A Very Special Episode
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The room is dark and cold, and the day was long. In anticipation of the deep, mindless pleasure of channel-surfing through the Courtyard by Marriott’s premium cable package, you spray the remote control once, then twice, with a half-empty bottle of organic hand sanitizer.
Click.
“Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty,” Derek Zoolander whispers underwater, an Aveda logo fading into the movie’s faux-commercial as his mermaid-tail swims offscreen. You, on the other hand, left your $40 water bottle at the gate this morning (a fatal hydration mistake, realized only after settling into 20C).
Click.
George, arms waving: “I didn’t even know what protein was until age 30! People just didn’t think about it before then, and if they did, nobody told me about it.”
Elaine, disgusted: “Or maybe they just didn’t want to talk to you.” [Laugh track]
You remember this one. Jerry and Elaine go back and forth about who gets more grams until it’s a competition; she gets so ripped that it inspires a new line of artisanal, Swiss-mountain-sourced crop tops by the J. Peterman Company. It turns out Jer’s lactose-intolerant, and a GI-reaction to the whey in his protein bars ruins his date with…is that a young Catherine Keener?
Click. Click. Click.
“Ohhh, get over it!” [Laugh track] Aniston is delivering peak, bite-y Rachel, David Schwimmer looks exasperated. She continues. “The problem is solved, Ross, everyone’s getting enough protein.”
Phoebe, thrilled, “Oh my god, we SOLVED it? We solved world hunger?” Central Perk, in its entirety, turns to stare at her.
“Oh, honey, no,” says Rachel, “I just mean we’ve moved on to being worried about fiber.” [Laugh track]
Click. [Weather Channel] Click. [History Channel] Click.
Terminator 2. Sarah Connor does not count protein or fiber amongst her concerns, and she probably would have been more than fine with the bar food on offer at tonight’s team dinner (your 26-year-old colleague chose the restaurant). Staring down the apocalypse doesn't leave much room for choice; her world is all war and doom, tech companies and AI run amok…Sh-t. You picture yourself, post-fallout, hoarding canned chickpeas and trading sexual favors for sunscreen.
Click.
Which Scream is this? 2? 3? The mask, the frustration, the all-encompassing unpredictability—if you think about it, Ghostface being on a Retinol journey sort of makes sense. You should’ve packed your red light mask in lieu of the hardback you’re avoiding, but at least you had room for your full run of topicals.
Click. [Commercial] “…for mature skin–” Buzz.
You reach for your phone. Another breaking news alert. Closing your eyes, you desperately seek the point of the folder full of auto-replies from your Senator.
Click.
Heartburn. Meryl Streep looks close to death. Why is she so matte? Was everyone this matte in the 80s? You search “how old.Meryl Streep heartburn” (37), then “how.old Noraephron Carl.bernstein when married” (34 and 32, respectively). You think about how—statistically and otherwise—more people you know should have gotten divorced by now. You image-search Carl Bernstein. Apparently he went on to date Bianca Jagger, but visually it’s difficult to understand how this was possible.
Click. Click. Click.
Jerry again, bug-eyed and yelling “No way! No whey!” You realize you're starving, making do with the cough drop that’s been rattling around in your suitcase since…actually, you don’t want to think about how long it’s been in there.
Click.
Tracy bursts into the room, interrupting a conversation between Liz and Jack about the bisexual nature of her shoes. “THE COURTYARD BY MARRIOTT IS A LIMINAL SPACE, LIZ LEMON.”
Liz, irritated: “Tracy, what?”
Dot Com: “That’s deep, Tray, and I concur. It’s not home or work, but an untethered plane upon which your anxieties are subject to a different sort of gravity. I believe Kierkegaard would say it reveals the tension between the finite and infinite—”
Tracy: “COOL IT, DOT COM.”
Jack: “GE is actually working on a new television specifically for business travel, Lemon, it’s in collaboration with the Denim Council of America. If it senses you’re perimenopausal, it sends a signal to double down until you’re channel-surfing on one screen and searching ‘jeans that will change my life’ on another.”
Click. [Commercial] “Are your parents getting older? When’s the last time you call—” Click.
Frasier, Niles, and Daphne are looking forlornly at Marty Crane’s empty armchair. Absolutely not.
Click.
Back to Friends. Joey’s chugging a container of orange juice and Phoebe’s timing it for some reason? Are these two fulfilled? They don’t really have jobs. You’d like to think you would be extremely fulfilled without a job—you would not have had to scrape cheese from a communal bowl of nachos for dinner, you’d be in your own bed. You remember the amount of therapy required when you got laid off during Covid; your left eye twitches. You are fine with having a job. You love the Courtyard by Marriott.
Click. Click.
Charlotte, wholesomely: “I’m starting a digital detox! Anyone want to join me?”
Miranda: “Noooo, thank you.”
Charlotte: “I keep reading that in our 40s, screen time can really affect cortisol levels.”
Samantha, annoyed: “What doesn’t? I mean, really, Charlotte, I’ll read the book I packed eventually. If I want to spend the occasional hour-or-so screaming into the soft pillow of nostalgia, let me. I just can’t get it up to feel shame about this.”
Brunch server: “What can I get you, ladies?”
Carrie, nodding towards Charlotte: “Not what she’s having.”
[Cut to Carrie’s apartment; her voiceover begins] “After denying the detox, I couldn’t help but wonder: does a ‘mindless pleasure’ even exist for a 45-year-old woman? Or are our mental loads destined to find themselves on every channel?”
She looks pensively through the window, then back at her laptop.
“Will the hotel gym be overrun with old guys tomorrow? And should I be thinking more about my pelvic floor?”
Her cell phone buzzes; another breaking news alert. She looks briefly at the ceiling. [Tight shot on her browser window] Opening a new tab, Carrie begins to type:
“Jeans that will change my—”
Click.
“A Very Special Episode” emailed out 3.31.2026 with newsletter-exclusive extras. Subscribe for free here.