Dr. Dolly Alderton

The thing is, back to your earlier point about sort of did therapy change TV writing, which I think it probably did.

And I think there actually is a Dr. Dolly Alderton in that, in the effect of therapy on popular culture.

That is quite a knowing episode, isn't it?

Because it's just like...

yes, the character is a therapist talking about like, oh, I think at one point one of his analyses is like, maybe you always, Ross, maybe you always knew Carol was a lesbian and maybe you were trying to protect your younger sibling from critique by sort of

Failing yourself Kind of thing It's all quite Very advanced Quite spurious stuff But obviously It's the kind of thing That groups of friends Initially really want to hear And then really don't Want to hear anymore It does feel like Oh this is Is this Them showing us The writer's room

And then you come home knackered and you talk to your spouse and you're like, really tough day there.

We were really talking about like, you know, whether or not Rachel's ever been fingered by another guy before.

And we thought maybe, yeah, she had.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think that is a far more honest way to approach a piece of work rather than themes of war.

I know we love themes, obviously, but the idea that you could sort of boil down a piece of art into three or four key words that you could then extrapolate because of whether or not they use this word or the other feels to me like an artistically shallower experience than...

Really, like, this is going to sound like I'm showing off, but the something me and Gav have been doing a lot in the last year is like one Saturday a month going to an art gallery and just picking a few paintings and just talking about them for a really long time.

And like the way I've been sort of rebranding paintings to myself has been it's just movies you can talk through.

Do you know what I mean?

And like, we've just been like, it's been so lovely just like standing in front, like learning a lot more about artists, like visual artists and standing in front of a painting and like for 25 minutes being like, what is going on here?

And like, what does every single person in this painting, what do they arrive to the painting with?

And because like the thing, I think what's like,

Like that art form has finally clicked for me in the last year because I've realised that every single like millimetre on a painting was a decision.

And therefore the artist has thought about it for years of every single fleck of paint.