Last week marked the 10 year anniversary since The Last One, the Friends series finale. So with that, I attempt to do the unthinkable. Of the 238 episodes, I narrow it down to my Top 10. There will obviously be some great episodes that I leave off this list because with a show like Friends, it’s near impossible to pick just ten. I guess I should give a spoiler alert, but it’s been 10 – 20 years since these episodes aired, so if you haven’t seen them by now, it’s your own fault. Anyway, here we go:
Honorable Mentions: The One With The Nap Partners, The One With The Prom Video, The One With Joey’s New Brain (simply because of Ross playing the bagpipes, which is among the best scenes of the whole series. When the cast can’t even contain their laughter on screen, you know it’s hilarious), The One Where Joey Loses His Insurance, The One Where Ross Finds Out, The One The Morning After, The One Where Chandler Doesn’t Like Dogs (where we learned there are 56 states), The One With All The Cheesecakes, The One With The Jellyfish, The One With Chandler In a Box, The One With The Holiday Armadillo, The One With The Tea Leaves (simply because it offers my favorite line of the entire series), The One Where Eddie Won’t Go, The Last One, The One With The Other 214 Episodes
Even though this episode introduced the disastrous idea of putting Joey and Rachel in a romantic relationship (Joey is jealous of Chandler and Monica's relationship, and in order to find something similar, he hits on Rachel, to which Rachel quickly dismisses), it is still one of the funnier episodes of the series. Ross goes looking for a couch, but when he finally picks out the right couch for him, he refuses to pay the delivery fee due to its price and the fact that he lives three blocks away. He and Rachel carry the couch to Ross's apartment building, but have a difficult time getting the couch up the stairs. Rachel gets Chandler to come help (PIVOT!), but they still can't get the couch upstairs. Ultimately, the couch is destroyed and Ross turns it back in for "store credit in the amount of $4." The namesake of the episode comes from Phoebe finding a NYPD badge and impersonating a cop, until ultimately, the cop finds Phoebe. Instead of arresting her, however, they begin to date. Still, this episode is all about Ross and his couch. If you carry a couch anywhere and you don't yell PIVOT! at least once, you failed.
9. The One With The Football – Season 3, Episode 9
The Thanksgiving episodes are typically some of my favorites throughout the series (as you'll see as you continue down the list), and The One With The Football fits that mold. The episode shows the group wanting to play a "friendly" football game; however, the Geller siblings (Ross and Monica) have been banned from playing football together since the ill-fated Geller Cup where Monica broke Ross's nose and sent him to the hospital. However, the Geller's decide to go against mother's orders and play anyway for one last chance at the infamous Geller Cup. Monica picked Joey and Phoebe for her team, while Ross picked Chandler and Rachel. The game that ensues is has Monica's team up big at halftime (with Monica gloating the whole time). But when Rachel and Joey trade places at the half for a Boys v. Girls match-up, Ross's team quickly makes a comeback. Monica's team has the ball with a chance to win when Monica throws a deep pass for Rachel, who to that point had been essentially useless. She makes the catch and seemingly scores, even though Ross argues that she never crossed the line. Ross and Monica both jump on the ball and fight back and forth for whose possession it is the rest of the night. The actual game, plus the in-game battle between Chandler and Joey to win the heart of the Dutch girl, Margha, who's at the game provide some great moments and an overall very good episode.
8. The One With The Blackout – Season 1, Episode 7
I remember the first time I watched the series all the way through, this was the very first episode that literally made me laugh out loud consistently. I found funny moments in the first six episodes, but this was the first one that really cemented my love for the show. The episode takes place during a blackout (shocking) in New York City. Ross, Rachel, Joey, Monica, and Phoebe wait out the blackout in Monica and Rachel's apartment, while Chandler finds himself locked in an ATM vestibule with a Victoria's Secret model (Friends Life Lesson: when a Victoria's Secret model offers you a piece of gum, just take it). This is one of the first episodes where Ross begins to reveal the feelings he's had for Rachel all these years, even though Joey is convinced that Ross is "mayor of the zone." Even though the episode doesn't allow Ross to actually ask Rachel out, it does provide some of the groundwork towards what becomes the central relationship of the series.
7. The One With All The Poker – Season 1, Episode 18
It's no joincidence that this episode makes my top ten. I was a huge fan of the Ross-Rachel relationship throughout the show (even though the "We were on a break" narrative got really old, really quickly...), and this is one of the first episodes where Ross shows how much he truly cares for Rachel. Rachel enters the episode fed up with her job at Central Perk. She clearly does not want to be a waitress, and she ambitiously sends out her résumé looking for another job. When she finds out the job search isn't going exactly as planned, she turns to the poker game between the six friends. The guys (Ross, Chandler, and Joey) regularly play poker together, but never invited the girls because they didn't know how (in Chandler's words, "Phoebe just threw away two Jacks because they didn't look happy"). Ross, desperately trying to prove he doesn't still have feelings for Rachel, goes very hard on Rachel during the first game. The girls enlist Monica's Aunt Iris to teach them to play, which leads the girls to challenge the boys to another game, this time quite prepared. The game's final hand pits a fed-up Rachel, who's angry at the job search and Ross for how he treated her during the last game, against a reluctant Ross. Rachel keeps bidding higher and higher, determined to finally win something. Ross reluctantly keeps calling her bets, and despite his want to fold (Rachel won't let him), he takes it to the end of the hand. Rachel reveals her hand of a full house, while Ross, knowing just how much the hand means to Rachel, tells her that she has him beat, even though it's suggested that Ross should have actually won the hand. The episode is another building block towards Ross and Rachel's relationship as we really are starting to see just how much Ross cares for her. Plus, the first poker scene where the girls are learning, and the guys' reactions to how the girls play, is hilarious.
6. The One Where Everyone Finds Out – Season 5, Episode 14
Consistently ranked one of the greatest episodes (this and The Last One: Part 2 are tied for IMDb’s #1 based on user rankings, scoring a 9.5/10) of the series, this episode finds the secret of Chandler and Monica’s relationship starting to be discovered. Joey had been the only person to know (he found out in The One With The Kips), but when Rachel overhears a phone conversation between Chandler and Monica (in The One With All The Resolutions), she quickly realizes that the two have been secretly seeing each other. As the episode begins, Ugly Naked Guy is finally moving from his apartment across the street from Monica and Rachel, and Ross has determined he wants to get the apartment. During the initial visit to the apartment, Rachel and Phoebe go with Ross. With Ross out of the room, Phoebe looks over to Monica and Rachel’s apartment where she sees Chandler and Monica together. Phoebe, freaking out at what she just saw, needs to be calmed down by Rachel because Ross still hasn’t found out that his sister and best friend have been secretly dating. The rest of the episode follows the story of Rachel and Phoebe trying to get Chandler and Monica to admit their relationship, with Joey helplessly stuck in the middle. Because they don’t know that we know they know we know they know, Phoebe and Chandler begin a hilarious flirtatious encounter to see which will flinch first. Finally, Chandler gives in and admits that not only is he seeing Monica, but he’s in love with her.
5. The One With The Baby On The Bus – Season 2, Episode 6
When Ross is forced to go to the hospital due to an allergic reaction, Joey and Chandler volunteer to take care of Ross's son, Ben. When an attractive girl comes up to Joey and Chandler, they believe they can use Ben as a ploy to pick up women. The two of them, with Ben, ride the bus with two other attractive women. However, when they get off the bus, they realize that neither of them actually have Ben with them. Now, having to track down Ben before Ross gets out of the hospital, they race down to Human Services to find two babies there: one with ducks on his outfit, the other with clowns. Unable to remember which baby is actually Ben, they decide to flip for it, which is another classic Joey-Chandler moment.
4. The One With The Rumor – Season 8, Episode 9
The margin between 2, 3, and 4 on this list is so small, that they could all change order on any given day. By far, the hardest part was trying to put these three episodes in some sort of order. The One With The Rumor comes in at #4 today. This episode is another Thanksgiving episode, and guest stars Brad Pitt as Will Colbert, one of Ross's good friends from high school. Formerly overweight, but now, you know, looking like Brad Pitt, Will has spent his whole life despising Rachel since high school (which is even funnier when you realize that at the time of the episode Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, who plays Rachel, were married) because of how terrible Rachel was to him in high school. The dynamic Pitt brings to the group is hilarious, and couple that with the fact that Joey has to eat an entire turkey (Another Friends Life Lesson: Jeans have no give! Wear these pants instead to Thanksgiving dinner), and you have another fantastic Friends episode.
3. The One With The Embryos – Season 4, Episode 12
Even though the episode, as the name may suggest is supposed to center around the fact that Phoebe is about to hopefully be impregnated in vitroly (is that how you say that?) with her brother's babies, the main reason this episode makes the list is the trivia battle which features Chandler and Joey against Rachel and Monica. Convinced that each knows more about the other, and with Ross as the game show host for the battle, the game provides more than a few laughs as find out even more about the background of those four friends. When the game is tied after all the questions are asked, Ross declares that a lightning round will determine the winner. Due to their utter disdain for Joey and Chandler's now grown-up chick and duck, they decide to make the game even more interesting. If the girls win, the guys get rid of the chick and duck. But if the guys win, the girls must trade apartments with the guys. The ensuing lighting round is one of the best scenes of the show, and clearly makes the case for this episode as one of the best of the entire series.
2. The One Where Ross Got High – Season 6, Episode 9
Yet another Thanksgiving episode makes the list. The sixth Thanksgiving of the friends also includes Jack and Judy Geller, Monica and Ross's parents. Monica, however, has not told her parents that she and Chandler have been dating, nor the fact that they currently live together. When Chandler asks why, it's revealed that the Geller's do not like him because when Ross was caught smoking pot in college, he blamed it on Chandler (thus, the name of the episode). Jack and Judy, thinking that Chandler was always a terrible influence on their golden child, never liked Chandler, and Monica knew they wouldn't approve of him dating their daughter. That story line, along with the story line of Ross and Joey being invited to spend Thanksgiving with supermodels and Rachel being tasked with making dessert, are all incredibly entertaining. Rachel's disaster of a trifle is attempted to be covered up by Ross, but only Joey actually likes it, because what's not to like? Eventually, the Geller's find out that Chandler and Monica are living together after Monica forces Ross to confess it wasn't Chandler who smoked the pot. This episode is non-stop laughs from beginning to end, and is an easy choice for one of the top ten list for any Friends fan.
1. The One Where No One’s Ready – Season 3, Episode 2
The choice for #1 on this list was the easiest for me. This episode, shot in real time, has always been my favorite. It covers the half hour before the group needs to leave to go to one of Ross’s events and showcased the potential hysterical nature of putting all six friends all in the apartment together and watching what happens. Rachel and Ross in a mini-fight because Rachel can’t decide what to wear and Ross is beginning to grow impatient. Monica being breezy. Phoebe being political. But my favorite interactions throughout the episode are between Joey and Chandler and their fight over the chair. Throw in another one of my favorite lines from the series (“Hi, welcome to an adult conversation”), and you have the makings of an incredible episode. The episode was the first episode of the series that featured only the six friends and the apartment as the lone set, and it shows each character at their best. Each character takes one trait that defines that character, and expands upon it throughout the episode. It's so simple, yet so effective, especially when mixed together. The six friends together are what made the series great, and their wonderful interactions with one other throughout this episode makes The One Where No One’s Ready #1 in my book.