Disappearing Scenes

Friends - the bitches scene
Fawlty Towers - The Major’s Cricket Experience
Grease - Numerous

Friends - Phoebe’s Bitches

I was watching Friends with my daughter over the weekend. It’s the one where Monica and Rachel have a cat fight and Phoebe breaks this up by pulling the other two’s hair. Her mastery assured, I remembered that Phoebe allows herself a little trash talk: “If we were in prison, you guys would be my bitches!”

It’s a funny line and as the episode progressed I was pleasantly looking forward to watching it. But then the scene ended abruptly without the anticipated payoff. The line had been cut. Chopped. Lying unscreened on the censor’s floor.

Maybe my memory was faulty? What to do? Well, Youtube is very good for these sort of nerdy fact checks. I’ve read that it is a very male dominated medium and so can believe it is often used to settle many an annoying pub argument. So, I found the scene, played it and no, I wasn’t wrong, the line was most definitely part of the original episode. See below. The censors (who are they?) had judged the line inappropriate.

The Major & Cricket

Now, Friends isn’t in the same category as the famous Major scene in Fawlty Towers that is always snipped from BBC reruns these days. It’s in the Germans episode. It’s incredibly funny and incredibly offensive - especially to modern ears. But the point - a nuanced one - was to laugh at the major character, not with him. Context is key but, the scene is gone unless you knew it, grew up with it and know it’s on YouTube somewhere.

Grease is the Word

I saw Grease in the cinema when it came out. I got the double LP to play at home. I was ten. It certainly isn’t a harmless musical with sub plots about teenage sex, pregnancy and the ribald things kids get up to. This all sailed over my head. Exhibit A: The Song Grease Lightnin’ which is one long smutty anthem to getting off with girls. Again, last time I watched it on TV, the censors had been hard at work. Them was different times… You can read about my Favourite 70’s films and, yes, Grease is on the list!

Orwellian

Back to Friends. Why the cut? What drove the censor to snip it?

The word ‘bitch’? Come on - kids these days hear worse than this every day. In the classroom. Probably from their teachers.

Is it perhaps the suggestion that in prison a ‘bitch’ is the dominant person’s unwilling same sex, sex slave? Yeah, that’s probably a bit rapey for day time TV.**

Or maybe, it was just a funny line. Cut that. Fuck it, humour is passé these - we just harangue our audience with our hard left politics.

Dunno. But a piece of my soul was snipped away along with those few seconds of celluloid and, although I’ve deliberately picked an asinine example, we’re becoming worryingly more censorious as a society even as our means of being free (the internet, social media) explodes.

There’s something sinister, Orwellian, about official sources and memory diverging. Remember what Winston Smith’s actual job was - excising and changing the past. Like the iconic picture of a revolution that progressively ‘disappears’ the original heroes as they fall from favour, does real or official memory take precedence? Instinctively I’m against censorship. One draws the line very, very narrowly.

Nuance, context, treating people as adults. I return to this in my discussion about the what drives - and hides - our news agenda and how the choices our media make about what to show, and what not to show, is impossible to miss. Read this piece The Internet, Porn and the Opiate of the Masses.

But first, enjoy the Friends scene below as it was originally intended.

Quotidian Notes

1) I like humour. Edgy humour elegantly crafted. The pyschology of jokes is offensive. It makes us human to laugh about systems, governments, people. Humour is sign of intelligence I’m told. And I keep telling myself that.

2) I recently revised this article in August 2026 adding those SEO friendly ‘look at me Google bots!’ H2 headings and lists that our digital overlords prefer. In a way, we’re all bitches to algorithm. Now you’re here, check out my Features Page which has a sturdy and impressive list of articles to read.

3) I try to avoid the simplistic things were better in my day arguments. I look at some sitcoms, comedians and movies from my youth and cringe at how bad they were. My argument is about censorship, received opinion and prejudging the past arbitarily. History and humankind cannot progress is we forget the past. Good and bad. But I miss the good.

NOTES

I saw Grease when it came out in 1978. The songs and dialogue and - indeed - the subject matter is pretty filthy. Sailed right over my head though. Didn’t get any of the many sexual references. Until I watched it years later. Should it be censored? Or should movie makers self censor? TBC
“A bit rapey” - this term, is a strange one that I’ve only come across in the last year or so. It is ALWAYS said by a woman. There’s probably an article in male / female relations that explores the meaning behind the words. Not today.