The 'Friends' Spinoff You Forgot About Is Now Streaming — And It's Kind Of Good

While “Joey” is certainly no “Friends” — it’s way better than I ever imagined. In fact, it’s exactly the kind of nostalgic escape we need these days.

Spinoffs are hard. For every “Frasier” or “The Jeffersons,” there are about a dozen forgotten shows that buckled under the pressure of living up to their original series. But the stakes for a spinoff have arguably never been higher than they were in 2004, when Joey Tribbiani left his friends behind and flew across America to launch his Hollywood career.

After the incredible success of “Friends,” which ran for 10 seasons and won six Emmy Awards, the only cast member who agreed to stick around for a spinoff was Matt LeBlanc. The result was “Joey,” a two-season sitcom filmed on the very same soundstage, in which the lovable doofus moves to Los Angeles to finally become a star. Spoiler alert: He kind of succeeds, but his career was cut short when the show was canceled due to low ratings.

Two decades later, the pilot episode of Joey recently made its streaming debut when it was quietly uploaded to the official “Friends” YouTube channel. Overnight, the 26-minute-long episode racked up over a million views.

I’m only slightly ashamed to admit that one of those views was from me. After stumbling across the first episode of “Joey” thanks to YouTube’s algorithm, I wound up watching more episodes of the series than I’m willing to publicly admit. And while “Joey” has plenty of flaws — it’s certainly no “Friends” — it’s way better than I ever imagined. In fact, it might actually be kind of good.

The best thing “Joey” has going for it is its cast. There’s LeBlanc, of course, who does an impressive job carrying the weight of an entire show on his broad shoulders. The Joey Tribbiani we see here is pretty much the exact same version from “Friends,” and the fact that he’s still entertaining to watch even without Chandler by his side speaks to the resilience of a well-built sitcom character.