“I just watched the complete scene and fully understand why they chose not to air it two weeks after 9/11. It wouldn’t have gone over well at all.
Nobody was laughing about airport security in October, 2011. Living in downtown Denver at the time, I was still paranoid walking under skyscrapers. “
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My family and I had moved away to Canada from Denver just a year or so before 9-11.
That is neither here nor there, what I mean was, no, that would NOT have been funny... and I actually think the rewrite was funnier.
“We’re you! Just ten seconds later!” LOL. “We want the stuff!” LOL. :)
It says a lot about the writers that they were able to switch gears and change that and actually make it even funnier.
If 9-11 hadn’t happened, people might think that scene is funny. And of course, it is, but not really. It would have been if those events hadn’t happened.
And the writers or producers dedicated one of the shows to the people of New York City not long after 9=11. It probably was even that one.
And there are many pro-NYC, pro-US references, in the clothes they wear, in posters, what have you, maybe even in the scribbles on the door for messages, etc.... all right after 9-11.
I remember just a few days after 9/11, trying to unwind and get away; even for a brief time from all the horrible news and images of what I’d watched unfold on TV, watching with my niece, a movie playing on HBO. It was the Nicholas Cage movie The Family Man – good movie BTW. There was one scene where Cage’s character is driving back to NYC and the Twin Towers are in the distance. My niece and I broke into tears and had to turn it off.
So I understand why the Friends producers removed that particular scene at the time, but I don’t find it offensive and it is IMO a funny scene now.
On a related note, the movie Meet The Parents which came out in 2000 had a very funny scene regarding saying bomb on a plane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXFwiESB9WI
FWIW, the video for the Ryan Adams’ song, New York, New York was filmed on Friday September 7th, 2001. I cry every time I watch it.