Friends Episode In New Kate Winslet Show Oddly Parallels 1 Viral Moment From Netflix’s Hit 2023 Thriller

WARNING! This article contains spoilers for The Regime episode 2!

Summary

• The Regime features Kate Winslet’s character watching Friends, all the while her political power is slipping and being manipulated.
• The parallel between Friends scenes in The Regime and Leave The World Behind showcases characters escaping their troubled reality.
• Both shows explore the distraction and comfort found in watching Friends during chaotic times, reflecting on the sitcom’s enduring legacy.

Kate Winslet’s character Elena Vernham watches a classic episode of Friends in The Regime episode 2, which has a curious parallel to a hit Netflix thriller from 2023. In her third miniseries for HBO, Kate Winslet leads the cast of The Regime as the eccentric Chancellor Elena, the leader of an unnamed small country in Central Europe. While her character attempts to gain more power and control over her country, The Regime’s political satire includes various unconventional storylines, moments, and traits for Elena that subtly reveal more about her complex nature.

In the midst of political diplomacy and strategy related to a potential deal with the United States, The Regime episode 2 curiously spends a chunk of time dedicated to Elena and her husband, Nicholas, watching an episode of the sitcom Friends. Elena watches Friends’ season 2 episode “The One with a Chick and a Duck,” and the series plays a clip of Ross doing Rachel’s makeup. Coincidentally, The Regime’s episode premiered only a few months after a hit politically-charged Netflix movie featured a viral moment that included characters watching an episode of Friends.

The Regime & Leave The World Behind Both Feature Characters Watching Friends At Terrible Times

Elena casually watches “The One with a Chick and a Duck” in The Regime episode 2; meanwhile, her political power is being abused and the stability of her palace is crumbling around her in a dystopian-like fashion. This situation is reminiscent of the end of Netflix’s 2023 movie Leave the World Behind, in which the teenage Rose simply wants to watch Friends’ series finale while the entire world’s infrastructure is being destroyed around her. The comeback of Friends on streaming has certainly contributed to a massive revival in its popularity, but the sitcom’s feature in two very different political dramas so close together is still notable.

Other than the fact that Julia Roberts appeared in both projects, Leave the World Behind’s Friends subplot inspired plenty of discussion about how frustrated audiences became at Rose for paying more attention to the show than the world around her. Meanwhile, Kate Winslet’s paranoid Elena is in a comparable situation as she sits inside her palace watching Friends with an entire staff at her call, as much food and supplies as she could possibly need, and the power to change her country’s future with the snap of her fingers. All the while, The Regime’s main character is completely disconnected from her citizens, society, and reality.

New episodes of
The Regime
release Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.
Leave the World Behind
is available to stream on Netflix, and
Friends
is available to watch on Max.

With the sitcom continuing to stay popular with several generations while gaining new audience demographics on streaming, Friends’ inclusion as a show characters watch in other TV shows and movies isn’t surprising. However, it does have a deeper meaning in The Regime and Leave the World Behind, as Friends is watched when characters become distracted from reality and escape to the nostalgia for – as the Netflix thriller states – a “time that never existed.” Both Elena and Rose find comfort in watching the show during times of trouble, escaping to Friends’ predictable “perfect,” or controversial, world while losing control over the one they actually live in.