Pedro gives us a thumbs-up. “Perfect! I’ll leave you to it. Good luck, lovebirds!”
He saunters out, looking mighty pleased with himself.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ANTOINE
Laura and I are freshly showered, fed, and parked on the sofa in front of the television. Laura looks giddy, curled up like she’s settling in for a movie marathon.
Sorry, but the deal was one episode and one episode only!No binge watching.
I’ve taken the other end of the couch, careful to keep a respectable buffer zone between us. Alain, the cameraman, and two other crew members hover nearby. One of them adjusts the boom mic, making sure they don’t miss a single word spoken between us.
Laura flips through the channels until she finds what she was looking for. “Here!”
It’s the opening credits ofFriends.The clip features six young people goofing around by a fountain and then in the fountain. Accompanied by the theme song “I’ll Be There for You,” this video is so iconic that even someone as uninterested in pop culture as I am has seen it before.
“I knew I’d catch a rerun somewhere!” Laura exclaims in triumph. “Prepare to have fun.”
“Will you remind me what the show is about?”
“Are you truly aFriendsvirgin?” she inquires with incredulity.
“As untouched as they come. Well, except for the opening credits, which are simply unavoidable in the modern world.”
She beams. “OK. This series is about six twenty-somethings navigating the ups and downs of love, work, and life in New York. It originally aired in the nineties.”
“Got it.”
We begin to watch the episode titled, “The One Where Joey Loses His Insurance.” A cinematic masterpiece it is not, but if I’m being honest, it’s better than I expected. And, since this is a French channel, the whole thing is dubbed in French.
On screen, the scene cuts to a college classroom. Ross Geller is standing at the front of a class, lecturing. His tone is stiff, his delivery even worse.
“Ross is a paleontologist and a total nerd,” Laura explains. “He just got his first guest lecturer gig, and he’s nervous, so he puts on a fake British accent to impress his students.”
As Ross talks, the French voice actor delivers what sounds like a textbook reading of Ross’s affected speech.
“I’ve seen this episode twice before,” Laura comments, “and I still don’t get why this part is funny.” She points at the screen. “This laugh track? It’s probably the only time on this show where it’s insincere.”
“Are you saying I was right about the fake laughter in sitcoms?”
“No, I’m saying that as far as this show is concerned, this is probably the only time where it may be the case.” She lets out a dramatic sigh. “Just my luck.”
“It’s not fake,” I say, surprising myself by coming to the show’s defense. “I believe most of the humor got lost in translation.”
“How do you mean?”
“The dubbing ruins it,” I postulate. “In English, Ross speaks with an American accent, right?”
“Right.”
“When he tries to fake a posh, upper-class British accent, it sounds absurd because the contrast is obvious.”
Her eyebrows lift in realization. “I see…”
“French doesn’t have a stark difference between standard and upper-class speech,” I argue. “It’s more subtle. That’s why Ross’s fake accent falls flat when dubbed in French.”
“I wonder what posh British English sound like?”
