Lord at First Sight (The Montevor Royals Saga #8)

Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ANTOINE

L aura and I are freshly showered, fed, and parked on the sofa in front of the television. Laura looks giddy, curled up like she’s settling in for a movie marathon.

Sorry, but the deal was one episode and one episode only! No binge watching.

I’ve taken the other end of the couch, careful to keep a respectable buffer zone between us. Alain, the cameraman, and two other crew members hover nearby. One of them adjusts the boom mic, making sure they don’t miss a single word spoken between us.

Laura flips through the channels until she finds what she was looking for. “Here!”

It’s the opening credits of Friends. The clip features six young people goofing around by a fountain and then in the fountain. Accompanied by the theme song “I’ll Be There for You,” this video is so iconic that even someone as uninterested in pop culture as I am has seen it before.

“I knew I’d catch a rerun somewhere!” Laura exclaims in triumph. “Prepare to have fun.”

“Will you remind me what the show is about?”

“Are you truly a Friends virgin?” she inquires with incredulity.

“As untouched as they come. Well, except for the opening credits, which are simply unavoidable in the modern world.”

She beams. “OK. This series is about six twenty-somethings navigating the ups and downs of love, work, and life in New York. It originally aired in the nineties.”

“Got it.”

We begin to watch the episode titled, “The One Where Joey Loses His Insurance.” A cinematic masterpiece it is not, but if I’m being honest, it’s better than I expected. And, since this is a French channel, the whole thing is dubbed in French.

On screen, the scene cuts to a college classroom. Ross Geller is standing at the front of a class, lecturing. His tone is stiff, his delivery even worse.

“Ross is a paleontologist and a total nerd,” Laura explains. “He just got his first guest lecturer gig, and he’s nervous, so he puts on a fake British accent to impress his students.”

As Ross talks, the French voice actor delivers what sounds like a textbook reading of Ross’s affected speech.

“I’ve seen this episode twice before,” Laura comments, “and I still don’t get why this part is funny.” She points at the screen. “This laugh track? It’s probably the only time on this show where it’s insincere.”

“Are you saying I was right about the fake laughter in sitcoms?”

“No, I’m saying that as far as this show is concerned, this is probably the only time where it may be the case.” She lets out a dramatic sigh. “Just my luck.”

“It’s not fake,” I say, surprising myself by coming to the show’s defense. “I believe most of the humor got lost in translation.”

“How do you mean?”

“The dubbing ruins it,” I postulate. “In English, Ross speaks with an American accent, right?”

“Right.”

“When he tries to fake a posh, upper-class British accent, it sounds absurd because the contrast is obvious.”

Her eyebrows lift in realization. “I see…”

“French doesn’t have a stark difference between standard and upper-class speech,” I argue. “It’s more subtle. That’s why Ross’s fake accent falls flat when dubbed in French.”

“I wonder what posh British English sound like?”

“Wonder no more—it sounds like me,” I blurt out in English without thinking. “Thank God we speak French to each other!”

She stares at me, then bursts out laughing. “ You speak posh British English?”

I regret my rash comment deeply, but what’s done is done. There’s no taking it back now. All I can do now is distract her from the topic.

With a dismissive wave, I pick up the remote. “Would you like me to check if we can watch this episode in English? That way, you can decide if this part is genuinely funny.”

“Yes, please! I’d love to hear Ross’s fake British accent!”

I grab the remote and fumble with the menu, scrolling through language options.

“Voilà,” I announce after a few seconds. “Original audio.”

The French voices vanish, and suddenly Ross is speaking to his students in an unnaturally deliberate and totally fake British drawl.

Laura leans forward, her eyes glued to the screen. “Oh my God, that’s awful. And funny!”

“You’re welcome.”

We watch Ross struggle through his lecture, his face twitching nervously as he tries to maintain the accent, which becomes spotty, until he drops it entirely and comes clean.

Laura chuckles. “Finally, this episode makes sense!”

On-screen, Rachel storms into the classroom, her voice sharp with anger, “Ross! Ross! You didn’t get the annulment?!”

His already crumbling composure shatters.

“Oh, bloody hell,” he sputters, his fake British accent snapping back into place.

Laura cracks up. I laugh, too, hard. We howl, uncontrolled and loud enough that the sound technician has to readjust the mic.

Laura wipes at the corner of her eye. “That was perfect.”

“I agree.”

“Aren’t you glad you gave it a chance?”

“Maybe,” I admit.

The truth is, I’m bewildered. I’d expected to endure this challenge like a root canal, but it turned out to be fun. It occurs to me that almost every waking hour since we arrived in Sardinia has surprised me this way by being more fun than anticipated.

Weird, that.