of the NBC execs was so palpable it affected the remainder of the NBC season preview show that year.

i watched Joey 1 recently on DVD and i can't get season 2 in Greece. I love "Friends" - brilliant show, but we all have to admit that such combinations of good writting - acting - chemistry - are very very rare. So Joey could never really be that good. I think Le Blanc is a good actor and his character adorable as in Friends. His agent was funny, but that's that. I don't see the reason to tell Matt Le Blanc off so badly though. I think none of them would have been able to distant themselves from their friends' character anyway. i'm only saying 10 years of enormous success have a price...fair one

The show sucked, I think everyone can agree with that. But they could have made it Ok. If the others visited, I would have watched that episode.

Plus, they made many mistakes. Joey didn't have the chick and duckling. And near the end of 'Friends', Joey is pissed and sad because everything's changing. Everyone still lived in New York, but he moved L.A. or whatever

The problems with this show were simple: lack of a good concept, bad writing and bad cast.

The producers never thought out the concept very well. They just thought, ok our main show is ending and we need to have a spin-off to keep the franchise going...quick, whadda we do? Um, let's move Joey to LA and Matt LeBlanc support a whole show by himself. You know what? Bad concept. Matt LeBlanc, while he's good at what he does, is not capable of supporting an entire series on his own. He's essentially a character actor, not a lead. He plays well in an ensemble, not out in front.

The second mistake, bad writing, caused the bad concept to turn into even worse scripts and dialogue. This show was a mess every week, every episode. The writers just made it worse the more they tried to salvage it.

The horrid cast only sealed the show's fate. Some talented actors might have been able to do something with the insipid writing and the inane situations to save something of the show, but this cast had almost zero talent and simply sank with the ship.

It was doomed from the start.

The major problem was the inconsistency: I remember when the sisters of joey show up in friends, and no one was that slot of drea.#1
Then, I think this Joey has no very much of his main characteristics he had in friends; The couple of joay and chandler was the very best, but they married chandler with that bitch, so both shows were destroyed.

I have to disagree -- this show would NEVER have been 'excellent' because it was doomed from the very first instant that some suit thought of doing it. The character of Joey, while extremely well-done in the Friends series, was not a character that would ever have been able to survive on his own show. Matt LeBlanc is a wonderful actor in his own way, but he is way too limited as Joey to be able to carry a whole show.

I think he was just greedy to jump at the carrot they dangled in front of him. LeBlanc should have left it alone. But what are you gonna do? What's done is done.

Actually, I felt Joey was a reasonable effort. The problems included: the network expected it to be a hit like Friends right away; they tried to recreate the Ross/Rachel will-they/won't-they thing, which ended up being annoying more than anything; what's her name who played Gina - she was impossible to like. You can't expect a series to do well if people don't like the characters
The show could have been excellent, and it had the potential, but the way it was made killed that.
Matt LeBlanc was the second choice for a spinoff, Aniston was asked first but she said no. That might have been more interesting.

What on Earth was Matt LeBlanc thinking when he decided to do this show?? Did he really think he could make it without the other 5? It was a horrible idea!

This show should never have seen the light of day. Spin-offs are a very difficult thing to get right. Some have worked (i.e., Frazier, Angel), but more often than not, most spin-offs have been really, truly awful rejects.

Joey was a great character on Friends. However, he was not a strong enough character to make an entire show work around him. It was doomed to failure from the onset.

Some characters can stand on their own and some need to be part of the scenery. Joey needed to stay in the background.

Loved FRIENDS but I think they should've made a show about Mondler and the twins they weren't expecting. And, no, person below me,Phoebe/Ursula would've been boring as h3ll. ross and rachel i'll agree with. Joey was very inconsistent on Joey, but on Friends he was like my third favorite character(behind only Ross, then Monica). He made a lot of the storylines funny, Ursula was funny, but only because SHE WAS SO DISTANT FROM HER SISTER!!! How would a spin off work? Phoebe can't stand to be in the same room as Ursula for a very long time, let alone a whole series.

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Joey jumped day one. They should have had a spin off show for Phoebe and Ursula. Ross and Rachel were boring. Chandler and Monica had NO sexual chemistry and shouldn't have been together. Joey was dumb and the storylines and titles of all the Joey episodes were boring and predictable, but a spinoff of Ursula and Phoebe would have been awesome!! Wonder what they are doing RIGHT NOW?!!

hu d hell doesnt lik JOey!!! for godsake he's jus acting dum... n its More difficult to act Dum dan smart!!! hmphh!! i thnk Friends wud be really empty widout d presence of Joey Tribbiani!!! i LOve him!!!mwahh!!

Jumped from day one, but I kept waiting for an episode when Tony, Chrissy, Paulie, Sil, & Bobby show up to find Adriana....

I was a big fan of "Friends" and like everyone else I started to watch "Joey" with the expectation that the show would be just as funny. It sucked from day one. The characters didn't click the way they did in "Friends". And, like someone mentioned before, Joey's character was inconsistent: one day he was stupid, next smart, in love, out of love. It was as if the writers didn't know what to do with him. The reason Joey's stupid/loveable character was a hit on Friends was because it balanced with Chandler's smart/sarcastic character. There was no character "balancing" on "Joey". The only way it would have been a hit is if they brought in Chandler, which was unlikely to happen.