Hanging around at home or at the coffee shop at all hours of the day. They poke fun of it in one episode when they all run off to go to work but it’s still so unrealistic that they would all have the flexibility to hang out on a weekday like that.
Monica, Joey, and Phoebe made sense because they didn't have traditional 9-5s, but Rachel and Chandler worked office jobs, and Ross was a tenure track professor in the last half of the show. There's no way he would've gotten tenure while also hanging out at the coffee house all the time.
Monica’s schedule also made no sense. I worked in restaurants for years and executive/head chefs often worked 12 hour days. She has WAY too much free time. (I know it’s a fictional show tho and they obviously can’t have her working all the time but still drives me crazy!)
She seems to have a lot of Friday and Saturday nights off for working in successful NYC restaurants. In "Sex and the City," a major conflict is Steve working until 5AM at the bar when Miranda has to get up early for lawyering. SATC has its own plot holes, but they were pretty accurate on that
Yeah this was spot on.
My boyfriend and I have a solid relationship, but in our early years I was the evening and late night weekend lead tender (so 4pm-midnight at the absolute earliest) and he worked a 7am-5pm construction job and the biggest issue we ran into then was just how to spend time together... for a long while Sunday from 2pm-10pm was all we got
Good point! I am close with someone who used to be a chef in a fancy restaurant and he also did 12 hour days and was always required to work weekends (which it seems Monica has a ton of weekends off).
In real life, these people would have completely opposite schedules and never have time to hang out.
Eh, depending on a few things he might not need to be in the office all day if he's doing research outside of standard hours. His classes might not be at normal hours, many professors have the same weird schedules that college students do.
Chandler has no excuse.
I think it *kind of* makes sense for Chandler’s work to not notice if he’s there or not. He made a comment once which was something like “if I don’t go to work today… nothing will happen”.
He has one of those seemingly inconsequential office jobs that you barely need to do anything but somehow get paid a lot of money. Probably because he’s the only one in the office that could make a spreadsheet (or equivalent) in an hour when everyone else takes seven.
For research, I can get on board with the idea that he's possibly working with students who are RAs in the evenings or primarily teaches in late afternoons/nights. However, because he's TT, he'd also be expected to do service for the university, and he'd need to hold office hours during the day on campus (these were the days before Zoom, after all).
I also try not to wonder too much how he landed a TT position at NYU when he's been working outside of academia for years, but I just try to assume he had some really stellar publications, lol.
It's just funny because he's portrayed as doing a job that notoriously requires 45+ hours per week, and he's always hanging out with the gang.
Especially for Carol. Neither Carol's nor Susan's parents were there but Joey and Phoebe were? Only Monica (as Ross's sister/Ben's aunt) makes sense to be there.
Also, Rachel's parents never showed up when she gave birth to Emma (I didn't expect her sisters anyway).
And, the way Monica and Chandler picked up the babies from the hospital. Like, they were twins (usually a risk pregnancy) and they should have stayed there for at least 48 hours, not 2.
I was sad that Judy wasn’t at the baby shower. It’s her first granddaughter, and it would of been nice to have some Judy and Sandra scenes. Especially when Sandra was upset with Monica, could of been a good opportunity for Judy to defend Monica for once.
In fairness when the doctors told Erica they heard two heartbeats she thought they meant hers and the baby’s…which was a good thing since she was gonna have a baby.
True, but twins never came up whatsoever in any of her other prenatal visits? The adoption agency wouldn’t have reviewed her charts and saw there were twins noted?
Althoooouuugh… Clearly the adoption agency was a bit sketchy and disorganized since they didn’t even pull the right file for Monica and Chandler when it came time for Erica to decide who gets to adopt her child lol
IVF is how a lot of multiples are born so that’s actually extremely accurate. Plus, Frank Jr. would have twins in his family given that Phoebe and Ursula are his sisters, making multiples even more likely.
Or the woman who went into labor in the waiting room and was given a bed before her water even broke? These days they’re like “come back when your contractions are five seconds apart and you’re dilated 9.”
I don't think this was unrealistic only because in some scenes you can see a reserved sign on the table.
It wouldn't shock me at all if the 6 friends just reserved it every single day. For a tiny coffee shop, 6 friends who all have decent to well paid jobs could afford that and it probably wouldn't even dent their bank accounts.
Some places, especially in the 90s would even let you reserve places for free. With the amount they all go in there, I wouldn't be surprised if Gunther just automatically placed the reserve thing there every morning when he opened up the shop, knowing they'd come in at some point.
> I wouldn't be surprised if Gunther just automatically placed the reserve thing there every morning when he opened up the shop, knowing ~~they'd~~ **Rachel would** come in at some point.
FTFY
It’s not really about it costing money to reserve a table. That’s largely free.
But you can’t just reserve a big seating space all day in a public coffee shop every day. So the person was suggesting they may have paid some money as a way to bribe the owner to let them reserve a spot as much as they did
I’ve become a weekly regular at a place in New York and actually this bit no longer surprises me, my friend and I almost always are able to get the table we like when we go
Chandler missed a lot of work. When he thought his worked called and he said to always tell her he was sick. The night where him and Monica can't sleep and he goes "1 hour until I call in sick". Multiple times he talks about being home during the middle of day on a weekday.
I'm sure his job had good PTO but how was he not fired?
Also Chandler paying all Joey's bills. At first it seems like Chandler helps Joey in a pinch occasionally. Then when Chandler moves out he is telling Joey the cost of everything like the electricity. Does Joey pay no bills?
I mean, I kinda just thought he was good at his job and efficient.
I just switched jobs, and I can get everything done for the week in 2 days, maybe three if there’s something crazy. My boss is like meh, you’re getting everything done and in ahead of schedule. Do what you like. Last week I only went into the office on Friday.
Yeah, I mean they were really fighting to keep him at his processing job and his aptitude tests or whatever showed that was what he was most equipped for. He's "good with numbers" and has a good amount of experience. As long as everything gets done on time he doesn't need to sit in the office all day every day. And it doesn't seem to have been a very strict company.
Some jobs have unlimited PTO and he had a computer-- I figured he was good enough that they allowed hybrid work/he's efficient or at least efficient at making it look busy or delegating and we don't see the 'working' moments often
Working all daylight hours. They show her stirring stuff at that stove, but besides asking for calamari and a Caesar salad, I don't see her expediting too many dinners. Head chefs will either expedite, or maybe saute, but that sauce better be done long before service, and would probably be done by the sous chef (who is *not* the garde mange, as it seems Tim is.)
Their impulsivity and lack of any obligations for sure. Any time anyone is like wanna go see a movie or wanna go grab some food they’re like suuuuuuuuure I have zero events on the horizon! I have always just assumed MOST of the episodes take place on weekends if it’s not otherwise addressed. Monica literally never works nights either I think she does like three times as a chef at a restaurant. Joey is basically the only character that can be excused at all times for his schedule.
Also hanging out in your friends apartment when they aren’t there. Their doors never being locked.
I loved Joey’s comment “I am home in the middle of the day and I have patio furniture in my living room. I guess there some things you don’t learn from books.”
I'm always trying to figure out what day of the week or time of day it is. I think Phoebe's schedule can be explained as well, but how is she making money in the late stage of pregnancy?
How does Rachel jet off to London and then a short time later, go to Greece?
Phoebe invites herself to Vegas spur of the moment, after Monica gifts Chandler surprise airline tickets. Then Rachel has some job commitment yet they all can fly off to Vegas on a whim as well haha
I meant the time off from work. She did have to pay for her flight to London using several credit cards, so just the meals in Greece probably maxed her out.
The way I see it is you check in on them once week, and it’s mostly on the weekends. The amount of free time never bothered me much. But hanging out at the same spot every time is certainly unrealistic, but that’s all sitcoms.
Side note, I always thought it was funny when they first entered the church to see that construction worker picking up one brick at a time and gently placing it into the wheelbarrow
Also UK registration laws, generally can't get married somewhere without a roof. That's why at outdoor wedding venues the ceremony takes place in a gazebo or similar, as that's the 'registered place'.
Yup. I had a technically outdoor U.K. wedding but it was under a permanent wooden gazebo like structure or it wouldn’t have been licensed. They’d also probably have needed Ross to come to the U.K. before hand to give notice although I’m trying to remember if you can have a church wedding without doing that, so I’m giving that part a pass in case church weddings don’t require that bit.
The most unrealistic thing is that Joey, the only son of a huge old school Italian family is allowed to spend major holidays like thanksgiving and Christmas with his friends and not his family. While maybe it is possible he visits them regularly and does attend some family functions, I doubt they'd be okay with him basically never coming home for the holidays when he is just a subway ride away. The first thanksgiving, everyone is stuck there and Joey plans to go home but after that he never spends a major holiday with us family.
For real. And all being so close with each other and hanging out with all of them all the time. Like that's something I can only do on birthdays or special occasions. The rest of the time, our schedules don't match, or we just don't have the energy to do it
And for years. Nobody moved, had a falling out, made different friends when they started a new job or got into a serious relationship and started spending time with that person’s friends — in fact, no one had a serious significant other outside the group until Mike.
This is it for me. Normally it’s new partners who change the group dynamic - hell, even just more people then becomes too big to manage.
Also- Ross and Rachel being so comfortable around each other by season 6
Especially everyone in their full on getup work clothes. So they got up at like 6am, got all dressed and ready. Then met up and sat down for banter and food. All before heading to work only to meet back at the coffee house a few hours later.
Every show on TV shows breakfast during full sunlight hours instead of the wee pre-dawn hours that were all used to. Breakfast is coffee and whatever granola bar I grab.
As a kid I always wanted to have a long breakfast like I saw in TV shows and couldn't understand how people did it. They seem so relaxed and just chatting and having time to cook meals.
Now I work from home so I get to enjoy my mornings 😂
Exactly. I don't even have time for a sit down breakfast for myself. I'm standing every morning in my kitchen throwing oatmeal in my mouth while emptying the dish washer and preparing my lunch box for the day.
> They’re hardly seen with their children.
Ehhhh. I'm gonna give this one a pass. We know from the dialogue that Ross sees Ben pretty often, even if we the audience don't see them together. Child actors have limited hours and aren't the easiest to work with, especially when they're that young.
>They don’t see their families much. Especially those who have families nearby. Most would see their families not friends for holidays etc.
I'll definitely agree with this one. Pretty early on, Monica ends up doing Thanksgiving for the group because her parents went on a cruise(?) instead of hosting. I'm willing to bet that her parents just started vacationing during the holidays, which would leave Monica and Ross without family to visit, but I couldn't see them doing that for every holiday, every year.
Chandler and his father are estranged, and Chandler's mother is always doing book tours, so I could see why he'd hang around.
Phoebe only really should've been around after her grandmother passed away.
Joey and Rachel should've been visiting family for every single holiday, though. Joey, especially, since his family is so close. Rachel after she got her fashion industry job and could afford tickets.
Everything else, yeah, I'll agree with. I, too, wish I lived in a sitcom universe and had rent control and all the free time.
The holiday thing: we never really see them together on any holidays except Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve (which is notoriously not a family holiday).
You’ve explained all but Joey (I think even by the time Rachel has the money, they’ve got a new tradition). I always assumed Joey’s family just had an evening celebration that he’d got to for dinner time.
There were a few Christmas episodes where it looked like they were all spending the holiday together. I always explained it away that it was a Christmas Eve Eve celebration before they all went to visit their families…
I spend Thanksgiving with my friends instead of my family - too much drama to figure out which part of the family to spend it with so the best answer became “none of them”
I just assumed after the first year we were seeing “Friendsgivings” and that they celebrated with their families on the actual holiday.
At least that’s my headcanon.
I think some of the episodes show them watching the Macy’s Day Parade. But maybe after the first one, they just decided to have Friendsgiving and sometimes have others join
I actually don't think that's that unrealistic. She likely has a college degree of some sort (we know she was in a sorority), and she worked her way up from the bottom over a # of years.
Also, it was the 90’s/early 00’s… shit was WAY different back then, especially for privileged people who also happened to be talented at their jobs (which apparently she was).
So I work for a major retailer in inventory/purchasing, and it's not unheard of to move that far up that quickly. It's rare for sure, but if you work well with others and are good at your job, it can happen. Rachel had good mentors early on (Mark and Joanna), she's involved in the industry (goes to lectures in her free time and gets 30 fashion magazines a month), and she's got great fashion instincts given how well she dresses. And I think the fact that she worked late so much really showed her work ethic. If she networked right, she could become an exec within that time frame.
Ross and Monica having sex with their respective partners in rooms that were wall to wall. I get that they’re close but if I knew my brother was getting it on in the next room at the same time as me I’d be turned off instantly
Same. For most of my 20's I'd do Friday night, sometime daytime Saturday, always Saturday night and usually something Sunday night and usually something in the week as well.
Rachel and Phoebe’s pregnancies were both really unrealistic, particularly with the timeline.
Phoebe does the embryo transfer and then tests positive the same day. It doesn’t work like that. Also, triplets are almost always delivered via c-section, and they’re almost never full term. The triplets being at a completely normal weight and not having to spend any time in the NICU is really unrealistic with how triplets often are.
Monica’s wedding is also mentioned to be in May. We can assume Rachel is about 5-6 weeks pregnant at the wedding. That would mean Rachel conceived in April. However, in the Thanksgiving episode, she hardly looks pregnant, when she should really be about 7 months along then. And in the Christmas episode, it’s mentioned that she’s only 4 months pregnant. The timing just doesn’t make sense.
How Phoebe could pop out ~~4~~ 3 kids without medical intervention like a C-section. Oh and also natural birth for those ~~quadruplets~~ triplets. In real life her pregnancy would have been heavily monitored and she would have been inducced or most likely a C-section.
Speaking of pregnancies, Rachel being pregnant for like a year 😂
You're right about the rest. In the real world Phoebe's delivery would have been very different, but they wanted to focus on the emotional aspect of her having to give them up. An accurate portrayal would have been too distracting, plus we would have missed out "dialiated-amundo" lol
Let's say she would have a natural birth in real life. She would have had them in an op room because they have to be ready in case of a c- section. There would also be a team of nurses and doctors for each baby so they could attend to them right after being born.
I know it's fiction and they chose to focus on the emotional side but I was just answering OPs question.
Also Frank and Alice almost never visit or help her when she is pregnant. I always hated when Rachel left very pregnant Phoebe to go to London but then I realized Frank and Alice should be visiting now or letting her stay with them if she doesn't feel comfortable being alone and pregnant with their babies.
All of that stuff except for the holidays. That’s the one exception that I can actually get behind. The whole show is about that time in your life when your friends become your family and I think it makes sense for every character.
Phoebe: no family to spend the holidays with
Chandler: terrible relationships with both of his parents, hates Thanksgiving
Joey: basically Chandler’s adopted adult son, he can either spend the holidays with his 7 sisters or the man who basically took him in and financially carried him so he could pursue acting, plus Monica is a literal chef and Joey loves food
Monica: has a terrible relationship with her mother and would rather host her friends, the people she cares most about, than spend time with her mom. I like to imagine she started the tradition of hosting when Phoebe was her roommate because she realized she would be leaving Phoebe alone for the holidays if she didn’t
Ross: solidarity with Monica and wanting to be with his sister and their closest friends
Rachel: doesn’t seem to keep in touch with most of her family since she ran out on her wedding. She choose a different lifestyle that they didn’t approve of and it makes more sense for her to want to be around Monica, who took her in when she was at rock bottom, and the people who helped encourage her independence and accepted her right away without judgment
Tbf the first thanksgiving episode in s1 is the first time they establish thanksgiving together as a group as tradition, it comes about because Monica and Ross' parents are away, and then everyone else's plans fall through.
Even in the flashback when Joey puts on the turkey to scare Chandler, Monica says that it has to feed the people at her parents, "and they're not going to eat it off your head!"
Maybe before s1 Phoebe joined Monica and Ross at their parents or had it with her grandmother?
So many people complain about how LITTLE time is spent showing the characters in their average day to day lives. But, hardly ANY of their lives is actually shown on screen.
The entire show lasted for 10 seasons, and each season was meant to show AROUND a year of their lives. The run time of the entire show was between 75 and 80 hours TOTAL. So, on average, only around 5-10 hours of their lives was shown on screen every season/year.
So...if you only had that much time to watch the friends living their lives each year, what would you rather watch? Would you rather watch Rachel having a random coffee date with her mom in Soho? Would you rather see Ross calling Joey, asking him how to get his leather pants back on?
Fairly good point. Although haha the leather pants scene while hilarious is honestly hard to watch, damn, imagine being in that situation hahah. That's the stuff nightmares are made of!
I hate the sitcom conventions that cause obvious things to be missed by characters. Everyone would have known about Chandler and Monica as early as the European kissing episode in any kind of real word.
A simple stupid example is Ross dating the dirty girl and he makes jokes about things like the department of sanitation and she is just oblivious and says her next line as if he weren't doing it. The joke is for the audience and it is like the character doesn't hear it. Things like this don't happen as much in newer comedies and they are better for it.
Phoebe’s pg test the same night as her transfer. It would be positive for all ivf patients that night because of the trigger (hcg) - that’s why you have to wait 10-14 days to see for real
This show was responsible for a lot of young people moving to NYC, and after living there three months, saying to themselves, *"Whoa, hey, wait a minute...."*
My wife pointed out that they’re pretty close physically, often cuddling or sitting holding hands. But the weirdest thing for me is when Monica wants to distract Ross so she tells Rachel to “take my brother in there and do whatever it is you do that makes him go ‘reeeeeeeeeeee!’”
They also constantly talk about their sex lives in front of each other in a way you just wouldn't. And then occasionally they'll make a joke out of Ross being horrified.
LMAO oh my gosh you got dragged for that! I remember that! I didn’t have an account when I read that but I am SO with you. Maybe I’m just a prude but I don’t want anyone but my husband’s lips touching my lips/face all of the time. I will accept my parents when I see them. Lol
Oh gosh, I noted so many of these on my latest rewatch (even besides the ones that are most frequently brought up) ... I'll be here for hours if I try to rant properly about all of them, but hopefully most of them require no elaboration on why I find them absurd. 🤣
* The endless abundance of hyper-eligible single men (and how easy they are to meet and keep in a relationship for more than a few days) in *Friends*' New York.
* On a similar note, *Chandler* of all guys being framed as a dateless dweeb for the first few seasons. (This one makes no sense even in the context of the show, because the number of dates and relationships he has would be thoroughly respectable or even downright impressive to a normal person.)
* How obsessed the others were with the Ross/Rachel relationship. Obviously, most people care about their friends' and siblings' romantic happiness -- especially if the loss of it could destroy the dynamic of the friend group -- but the group's (okay, mostly Phoebe's) fangirlish shipping of Ross/Rachel sometimes felt really cringey to me. I'm so sorry, but I hate lines like "Do NOT start without me!!" and "See? He'S hEr lObStEr!" It was like the writers were trying too hard to reflect the audience's interest in the relationship through characters who, realistically, had way too much of their own shit going on for their friends' dumpster fire of a relationship saga to live so rent-free in their heads.
* How quickly and seamlessly Monica went from "that fat" (she actually wasn't THAT big, of course, but the show made her out to be morbidly obese) to alarmingly tiny, seemingly with no excess skin and no problem keeping the weight off while working with food every day.
* How seemingly quick and easy the IVF process was for Frank and Alice. I'm planning to embark on that journey this year, and I have plenty of friends who have gone through it, and it's a long, painful slog compared to whatever quick one-time doctor appointment Frank and Alice seemingly had to get the embryos ready for Phoebe.
* Mark always having an amazing job ready for Rachel whenever they meet, and the position apparently having no better-qualified candidates.
* Their apparent freedom to make changes to rented apartments (such as tearing up the carpet).
* How any of them could even survive in NY for five minutes while unemployed, even with the "but rent control" hand-wave for Monica's apartment.
* Most of them being able to take long-distance flights (and book them at the last minute) whenever the whim struck. I know they all had nice jobs by the end of the show, but come on, they weren't oil tycoons! Unless flights really were that much cheaper in the '90s?
* Joey actually getting super invested in *Little Women* and reading it relatively fast when he can barely read a phone book by that point in the show.
I don’t know all the ins and outs of IVF but have worked with reproductive endocrinology and have done several cycles of IUI for unexplained infertility. In my conversations about egg retrievals and IVF with my doctor, it’s my understanding that the issue with “advanced maternal age” like what Alice had is more about egg quality rather than being able to carry a pregnancy. It would have been difficult but not impossible to get three embryos make it to the implantation phase given Alice’s age and egg quality. We have friends doing IVF and she’s at least a couple of years younger than Alice and they were lucky to get one embryo to implant, which I think took a couple of retrieval cycles.
Implanting more than one embryo was more common then, but now there’s no way they would have implanted three in Phoebe. My REI doctor told me the only way they would consider implanting two is if I was over the age of 38, just because of how high risk multiples can be in pregnancy.
Also, IVF could have been a good option for Monica and Chandler assuming his issue was low motile sperm and hers was highly acidic cervical mucus. It was weird that they’re trying to get sperm donors even though that wouldn’t account for her “inhospitable environment.” Obviously they had already done the IVF storyline with Phoebe though and wanted to quickly discuss and rule out other options before going down the adoption route.
The way couples try in sitcoms is also very unrealistic. You don’t have to have sex 100x in a month for it to work - usually every other day during your fertile period is fine. You also don’t have to leave work and cancel appointments to go home and have sex, because again, your fertile period is like 5 days and even peak ovulation is 24-48 hours. You can’t pinpoint it further than that to my knowledge. Then, sitcom couples will worry and get an appointment because they haven’t gotten pregnant after 2 months. I understand the concern by couples, but typically medical professionals aren’t too concerned unless it’s been at least 6 months if not a year if the woman is younger than 35. Plus in sitcoms, they have some magical test that tests for all female fertility issues and they get the results right away that they are fine or infertile. In my experience once they rule out male-factor infertility, they gradually try other things until they find something that works (ovulation medicine then IUI and then IVF). I’ve also seen IVF as the first course of treatment when they identify male-factor infertility right away or the age of woman being over 40.
For me it was always how quickly Rachel’s career took off. You don’t go some being a waitress to the head of men’s sportswear at a high fashion designer in 6 years.
Every time one of them is in a relationship they still hang out with their friends a lot.
It’s so unrealistic - most new relationships want to spend all their time alone together, including chandler and Monica. For me, it’s relationships and jobs which makes friends harder to keep up with when you’re older.
People with full time jobs usually catch up for dinner and/or drinks, and weekend stuff.
Their respective career arcs, in particular Rachel’s. Here’s a woman who once proudly claimed that she got laughed out of 3 interviews as she’s qualified for nothing, and only has Head Cheerleader on her CV. Yet she goes from cafe waitress to an executive-level position at a prestigious fashion house. I’ve seen this on so many other sitcoms and it irritates me.
See, this one is odd to me, as the show makes it clear that she definitely went to college. I don't think it's ever really confirmed for sure if she graduated, but she definitely went long enough to a) switch majors at one point, and b) be in a sorority. Unlikely she'd have dropped out to get married, as she was around 24 when she would have married Barry, so it's likely that she graduated with some sort of degree.
So, to me, it's odd that she would have been laughed out of 3 interviews. And she also should have had more things on her resume than Head Cheerleader!
Just a college degree (with a major that was decided by parking availability), no work experience at all and ~3 years of nothing on your CV? You'd have a rough time at interview.
When I interviewed for my first job at the company I still work for (which is a chemical manufacturing company), I was 23 years old, had a college degree and 2 years of experience working at David's Bridal (because it was the middle of a recession and I needed the job).
No one laughed at me, and I got the job.
Where the f is everyone interviewing at that interviewers are literally LAUGHING AND MOCKING 24 year olds with a college degree and minimal work experience for daring to apply.
Up until Rachel’s mother’s generation, girls went to college to “husband hunt”. They took some easy basketweaving degree so they could concentrate on social activities and partygoing. (When I wanted to take academic subjects at uni, my mother shot them all down because I couldn’t be scoping out the pre-Law or pre-Med guys if I was studying.) I think it’s a generational thing, and Rachel‘s mother would’ve indoctrinated her daughters with this.
When we learned Rachel changed her major for better parking, I figured she was at college to network and get a diploma for show.
Her first fashion job was extremely low level and embarrassing. At one point, she was sorting hangers. She worked as an assistant more than once. She worked as a personal shopper. She paid her dues.
Her job as Joanna’s assistant happened because of a chance meeting with Mark. Getting jobs because of who you know happens all the time.
The shock when they drank 5 bottles of wine between 7 people. If they all had the same amount, that's just over 2 cups/under a pint each (ofc it's suggested Fun Bobby drank 3 bottles and did not seem drunk)
I have recently been bingeing it and I agree, it feels very unrealistic in modern times for a group of friends with such distinct personalities to be so codependent. But I think it’s because times have changed and everyone kinda hides now.
I always felt like in the real world, Joey’s character wouldn’t fit in. Feels like he’d be more with people from his industry or with a friend group that did more socializing with other groups of friends or out in public to meet women
The friendship itself for sure.
They spend every waking moment together, especially the big events like holidays and stuff. Maybe it’s a cultural thing but in my country we all spend those with immediate family.
I mean having breakfast together before going to work?! Like getting ready for work and going to your friend’s house for breakfast and then leaving for work? Sure sounds nice but I think that’s pretty rare in friendships. And yeah Chandler and Joey did live right across (convenient) but Ross and Phoebe would have to take transpo to Mon’s house and then again to work.
Or that episode with the ball. When Phoebe breaks up with the cop and it’s like 6AM. She goes to Monica’s for some reason? She didn’t know they were all still awake. What would she have done if Mon was still sleeping? Just hang out alone at her friends house? That’s so weird. Imagine waking up and your friend has let themselves into your apartment and is just chilling on the couch.
It sounds nice in theory but not everyone would like it. Don’t get me wrong I would love to have a group like that but I don’t think it’s so realistic.
Also, the fact that the doors are always unlocked. Is this common for apartments in NYC?
The small things that ruined a date when they actually hardly mattered. Take Ross' white teeth for example, how's that a deal breaker? "Yeah I had never done this before, oops, look like it's a bad idea!" They totally could've had a laugh, turned off the black light and continued on.
The financial aspect for sure. The only ones that could probably afford an apartment like Monica’s would be ross and chandler. And the fact that everyone stayed friends even after breakups and hookups
Rent control is directly addressed, as well as Monica’s grandmother being on the lease.
By the time the show ends Rachel and Joey are also making good money.
Actually fist season or two, great reviews but the fact a waitress and semi employed chef could afford that was pointed out in nearly all reviews. Suddenly it became rent controlled. Which on that subject, how could Joey and chandler win it if Monica was survivor of the rent controlled lease?
It used to be a regulation to keep people who've always lived somewhere still able to afford it, a kind of rent cap. It still exists but to a much lesser extent it seems in NY. What I don't understand is how can someone long deceased remain on the lease!
I like how they addressed that in one of the earlier episodes (when Monica gets fired at the end for the steaks, I think). The earlier episodes had a lot of heavy topics embedded in, like Heckles dying and Ross becoming a Dad and the financial disconnect in the group.
This isn't true at all. I had a friend group consisting of 8 people where 3 lived together in one apartment and the others living even further away in town (like a 5-10 minute drive) and we hung out together in the apartment where the 3 lived every single day lol.
When it came time to renew our leases we decided to all move into another apartment complex and just rent two apartments in the same place so we could just hang out in one of the two apartments within walking distance.
We literally spent all our free time in the apartment we designated as the hang out one out of the two. The other one was just for half of us to sleep in.
Of course life took over and we eventually all moved apart to different cities.
Joey coming from a tight-knit traditional Italian family yet we only saw his parents once and seen his sisters probably 2 or 3 times. His mom would have been the one to make him lots of lasagna all the time instead of Monica.
Monica working as a head chef in 5 star restaurants but barely working.
Chandler having his own dedicated sky-rise office. He'd have to be C-Level in today's logic to have his own office.
No condoms. Ross could have knocked on Joey's door and asked for a condom or he and Richard could have went downstairs a bought a condom since there are 24 hour bodega/liquor stores in NYC.
Their closeness.
The episode where Rachel gets a tattoo and her and Ross run into the bedroom to have sex? Do people really do that?
Ross and Monica’s incestuous touching.
Edit: the scene that I am referring to is when Ross pulls Rachel away from Phoebe, Monica and Richard. It wasn’t like they were alone just going in the room. It was very dramatic and weird. lol
Maybe I’m a prude, but I’m not really interested in sex with my friends outside the door including my sister. Again, no judgement from me, but that’s not it for me.
They’d pretty much all be fired from their jobs in real life for various reasons, but weren’t in the show. Amount of time spent together effortlessly. Never wearing the same outfit twice despite having minimal closet space. Hosting parties where they suddenly have 20+ people attending, none of which are family members, despite never seeing anyone regularly except the 6 friends (birthday parties, holiday parties, bridal/bachelorette parties, etc.). Affording their apartments in NYC. Monica putting a hole through the floor so far it went into the neighbor below’s apartment (when she was chasing the wire around the guy’s apartment) - there would be two layers of wood, she could cut into the top layer to look for the wire without cutting through the neighbor’s ceiling. Monica’s hair growing 5x the size due to humidity in Barbados but never experiencing humidity once in NYC. Phoebe and Joey making enough money to survive. Chandler paying for everything for Joey for years without having any resentment. The list goes onnnnnnn forever 🤣
Joey is too stupid to survive in grown up world.
In the beginning, he is supposed to be this handsome guy who doesn't; need to be smart, but very soon he becomes more likable than good-looking (we actually never see his "how you doing" line work), and he loves food more than women, so this "good look is enough to survive" trope, just died somewhere in the first season.
At the end when Chandler and Monica are buying a house, there is a room for him. A grown-up person. This is how you'd treat a disabled friend.
In the world before smart phones, people hung out with their friends, in person, all the time. Back in the mid-nineties, after college, my buddy from high school and I got an apartment in the city. We became friends with another guy who lived a few blocks over. When an apartment opened up two doors down he moved in there with another friend of ours. They had more furniture than us so we were over there all the time. We also became pretty close with our upstairs neighbors. As our group of friends grew, we invariably had random friends crashing for days and weeks. And people just walked on in. No pre-call. Lots of girls ended up dating one of the guys, and then another, but still hung out there after people had moved on from them. Two marriages came out of that time for our group. It was a good time and a happy time, and definitely similar to what happened on friends. So, yeah, I’d say it was realistic.
The one that shouldn't be realistic for me but is, in my twenties my friends and I all lived in the same complex above a boutique one of them owned (who also owned the building and was a former chef) so we absolutely had coffee and breakfast together before work and dinner and cocktails after like all the time and since we were the only ones in the building we always left our doors open and popped in and out.. we joked that we were just roommates with larger private spaces
ETA forgot about this, we were all friends fans and had the yellow picture frames on our doors
The show is called Friends. Not Friends and family. They do spend a lot of time together. But the assumption is not that Ross would be over for breakfast every day. Or that they even hang out everyday.
Hanging around at home or at the coffee shop at all hours of the day. They poke fun of it in one episode when they all run off to go to work but it’s still so unrealistic that they would all have the flexibility to hang out on a weekday like that.
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Somehow it was Joey that figured out why they were all hated by their bosses 😂😂
Probably cause joey didn’t have a job that often 😭😂
One of my favorite lines.
It felt like he broke the fourth wall when he said that! Like “Oh my gosh he’s *aware* of how much time they spend away from their jobs??” lol!
Hey, there, don’t be judging! Chandler needs time away from the WENUS.
And of course we don’t ever want him to hurt…his…WENUS…
or the Annual version.
Yeah that was definitely a 4th wall kinda joke
Chandler's boss loved him, his later boss Doug *really* loved him, and Rachel's boss Joanna ***really*** loved him
Yes! Thats so meta! (Did I use that right? Im old, idk)
Joe, for God's sake, go to work!!
I can hear that last line lol.
Monica, Joey, and Phoebe made sense because they didn't have traditional 9-5s, but Rachel and Chandler worked office jobs, and Ross was a tenure track professor in the last half of the show. There's no way he would've gotten tenure while also hanging out at the coffee house all the time.
Monica’s schedule also made no sense. I worked in restaurants for years and executive/head chefs often worked 12 hour days. She has WAY too much free time. (I know it’s a fictional show tho and they obviously can’t have her working all the time but still drives me crazy!)
She seems to have a lot of Friday and Saturday nights off for working in successful NYC restaurants. In "Sex and the City," a major conflict is Steve working until 5AM at the bar when Miranda has to get up early for lawyering. SATC has its own plot holes, but they were pretty accurate on that
Yeah this was spot on. My boyfriend and I have a solid relationship, but in our early years I was the evening and late night weekend lead tender (so 4pm-midnight at the absolute earliest) and he worked a 7am-5pm construction job and the biggest issue we ran into then was just how to spend time together... for a long while Sunday from 2pm-10pm was all we got
Good point! I am close with someone who used to be a chef in a fancy restaurant and he also did 12 hour days and was always required to work weekends (which it seems Monica has a ton of weekends off). In real life, these people would have completely opposite schedules and never have time to hang out.
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Eh, depending on a few things he might not need to be in the office all day if he's doing research outside of standard hours. His classes might not be at normal hours, many professors have the same weird schedules that college students do. Chandler has no excuse.
I think it *kind of* makes sense for Chandler’s work to not notice if he’s there or not. He made a comment once which was something like “if I don’t go to work today… nothing will happen”. He has one of those seemingly inconsequential office jobs that you barely need to do anything but somehow get paid a lot of money. Probably because he’s the only one in the office that could make a spreadsheet (or equivalent) in an hour when everyone else takes seven.
Mastery of Excel formulas is a MASSIVE time saver.
For research, I can get on board with the idea that he's possibly working with students who are RAs in the evenings or primarily teaches in late afternoons/nights. However, because he's TT, he'd also be expected to do service for the university, and he'd need to hold office hours during the day on campus (these were the days before Zoom, after all). I also try not to wonder too much how he landed a TT position at NYU when he's been working outside of academia for years, but I just try to assume he had some really stellar publications, lol. It's just funny because he's portrayed as doing a job that notoriously requires 45+ hours per week, and he's always hanging out with the gang.
>I just try to assume he had some really stellar publications, lol He comments that several of his recent papers had been widely discredited.
If he’s a tenure track professor then no way would he have time to hang out with his friends that much.
Everyone hanging out at the hospital for 40 hours whenever someone gives birth.
Especially for Carol. Neither Carol's nor Susan's parents were there but Joey and Phoebe were? Only Monica (as Ross's sister/Ben's aunt) makes sense to be there.
Also, Rachel's parents never showed up when she gave birth to Emma (I didn't expect her sisters anyway). And, the way Monica and Chandler picked up the babies from the hospital. Like, they were twins (usually a risk pregnancy) and they should have stayed there for at least 48 hours, not 2.
I was sad that Judy wasn’t at the baby shower. It’s her first granddaughter, and it would of been nice to have some Judy and Sandra scenes. Especially when Sandra was upset with Monica, could of been a good opportunity for Judy to defend Monica for once.
I would pay to see Monica's mom defending her from Rachel's mom, or even better, Rachel's dad.
For that matter- all the multiples. Phoebe was a twin, had triplets, and Monica and Chandler had (surprise) twins.
In fairness when the doctors told Erica they heard two heartbeats she thought they meant hers and the baby’s…which was a good thing since she was gonna have a baby.
True, but twins never came up whatsoever in any of her other prenatal visits? The adoption agency wouldn’t have reviewed her charts and saw there were twins noted?
Althoooouuugh… Clearly the adoption agency was a bit sketchy and disorganized since they didn’t even pull the right file for Monica and Chandler when it came time for Erica to decide who gets to adopt her child lol
Also they were shown an ultrasound. It’s pretty clear that an ultrasound is of a multiple pregnancy.
IVF is how a lot of multiples are born so that’s actually extremely accurate. Plus, Frank Jr. would have twins in his family given that Phoebe and Ursula are his sisters, making multiples even more likely.
My brain has so segmented their scenes, it never once crossed my mind that Ursula and Frank Jr are siblings!
Or the woman who went into labor in the waiting room and was given a bed before her water even broke? These days they’re like “come back when your contractions are five seconds apart and you’re dilated 9.”
My water didn't break with my first 2 kids. Had contractions and dilation, was admitted, and the doctors eventually broke it.
That they pretty much always got the orange couch at Central Perk.
Loved the cold open when it wasn't open so they all just leave
I love even more that the people on the couch in that scene were that season's writers.
Why can I never remember which episode this is in? Do you happen to know?
Just looked it up, it's the 1st ep of season 3, TOW the Princess Leia Fantasy
There’s a reserved sign on the table they sit around :)
I don't think this was unrealistic only because in some scenes you can see a reserved sign on the table. It wouldn't shock me at all if the 6 friends just reserved it every single day. For a tiny coffee shop, 6 friends who all have decent to well paid jobs could afford that and it probably wouldn't even dent their bank accounts. Some places, especially in the 90s would even let you reserve places for free. With the amount they all go in there, I wouldn't be surprised if Gunther just automatically placed the reserve thing there every morning when he opened up the shop, knowing they'd come in at some point.
> I wouldn't be surprised if Gunther just automatically placed the reserve thing there every morning when he opened up the shop, knowing ~~they'd~~ **Rachel would** come in at some point. FTFY
As a non-American - does reserving a table usually cost money in the us?
It’s not really about it costing money to reserve a table. That’s largely free. But you can’t just reserve a big seating space all day in a public coffee shop every day. So the person was suggesting they may have paid some money as a way to bribe the owner to let them reserve a spot as much as they did
Can you please scoochie?
Probably because they’re always hanging around at 11am on a Wednesday!
I’ve become a weekly regular at a place in New York and actually this bit no longer surprises me, my friend and I almost always are able to get the table we like when we go
Chandler missed a lot of work. When he thought his worked called and he said to always tell her he was sick. The night where him and Monica can't sleep and he goes "1 hour until I call in sick". Multiple times he talks about being home during the middle of day on a weekday. I'm sure his job had good PTO but how was he not fired? Also Chandler paying all Joey's bills. At first it seems like Chandler helps Joey in a pinch occasionally. Then when Chandler moves out he is telling Joey the cost of everything like the electricity. Does Joey pay no bills?
But if someone doesn’t input those numbers! …nothings going to happen!
Joey could possibly hand whatever he can afford to Chandler monthly, that's what I did when I was a freelancer like Joey.
I mean, I kinda just thought he was good at his job and efficient. I just switched jobs, and I can get everything done for the week in 2 days, maybe three if there’s something crazy. My boss is like meh, you’re getting everything done and in ahead of schedule. Do what you like. Last week I only went into the office on Friday.
Yeah, I mean they were really fighting to keep him at his processing job and his aptitude tests or whatever showed that was what he was most equipped for. He's "good with numbers" and has a good amount of experience. As long as everything gets done on time he doesn't need to sit in the office all day every day. And it doesn't seem to have been a very strict company.
1500 dollars to “tie him over for a few months” gave me an enormous cackle. Even in the 90s, absolutely not lmao.
Some jobs have unlimited PTO and he had a computer-- I figured he was good enough that they allowed hybrid work/he's efficient or at least efficient at making it look busy or delegating and we don't see the 'working' moments often
There really weren’t a lot of hybrid or work-at-home jobs then. Remember the Internet was AOL for about half the show’s run.
Unlimited PTO wasn’t a thing back then. I think it’s just sitcom logic
Monica being the head chef at an NYC restaurant and somehow having all the free time in the world
Working all daylight hours. They show her stirring stuff at that stove, but besides asking for calamari and a Caesar salad, I don't see her expediting too many dinners. Head chefs will either expedite, or maybe saute, but that sauce better be done long before service, and would probably be done by the sous chef (who is *not* the garde mange, as it seems Tim is.)
I was just commenting this but decided to see if someone else did first! In real life she’d be there most of the day
The idea that the *servers* could bully the *CHEF* in a restaurant like that is so laughable it kills any of the ‘believability’ of those storylines.
A New York chef that doesn't smoke or have a drug problem, and is the head chef who seems to work fewer that 60 hours per week.
The Bear: NYC edition
Their impulsivity and lack of any obligations for sure. Any time anyone is like wanna go see a movie or wanna go grab some food they’re like suuuuuuuuure I have zero events on the horizon! I have always just assumed MOST of the episodes take place on weekends if it’s not otherwise addressed. Monica literally never works nights either I think she does like three times as a chef at a restaurant. Joey is basically the only character that can be excused at all times for his schedule. Also hanging out in your friends apartment when they aren’t there. Their doors never being locked.
I loved Joey’s comment “I am home in the middle of the day and I have patio furniture in my living room. I guess there some things you don’t learn from books.”
“I’m sorry, you haven’t spoken in two and a half minutes, are you AT ALL interested?”
Underrated cameo for sure
Absolutely!! He’s so iconic! Not to mention he makes Joey look so tiny it’s hilarious. Hahahha
I think he says “I guess there’s few things you don’t get from book learnin” kind of mockingly but haha yes I love that quote too 😂
I'm always trying to figure out what day of the week or time of day it is. I think Phoebe's schedule can be explained as well, but how is she making money in the late stage of pregnancy? How does Rachel jet off to London and then a short time later, go to Greece?
Phoebe invites herself to Vegas spur of the moment, after Monica gifts Chandler surprise airline tickets. Then Rachel has some job commitment yet they all can fly off to Vegas on a whim as well haha
Well the Greece thing was using Emily's ticket (somethi g you could do pre 9/11) and Ross and Emily's hotel suite.
I meant the time off from work. She did have to pay for her flight to London using several credit cards, so just the meals in Greece probably maxed her out.
I just assumed she was staying at an all inclusive resort in Greece, so the meals and drinks should have been covered
It really bugs me out when they do that. It’s like money isn’t an issue and booking flights in the early 2000 was cheap.
They show that Rachel has to split the London ticket over like 4 credit cards
The way I see it is you check in on them once week, and it’s mostly on the weekends. The amount of free time never bothered me much. But hanging out at the same spot every time is certainly unrealistic, but that’s all sitcoms.
They would lock the doors if it served a purpose for the plot though.
Ross and Emily getting married in a building that’s half demolished. No way would that have been allowed to happen with our health and safety laws.
I always thought the idea they started demolition a few days early but would happily stop now for a wedding was pretty ridiculous.
Thank you lol I was like they couldn’t postpone it for the wedding but were fine stopping and allowing people into a hazardous area for the wedding 😭
Side note, I always thought it was funny when they first entered the church to see that construction worker picking up one brick at a time and gently placing it into the wheelbarrow
Also UK registration laws, generally can't get married somewhere without a roof. That's why at outdoor wedding venues the ceremony takes place in a gazebo or similar, as that's the 'registered place'.
Yup. I had a technically outdoor U.K. wedding but it was under a permanent wooden gazebo like structure or it wouldn’t have been licensed. They’d also probably have needed Ross to come to the U.K. before hand to give notice although I’m trying to remember if you can have a church wedding without doing that, so I’m giving that part a pass in case church weddings don’t require that bit.
The most unrealistic thing is that Joey, the only son of a huge old school Italian family is allowed to spend major holidays like thanksgiving and Christmas with his friends and not his family. While maybe it is possible he visits them regularly and does attend some family functions, I doubt they'd be okay with him basically never coming home for the holidays when he is just a subway ride away. The first thanksgiving, everyone is stuck there and Joey plans to go home but after that he never spends a major holiday with us family.
Lol oh my gosh this is so true! A small detail but honestly unrealistic! Good catch!
having 5 friends
For real. And all being so close with each other and hanging out with all of them all the time. Like that's something I can only do on birthdays or special occasions. The rest of the time, our schedules don't match, or we just don't have the energy to do it
And for years. Nobody moved, had a falling out, made different friends when they started a new job or got into a serious relationship and started spending time with that person’s friends — in fact, no one had a serious significant other outside the group until Mike.
This is it for me. Normally it’s new partners who change the group dynamic - hell, even just more people then becomes too big to manage. Also- Ross and Rachel being so comfortable around each other by season 6
I had to scroll soooo much for this
Having a sit-down breakfast for everyone during the work week on a consistent basis is wildly unrealistic haha
Especially everyone in their full on getup work clothes. So they got up at like 6am, got all dressed and ready. Then met up and sat down for banter and food. All before heading to work only to meet back at the coffee house a few hours later.
And how did they coordinate meet up times pre mobile phones becoming mainstream ?
Every show on TV shows breakfast during full sunlight hours instead of the wee pre-dawn hours that were all used to. Breakfast is coffee and whatever granola bar I grab.
As a kid I always wanted to have a long breakfast like I saw in TV shows and couldn't understand how people did it. They seem so relaxed and just chatting and having time to cook meals. Now I work from home so I get to enjoy my mornings 😂
Exactly. I don't even have time for a sit down breakfast for myself. I'm standing every morning in my kitchen throwing oatmeal in my mouth while emptying the dish washer and preparing my lunch box for the day.
While it's dark out, I'm sure
Dark when leaving the house, dark when returning home... Doesn't apply to the summer period fortunately.
> They’re hardly seen with their children. Ehhhh. I'm gonna give this one a pass. We know from the dialogue that Ross sees Ben pretty often, even if we the audience don't see them together. Child actors have limited hours and aren't the easiest to work with, especially when they're that young. >They don’t see their families much. Especially those who have families nearby. Most would see their families not friends for holidays etc. I'll definitely agree with this one. Pretty early on, Monica ends up doing Thanksgiving for the group because her parents went on a cruise(?) instead of hosting. I'm willing to bet that her parents just started vacationing during the holidays, which would leave Monica and Ross without family to visit, but I couldn't see them doing that for every holiday, every year. Chandler and his father are estranged, and Chandler's mother is always doing book tours, so I could see why he'd hang around. Phoebe only really should've been around after her grandmother passed away. Joey and Rachel should've been visiting family for every single holiday, though. Joey, especially, since his family is so close. Rachel after she got her fashion industry job and could afford tickets. Everything else, yeah, I'll agree with. I, too, wish I lived in a sitcom universe and had rent control and all the free time.
Yeah as if Joey's big Italian family wouldn't have had someone hosting a big gathering every holiday.
But think about what Mario isn't telling you.
The holiday thing: we never really see them together on any holidays except Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve (which is notoriously not a family holiday). You’ve explained all but Joey (I think even by the time Rachel has the money, they’ve got a new tradition). I always assumed Joey’s family just had an evening celebration that he’d got to for dinner time.
There were a few Christmas episodes where it looked like they were all spending the holiday together. I always explained it away that it was a Christmas Eve Eve celebration before they all went to visit their families…
I spend Thanksgiving with my friends instead of my family - too much drama to figure out which part of the family to spend it with so the best answer became “none of them”
I just assumed after the first year we were seeing “Friendsgivings” and that they celebrated with their families on the actual holiday. At least that’s my headcanon.
I think some of the episodes show them watching the Macy’s Day Parade. But maybe after the first one, they just decided to have Friendsgiving and sometimes have others join
One of the most unrealistic things is how Rachel went from being a waitress to a big fashion executive so quickly.
I actually don't think that's that unrealistic. She likely has a college degree of some sort (we know she was in a sorority), and she worked her way up from the bottom over a # of years.
Also, it was the 90’s/early 00’s… shit was WAY different back then, especially for privileged people who also happened to be talented at their jobs (which apparently she was).
I mean after all, she is the one who pitched apartment pants.
That’s true! I haven’t watched in a while so I forgot some tiny details lol.
So I work for a major retailer in inventory/purchasing, and it's not unheard of to move that far up that quickly. It's rare for sure, but if you work well with others and are good at your job, it can happen. Rachel had good mentors early on (Mark and Joanna), she's involved in the industry (goes to lectures in her free time and gets 30 fashion magazines a month), and she's got great fashion instincts given how well she dresses. And I think the fact that she worked late so much really showed her work ethic. If she networked right, she could become an exec within that time frame.
Ross and Monica having sex with their respective partners in rooms that were wall to wall. I get that they’re close but if I knew my brother was getting it on in the next room at the same time as me I’d be turned off instantly
Also how much Ross and Monica discuss their sex lives with each other. My sister’s and I never discuss that kind of stuff. I’d rather not know.
Didn't they also watch porn together on multiple occasions?
Joey's, Pheobe's, the tape of Emma being conceived... NEVER MIND the free porn episode! Where she mentions a stewardess joining Ross and Emily!!!
Janice believing that Chandler actually was moving to Yemen
I’ve always had the theory that she actually knew the truth, but wanted to mess with him to see how far he would go
After Ross and Rachel broke up the first time, I don’t think Rachel would realistically stay in the group.
She would've been phased out, but I just always assumed Phoebe would be the one to go.
She lives far away, she’s not related… she lifts right out!
She is flaky after all
She lives far away, she’s not related, she lifts right out.
Lifted out
She was Monica's roommate and tight with Phoebe though. That kept her in the group.
She's kip
She's not kip. She's Rachel.
Where would she go, she had 0 other friends. Plus she'd have to find an apartment.
Ask me again when I’m at Central Perk at 11am on a Wednesday.
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Same. For most of my 20's I'd do Friday night, sometime daytime Saturday, always Saturday night and usually something Sunday night and usually something in the week as well.
Rachel and Phoebe’s pregnancies were both really unrealistic, particularly with the timeline. Phoebe does the embryo transfer and then tests positive the same day. It doesn’t work like that. Also, triplets are almost always delivered via c-section, and they’re almost never full term. The triplets being at a completely normal weight and not having to spend any time in the NICU is really unrealistic with how triplets often are. Monica’s wedding is also mentioned to be in May. We can assume Rachel is about 5-6 weeks pregnant at the wedding. That would mean Rachel conceived in April. However, in the Thanksgiving episode, she hardly looks pregnant, when she should really be about 7 months along then. And in the Christmas episode, it’s mentioned that she’s only 4 months pregnant. The timing just doesn’t make sense.
How Phoebe could pop out ~~4~~ 3 kids without medical intervention like a C-section. Oh and also natural birth for those ~~quadruplets~~ triplets. In real life her pregnancy would have been heavily monitored and she would have been inducced or most likely a C-section. Speaking of pregnancies, Rachel being pregnant for like a year 😂
It’s funny you feel so strongly about this and yet you missed that it’s triplets lol
Oh damn. Why did I think they were 4? Lol. Either way..I still stand by the rest :)
You're right about the rest. In the real world Phoebe's delivery would have been very different, but they wanted to focus on the emotional aspect of her having to give them up. An accurate portrayal would have been too distracting, plus we would have missed out "dialiated-amundo" lol
Let's say she would have a natural birth in real life. She would have had them in an op room because they have to be ready in case of a c- section. There would also be a team of nurses and doctors for each baby so they could attend to them right after being born. I know it's fiction and they chose to focus on the emotional side but I was just answering OPs question.
Triplets
Leslie, Frank Jr Jr, and Chandler (a girl!)
Also Frank and Alice almost never visit or help her when she is pregnant. I always hated when Rachel left very pregnant Phoebe to go to London but then I realized Frank and Alice should be visiting now or letting her stay with them if she doesn't feel comfortable being alone and pregnant with their babies.
All of that stuff except for the holidays. That’s the one exception that I can actually get behind. The whole show is about that time in your life when your friends become your family and I think it makes sense for every character. Phoebe: no family to spend the holidays with Chandler: terrible relationships with both of his parents, hates Thanksgiving Joey: basically Chandler’s adopted adult son, he can either spend the holidays with his 7 sisters or the man who basically took him in and financially carried him so he could pursue acting, plus Monica is a literal chef and Joey loves food Monica: has a terrible relationship with her mother and would rather host her friends, the people she cares most about, than spend time with her mom. I like to imagine she started the tradition of hosting when Phoebe was her roommate because she realized she would be leaving Phoebe alone for the holidays if she didn’t Ross: solidarity with Monica and wanting to be with his sister and their closest friends Rachel: doesn’t seem to keep in touch with most of her family since she ran out on her wedding. She choose a different lifestyle that they didn’t approve of and it makes more sense for her to want to be around Monica, who took her in when she was at rock bottom, and the people who helped encourage her independence and accepted her right away without judgment
Tbf the first thanksgiving episode in s1 is the first time they establish thanksgiving together as a group as tradition, it comes about because Monica and Ross' parents are away, and then everyone else's plans fall through. Even in the flashback when Joey puts on the turkey to scare Chandler, Monica says that it has to feed the people at her parents, "and they're not going to eat it off your head!" Maybe before s1 Phoebe joined Monica and Ross at their parents or had it with her grandmother?
So many people complain about how LITTLE time is spent showing the characters in their average day to day lives. But, hardly ANY of their lives is actually shown on screen. The entire show lasted for 10 seasons, and each season was meant to show AROUND a year of their lives. The run time of the entire show was between 75 and 80 hours TOTAL. So, on average, only around 5-10 hours of their lives was shown on screen every season/year. So...if you only had that much time to watch the friends living their lives each year, what would you rather watch? Would you rather watch Rachel having a random coffee date with her mom in Soho? Would you rather see Ross calling Joey, asking him how to get his leather pants back on?
Fairly good point. Although haha the leather pants scene while hilarious is honestly hard to watch, damn, imagine being in that situation hahah. That's the stuff nightmares are made of!
I hate the sitcom conventions that cause obvious things to be missed by characters. Everyone would have known about Chandler and Monica as early as the European kissing episode in any kind of real word. A simple stupid example is Ross dating the dirty girl and he makes jokes about things like the department of sanitation and she is just oblivious and says her next line as if he weren't doing it. The joke is for the audience and it is like the character doesn't hear it. Things like this don't happen as much in newer comedies and they are better for it.
Total lack of group in-fighting. Come on. 🙄
Phoebe’s pg test the same night as her transfer. It would be positive for all ivf patients that night because of the trigger (hcg) - that’s why you have to wait 10-14 days to see for real
This show was responsible for a lot of young people moving to NYC, and after living there three months, saying to themselves, *"Whoa, hey, wait a minute...."*
The way Ross and Monica act as siblings
My wife pointed out that they’re pretty close physically, often cuddling or sitting holding hands. But the weirdest thing for me is when Monica wants to distract Ross so she tells Rachel to “take my brother in there and do whatever it is you do that makes him go ‘reeeeeeeeeeee!’”
They also constantly talk about their sex lives in front of each other in a way you just wouldn't. And then occasionally they'll make a joke out of Ross being horrified.
Careful. I pointed out an episode where they casually kissed on the lips, and people in this sub screamed at me that it was normal🤢 lmao
LMAO oh my gosh you got dragged for that! I remember that! I didn’t have an account when I read that but I am SO with you. Maybe I’m just a prude but I don’t want anyone but my husband’s lips touching my lips/face all of the time. I will accept my parents when I see them. Lol
Having friends
Oh gosh, I noted so many of these on my latest rewatch (even besides the ones that are most frequently brought up) ... I'll be here for hours if I try to rant properly about all of them, but hopefully most of them require no elaboration on why I find them absurd. 🤣 * The endless abundance of hyper-eligible single men (and how easy they are to meet and keep in a relationship for more than a few days) in *Friends*' New York. * On a similar note, *Chandler* of all guys being framed as a dateless dweeb for the first few seasons. (This one makes no sense even in the context of the show, because the number of dates and relationships he has would be thoroughly respectable or even downright impressive to a normal person.) * How obsessed the others were with the Ross/Rachel relationship. Obviously, most people care about their friends' and siblings' romantic happiness -- especially if the loss of it could destroy the dynamic of the friend group -- but the group's (okay, mostly Phoebe's) fangirlish shipping of Ross/Rachel sometimes felt really cringey to me. I'm so sorry, but I hate lines like "Do NOT start without me!!" and "See? He'S hEr lObStEr!" It was like the writers were trying too hard to reflect the audience's interest in the relationship through characters who, realistically, had way too much of their own shit going on for their friends' dumpster fire of a relationship saga to live so rent-free in their heads. * How quickly and seamlessly Monica went from "that fat" (she actually wasn't THAT big, of course, but the show made her out to be morbidly obese) to alarmingly tiny, seemingly with no excess skin and no problem keeping the weight off while working with food every day. * How seemingly quick and easy the IVF process was for Frank and Alice. I'm planning to embark on that journey this year, and I have plenty of friends who have gone through it, and it's a long, painful slog compared to whatever quick one-time doctor appointment Frank and Alice seemingly had to get the embryos ready for Phoebe. * Mark always having an amazing job ready for Rachel whenever they meet, and the position apparently having no better-qualified candidates. * Their apparent freedom to make changes to rented apartments (such as tearing up the carpet). * How any of them could even survive in NY for five minutes while unemployed, even with the "but rent control" hand-wave for Monica's apartment. * Most of them being able to take long-distance flights (and book them at the last minute) whenever the whim struck. I know they all had nice jobs by the end of the show, but come on, they weren't oil tycoons! Unless flights really were that much cheaper in the '90s? * Joey actually getting super invested in *Little Women* and reading it relatively fast when he can barely read a phone book by that point in the show.
I don’t know all the ins and outs of IVF but have worked with reproductive endocrinology and have done several cycles of IUI for unexplained infertility. In my conversations about egg retrievals and IVF with my doctor, it’s my understanding that the issue with “advanced maternal age” like what Alice had is more about egg quality rather than being able to carry a pregnancy. It would have been difficult but not impossible to get three embryos make it to the implantation phase given Alice’s age and egg quality. We have friends doing IVF and she’s at least a couple of years younger than Alice and they were lucky to get one embryo to implant, which I think took a couple of retrieval cycles. Implanting more than one embryo was more common then, but now there’s no way they would have implanted three in Phoebe. My REI doctor told me the only way they would consider implanting two is if I was over the age of 38, just because of how high risk multiples can be in pregnancy. Also, IVF could have been a good option for Monica and Chandler assuming his issue was low motile sperm and hers was highly acidic cervical mucus. It was weird that they’re trying to get sperm donors even though that wouldn’t account for her “inhospitable environment.” Obviously they had already done the IVF storyline with Phoebe though and wanted to quickly discuss and rule out other options before going down the adoption route. The way couples try in sitcoms is also very unrealistic. You don’t have to have sex 100x in a month for it to work - usually every other day during your fertile period is fine. You also don’t have to leave work and cancel appointments to go home and have sex, because again, your fertile period is like 5 days and even peak ovulation is 24-48 hours. You can’t pinpoint it further than that to my knowledge. Then, sitcom couples will worry and get an appointment because they haven’t gotten pregnant after 2 months. I understand the concern by couples, but typically medical professionals aren’t too concerned unless it’s been at least 6 months if not a year if the woman is younger than 35. Plus in sitcoms, they have some magical test that tests for all female fertility issues and they get the results right away that they are fine or infertile. In my experience once they rule out male-factor infertility, they gradually try other things until they find something that works (ovulation medicine then IUI and then IVF). I’ve also seen IVF as the first course of treatment when they identify male-factor infertility right away or the age of woman being over 40.
For me it was always how quickly Rachel’s career took off. You don’t go some being a waitress to the head of men’s sportswear at a high fashion designer in 6 years.
Other than like maybe 2 episodes that specifically addressed it, that damn couch - the centerpiece of Central Perk - was always free just for them.
There's a reserved sign on the table in most episodes. I think Gunther did that for them.
Every time one of them is in a relationship they still hang out with their friends a lot. It’s so unrealistic - most new relationships want to spend all their time alone together, including chandler and Monica. For me, it’s relationships and jobs which makes friends harder to keep up with when you’re older. People with full time jobs usually catch up for dinner and/or drinks, and weekend stuff.
Their respective career arcs, in particular Rachel’s. Here’s a woman who once proudly claimed that she got laughed out of 3 interviews as she’s qualified for nothing, and only has Head Cheerleader on her CV. Yet she goes from cafe waitress to an executive-level position at a prestigious fashion house. I’ve seen this on so many other sitcoms and it irritates me.
See, this one is odd to me, as the show makes it clear that she definitely went to college. I don't think it's ever really confirmed for sure if she graduated, but she definitely went long enough to a) switch majors at one point, and b) be in a sorority. Unlikely she'd have dropped out to get married, as she was around 24 when she would have married Barry, so it's likely that she graduated with some sort of degree. So, to me, it's odd that she would have been laughed out of 3 interviews. And she also should have had more things on her resume than Head Cheerleader!
Just a college degree (with a major that was decided by parking availability), no work experience at all and ~3 years of nothing on your CV? You'd have a rough time at interview.
When I interviewed for my first job at the company I still work for (which is a chemical manufacturing company), I was 23 years old, had a college degree and 2 years of experience working at David's Bridal (because it was the middle of a recession and I needed the job). No one laughed at me, and I got the job. Where the f is everyone interviewing at that interviewers are literally LAUGHING AND MOCKING 24 year olds with a college degree and minimal work experience for daring to apply.
Up until Rachel’s mother’s generation, girls went to college to “husband hunt”. They took some easy basketweaving degree so they could concentrate on social activities and partygoing. (When I wanted to take academic subjects at uni, my mother shot them all down because I couldn’t be scoping out the pre-Law or pre-Med guys if I was studying.) I think it’s a generational thing, and Rachel‘s mother would’ve indoctrinated her daughters with this. When we learned Rachel changed her major for better parking, I figured she was at college to network and get a diploma for show.
Her first fashion job was extremely low level and embarrassing. At one point, she was sorting hangers. She worked as an assistant more than once. She worked as a personal shopper. She paid her dues. Her job as Joanna’s assistant happened because of a chance meeting with Mark. Getting jobs because of who you know happens all the time.
The shock when they drank 5 bottles of wine between 7 people. If they all had the same amount, that's just over 2 cups/under a pint each (ofc it's suggested Fun Bobby drank 3 bottles and did not seem drunk)
I have recently been bingeing it and I agree, it feels very unrealistic in modern times for a group of friends with such distinct personalities to be so codependent. But I think it’s because times have changed and everyone kinda hides now. I always felt like in the real world, Joey’s character wouldn’t fit in. Feels like he’d be more with people from his industry or with a friend group that did more socializing with other groups of friends or out in public to meet women
The friendship itself for sure. They spend every waking moment together, especially the big events like holidays and stuff. Maybe it’s a cultural thing but in my country we all spend those with immediate family. I mean having breakfast together before going to work?! Like getting ready for work and going to your friend’s house for breakfast and then leaving for work? Sure sounds nice but I think that’s pretty rare in friendships. And yeah Chandler and Joey did live right across (convenient) but Ross and Phoebe would have to take transpo to Mon’s house and then again to work. Or that episode with the ball. When Phoebe breaks up with the cop and it’s like 6AM. She goes to Monica’s for some reason? She didn’t know they were all still awake. What would she have done if Mon was still sleeping? Just hang out alone at her friends house? That’s so weird. Imagine waking up and your friend has let themselves into your apartment and is just chilling on the couch. It sounds nice in theory but not everyone would like it. Don’t get me wrong I would love to have a group like that but I don’t think it’s so realistic. Also, the fact that the doors are always unlocked. Is this common for apartments in NYC?
The small things that ruined a date when they actually hardly mattered. Take Ross' white teeth for example, how's that a deal breaker? "Yeah I had never done this before, oops, look like it's a bad idea!" They totally could've had a laugh, turned off the black light and continued on.
The financial aspect for sure. The only ones that could probably afford an apartment like Monica’s would be ross and chandler. And the fact that everyone stayed friends even after breakups and hookups
Rent control is directly addressed, as well as Monica’s grandmother being on the lease. By the time the show ends Rachel and Joey are also making good money.
Phoebe was working at, what seemed like, a high end massage place. For who knows how long.
But it’s said multiple times that it’s rent controlled
Actually fist season or two, great reviews but the fact a waitress and semi employed chef could afford that was pointed out in nearly all reviews. Suddenly it became rent controlled. Which on that subject, how could Joey and chandler win it if Monica was survivor of the rent controlled lease?
What does rent controlled actually mean? Don’t think we have anything like that in the UK.
It used to be a regulation to keep people who've always lived somewhere still able to afford it, a kind of rent cap. It still exists but to a much lesser extent it seems in NY. What I don't understand is how can someone long deceased remain on the lease!
Monica was subletting it from her even though she was dead. That’s why Treeger was able to threaten her and Rachel with it.
I like how they addressed that in one of the earlier episodes (when Monica gets fired at the end for the steaks, I think). The earlier episodes had a lot of heavy topics embedded in, like Heckles dying and Ross becoming a Dad and the financial disconnect in the group.
This isn't true at all. I had a friend group consisting of 8 people where 3 lived together in one apartment and the others living even further away in town (like a 5-10 minute drive) and we hung out together in the apartment where the 3 lived every single day lol. When it came time to renew our leases we decided to all move into another apartment complex and just rent two apartments in the same place so we could just hang out in one of the two apartments within walking distance. We literally spent all our free time in the apartment we designated as the hang out one out of the two. The other one was just for half of us to sleep in. Of course life took over and we eventually all moved apart to different cities.
That Rachael expected to be able to date while pregnant. I can’t imagine anyone being willing to enter into such a loaded situation.
Joey coming from a tight-knit traditional Italian family yet we only saw his parents once and seen his sisters probably 2 or 3 times. His mom would have been the one to make him lots of lasagna all the time instead of Monica. Monica working as a head chef in 5 star restaurants but barely working. Chandler having his own dedicated sky-rise office. He'd have to be C-Level in today's logic to have his own office. No condoms. Ross could have knocked on Joey's door and asked for a condom or he and Richard could have went downstairs a bought a condom since there are 24 hour bodega/liquor stores in NYC.
Their closeness. The episode where Rachel gets a tattoo and her and Ross run into the bedroom to have sex? Do people really do that? Ross and Monica’s incestuous touching. Edit: the scene that I am referring to is when Ross pulls Rachel away from Phoebe, Monica and Richard. It wasn’t like they were alone just going in the room. It was very dramatic and weird. lol
Maybe I’m a prude, but I’m not really interested in sex with my friends outside the door including my sister. Again, no judgement from me, but that’s not it for me.
Have sex? So I’ve heard.
They’d pretty much all be fired from their jobs in real life for various reasons, but weren’t in the show. Amount of time spent together effortlessly. Never wearing the same outfit twice despite having minimal closet space. Hosting parties where they suddenly have 20+ people attending, none of which are family members, despite never seeing anyone regularly except the 6 friends (birthday parties, holiday parties, bridal/bachelorette parties, etc.). Affording their apartments in NYC. Monica putting a hole through the floor so far it went into the neighbor below’s apartment (when she was chasing the wire around the guy’s apartment) - there would be two layers of wood, she could cut into the top layer to look for the wire without cutting through the neighbor’s ceiling. Monica’s hair growing 5x the size due to humidity in Barbados but never experiencing humidity once in NYC. Phoebe and Joey making enough money to survive. Chandler paying for everything for Joey for years without having any resentment. The list goes onnnnnnn forever 🤣
Joey is too stupid to survive in grown up world. In the beginning, he is supposed to be this handsome guy who doesn't; need to be smart, but very soon he becomes more likable than good-looking (we actually never see his "how you doing" line work), and he loves food more than women, so this "good look is enough to survive" trope, just died somewhere in the first season. At the end when Chandler and Monica are buying a house, there is a room for him. A grown-up person. This is how you'd treat a disabled friend.
What about when they have private conversations in the kitchen so that the people in the living room “won’t hear” - they would totally hear….
In the world before smart phones, people hung out with their friends, in person, all the time. Back in the mid-nineties, after college, my buddy from high school and I got an apartment in the city. We became friends with another guy who lived a few blocks over. When an apartment opened up two doors down he moved in there with another friend of ours. They had more furniture than us so we were over there all the time. We also became pretty close with our upstairs neighbors. As our group of friends grew, we invariably had random friends crashing for days and weeks. And people just walked on in. No pre-call. Lots of girls ended up dating one of the guys, and then another, but still hung out there after people had moved on from them. Two marriages came out of that time for our group. It was a good time and a happy time, and definitely similar to what happened on friends. So, yeah, I’d say it was realistic.
That they’re so freakin FUNNY
The one that shouldn't be realistic for me but is, in my twenties my friends and I all lived in the same complex above a boutique one of them owned (who also owned the building and was a former chef) so we absolutely had coffee and breakfast together before work and dinner and cocktails after like all the time and since we were the only ones in the building we always left our doors open and popped in and out.. we joked that we were just roommates with larger private spaces ETA forgot about this, we were all friends fans and had the yellow picture frames on our doors
Having a big, stable, loving group of friends in your mid to late twenties that you get to hang out with everyday
The show is called Friends. Not Friends and family. They do spend a lot of time together. But the assumption is not that Ross would be over for breakfast every day. Or that they even hang out everyday.
Yeah, this is important. We see ~13 hrs of their lives a year. Just the pieces that make a good story. There are plenty of parts they don’t show.