After nearly two decades, a long-forgotten episode of “Friends” is finally seeing the light of day, just in time for Thanksgiving, appropriately enough.

Both seasons of the “Friends” spinoff series “Joey,” centered on Matt LeBlanc’s Joey Tribbiani, were officially available to stream on YouTube this week for the first time. The release includes the season. The last eight episodes of 2, which NBC never aired after the show was officially canceled in 2006.

“Joey” was created by Shana Goldberg-Meehan and Scott Silveri, who worked on the original series “Friends” over the course of that show’s record-breaking 10 seasons.

The show followed Joey Tribbiani after he moved from New York to Los Angeles to focus on his acting career, and also starred “The Sopranos” actress Drea de Matteo as Joey’s sister Gina and Jennifer Coolidge as Hollywood agent Bobbie Morganstern.

The NBC cast
The cast of NBC’s “Joey,” which aired from 2004 to 2006, included Jennifer Coolidge, Miguel A. Nuñez Jr., Paulo Costanzo, Andrea Anders, Matt LeBlanc and Drea de Matteo.

NBC via Getty Images

Critical reception of “Joey” at the time of its release was mixed. “Let’s be honest: ‘Joey’ is no ‘Friends,'” Newsweek wrote, before praising LeBlanc’s “adorably dense” portrayal of the title character. Meanwhile, Variety called it a “polished and enjoyable half hour.”

Although “Joey” premiered to respectable ratings in 2004, it failed to capture the zeitgeist like its predecessor and was canceled in the middle of its second season, with its final eight episodes not aired in the US.

The first two episodes of “Joey” were uploaded to the official “Friends” YouTube page in March, and the remaining 46 finally appeared online on Wednesday.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2014, LeBlanc recalled how the failure of “Joey” led him to take a long break from Hollywood. After the show’s cancellation in 2006, he did not return to television until 2011, when he played a fictional version of himself on the Showtime series “Episodes.”

“I did ‘Joey’ for two years and it didn’t have the same success as ‘Friends’. The pressure was incredible,” he explained. “There was just no way, it couldn’t work like ‘Friends’ did. So when it ended, I said, ‘I’m going to take at least a year and do nothing,’ and that turned into six years. I was enjoying it… I didn’t really think about work at all.”