Wednesday evening's episode of 7de Laan on SABC2 contains a scene between characters Vanessa and Xander which shocking close echoes the 8th season episode of Friends entitled "The One Where Chandler Takes a Bath".
The 7de Laan scene duplicates what Friends did down to the actual words used, and even the set-up and how the scene plays out.
Wednesday evening's episode of 7de Laan at the beginning credits Maritha Broschk with "draaiboek" (script), and in the end-credits Linda Scheepers as head writer.
At this point however it's not clear which writer or writers are responsible for the eye-popping 7de Laan scene, but whoever wrote it definitely watched Friends and took from it without any credit being given to the creative and intellectual original source.
Watching the clip from Friends and then watching the scene from 7de Laan, its shockingly clear how blatant and shameless the plagiarism is as the Danie Odendaal Productions episode lifted from the Friends script without any credit to the American sitcom which came before it.
In Friends Ross and Rachel sits and suggest baby names and come up with the possible names of Sandrine and Rain.
In 7de Laan Vanessa and Xander sits and suggest baby names and in turn come up with exactly the possible names of Sandrine and Rain in a similar scene discussing baby names.
In Friends Phoebe is the third party who suggest each of them suggest five names and that everybody then gets the chance to veto possible suggestions.
"How about you each get five veto's?" suggests Phoebe.
Cue to 7de Laan and the exact same thing happens in 7de Laan's episode on Wednesday, exactly in the same way.
"Each make a list of your five favourite names. The one can veto three names on the other's list," suggests Bernard.
Here is the original scene from Friends:
Here is Wednesday evening's scene on SABC2 from 7de Laan:
Danie Odendaal Productions is so far silent and haven't yet responded with any answers to a media enquiry made on Thursday as to why Wednesday's episode of 7de Laan contains the massive similarities - down to even the exact two baby names - as Friends.
Why did Danie Odendaal Productions and 7de Laan include portions of dialogue and script which was originally in Friends and took the words and situation without any credit?
TV SABC2 and the broadcaster SABC have also not responded to media enquiries seeking clarification on the issue from the perspective as a TV channel and as a broadcaster which appears to allows what looks to be content and creative theft on their public broadcasting air.
