Friends fans, this is major news for you. Listen up. Matt LeBlanc’s classic spinoff series Joey has just released a whopping eight unaired episodes — over 20 years after the show was cancelled.
The official Friends Instagram account recently announced the episode drop. “East or west coast, Joey is still, well, Joey. Did you know that the final eight episodes of Joey Season 2 never aired in the U.S.?” the account wrote alongside a video with clips from the series. “Now, 21 years later, catch the remaining episodes exclusively on the #FRIENDS YouTube channel!”
Friends aired for ten seasons that spanned 1994 to 2004. Alongside LeBlanc, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow, and Matthew Perry starred. The year the show went off the air, Joey premiered on NBC.
Joey specifically followed LeBlanc’s Joey Tribbiani as he tried his hand at an acting career in Los Angeles. The show starred Paulo Costanzo, Drea de Matteo, Andrea Anders, and Jennifer Coolidge alongside LeBlanc. They made only two seasons of the show, which was cancelled in 2006.
In a 2012 interview with The Guardian, LeBlanc opened up about the complicated feelings he had about the show and where his character went. “I thought that it was a good show. I just think that we were telling stories that emasculated the character,” he explained to the outlet. “They wrote a guy who became very doubtful of himself in this new place, in Hollywood, no friends, can't meet girls – and that's not who Joey was. He was always, always, always, the consummate optimist. Always. And that's not who they wrote. That was very frustrating for me."
That said, his work on Friends set him up for success beyond Joey. “Friends was an education in intelligent comedic banter; in intelligent vernacular. It was an education in scene study,” he told The Guardian. “It was an education in group dynamic. I came out of there with a masters degree in comedy."
The eight unseen episodes of Joey are available to watch on the Friends YouTube Channel but the show is not currently available on streaming.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
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