Joey Turns 20: Why Isn’t the Friends Spinoff Streaming Anywhere?

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By Dave Nemetz

September 9, 2024 6:00 am

Twenty years ago, one of the greatest sitcoms of all time went off the air… but one of its characters lived on.

Yes, NBC’s infamous Friends spinoff Joey, with Matt LeBlanc reprising his role as Joey Tribbiani, premiered two decades ago today, on Sept. 9, 2004 — just four months after Friends ended its 10-season run. But it wasn’t nearly the success that its predecessor was, with the cancellation axe falling after just two seasons. And while Friends is still incredibly popular to this day with streaming audiences, Joey is nowhere to be found on streaming. Now why is that, we wondered?

TVLine reached out to production company Warner Bros. Television to get the latest update on Joey’s streaming status. A source there confirmed that they still hold the streaming rights to Joey, and the show is available to license — but it has not been “cleared,” or sold to any streaming service as of yet. That includes Max, which also falls under parent company Warner Bros. Discovery and currently streams all 10 seasons of Friends on an exclusive basis.

It’s somewhat understandable, though, that no one has forked over the cash to stream Joey yet, since it was one of the most infamous flops in recent TV history. In it, LeBlanc’s Joey moved from New York to L.A. to pursue his acting career in Hollywood, reuniting with his older sister Gina, played by The Sopranos alum Drea de Matteo, and moving in with Gina’s genius son Michael (future Royal Pains star Paolo Costanzo), who is literally a rocket scientist. Plus, Andrea Anders played landlord/love interest Alex, Miguel A. Núñez Jr. joined the cast in Season 2 as Joey’s actor pal Zach and a pre-White Lotus Jennifer Coolidge co-starred as Joey’s talent agent Bobby.

Joey got off to a great start in the ratings, with 18.6 million viewers (!) tuning in to the series premiere, which aired in Friends’ usual Thursdays-at-8 time slot. NBC happily renewed it for a second season, but ratings began to dwindle, and a Season 2 move to Tuesdays opposite juggernaut American Idol was basically a death sentence. The show went on hiatus and was officially cancelled in May 2006, with eight produced episodes never even airing in the United States. (They did air overseas, though.)

So why did Joey fail when Friends was so popular? Well, for one thing, his Friends never came by to help: None of the other five Friends stars made a guest appearance on Joey, with only Robert Costanzo reprising his role as Joey’s father, though David Schwimmer did direct a pair of Season 1 episodes. Plus, the character of Joey Tribbiani wasn’t the same as he was on Friends, according to executive producer Kevin S. Bright, who blamed NBC executives for turning Joey from a womanizer into a loser: “He became a pathetic, mopey character. I felt he was moving in the wrong direction, but I was not heard.”

Even if we wanted to see Joey for ourselves, we couldn’t: It’s not available on any streaming service, not even for rent or purchase. It was released on DVD years ago, but those sets are long out of print, although you can still find them used on Amazon or eBay. However, we think the time has come for Joey to finally get his day in the sun. It’s been 20 years, and we’ve watched every Friends episode 10 times by now. (Plus, who doesn’t want to see Coolidge as Joey’s agent?) It’s time for some heroic streamer to step up, take a long look at Joey’s streaming rights and say: “How you doin’?”