Well, it had to happen, didn't it? Brad Pitt had to eventually make an appearance on the NBC sitcom "Friends" — and he does tonight at 7 on Ch. 5.
Pitt, of course, is married to Jennifer Aniston, who stars as Rachel. And he's not the first actor to show up on "Friends" because of that sort of connection. You may recall that Tate Donovan made a series of guest appearances as Rachel's boyfriend when he and Aniston were a couple.
Pitt does not, however, play a character who's interested in Rachel, at least not in a positive way. He hates her, as a matter of fact.
When they were teenagers, he was the fattest guy in school — even fatter than Monica (Courteney Cox Arquette). And popular girl Rachel, apparently, made his life miserable.
Monica invites him for Thanksgiving dinner, and he's less happy when he learns that Rachel doesn't even remember him.
Like all good "Friends" episodes, there's more going on than just the one storyline. Thursday night's episode also features Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) coming up with a clever way to avoid helping prepare dinner, and Joey (Matt LeBlanc) sets out to eat an 18-pound turkey pretty much by himself.
It's a great little episode to sit down and watch while you're digesting your own turkey dinner.
There are only a couple of things about it that don't work, the biggest being NBC's enormously stupid ad campaign that refers to "the biggest surprise ever" and shows a scene from the show with Pitt's face covered.
Um, that only works when you really have a surprise up your sleeve. When you don't tell everyone who that surprise guest is and release photos of Pitt on "Friends" to the print media and clips of his appearance to the broadcast media.
The only other thing that doesn't quite work is the hooting and hollering from the audience when Pitt makes his first appearance — hooting and hollering which, we're assured, was greatly toned down from what actually happened in the studio that day from fans who actually were surprised to see him.
(The biggest surprise may be that, contrary to widespread reports, Pitt does not wear a fat suit.)
The fact is that this episode of "Friends" would be funny even if Pitt didn't have anything to do with it — and that's what makes it work.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com