It’s incredible that no one has spotted this quite amateur but funny blooper in one of the most popular series of the world. The mentioned mistake is in the ninth season’s fifteenth episode of the series, which was on air on February 13, 2003 for the first time – that means no one has realized it for twelve years.
In one of the scenes of the episode titled The One with the Mugging (that’s the episode when it turns out that many years ago Phoebe was the one who robbed the teenager Ross on the street), Rachel and Joey are talking to Monica in the kitchen.
After a transition, a stranger woman is standing next to Joey. Only one half of her face can be seen but she’s clearly not Rachel and doesn’t even resemble her; their clothes are different as well. In movies and TV series body doubles are often employed instead of the stars so that they don’t have to be there all the time, for example, during the light setup or when a scene in which they don’t appear has to be recorded again.
So the mentioned woman might be a body double substituting Jennifer Aniston, but she shouldn’t have been visible in the scene. She was forgotten in probably because of the inattention of the cameraman, editor or the director. Because of the fast work it often occurs that viewers see something in a series that we shouldn’t -- for example, we can see the reflection of the cameraman or a hanging microphone on the cinema screen.
And not so long ago, an actor forgot to take his modern wristwatch off in a movie set in the distant past. But not noticing a person who shouldn’t appear in the finished material is quite awkward and could win the first prize of the mentioned bloopers.
This blooper raises the disappointing facts that when in our beloved series a character is talking to someone outside the screen who knows who they are really talking to; maybe not to one of our favorites but to a body double or a random crew member who just substitutes. However, these things don’t spoil the quality of the outcome, they just make us smile.
