The One With All the Titles
Almost every episode of Friends has a title beginning The One With or The One Where, such as The One Where No One's Ready or The One With the Embryos, because the writers wanted fans to be able to describe an episode the way they would to a friend. The show ran from 1994 to 2004, ten series and 236 episodes, following six friends in their twenties in MANHATTAN: ROSS, RACHEL, MONICA, JOEY, PHOEBE and CHANDLER.
Much of the action happens in a coffee house, CENTRAL PERK, which is where the gang drinks COFFEE on the famous orange sofa. Across the street, Monica's flat has walls painted a bold purple, chosen by the set designer because it looked cheerful on camera. The actor who played GUNTHER, the café's manager, got the part largely because he was one of the few people on set who knew how to work a professional espresso machine. He started as an extra and ended up appearing in around 150 episodes.
A cast that asked for equal pay together
The six stars made an unusual decision early on: they agreed to negotiate their pay together, so that none of them would earn more than the others. By the last two series, each was being paid a million dollars an episode. The idea was also written into the show's spirit: no single friend was the star, and each episode usually followed several stories at once.
The theme song, I'll Be There for You by the Rembrandts, with its four claps, became a hit in its own right. Rachel's layered haircut from the first series, nicknamed the Rachel, was copied by so many people that it became one of the most requested hairstyles of the 1990s, although the actor who wore it, Jennifer Aniston, said she never liked it much.
Lobsters, a sofa and a pivot
In one early episode, PHOEBE insists that Ross and Rachel are each other's LOBSTER, because lobsters fall in love and mate for life, walking around the sea floor holding claws. It became one of the show's best-known romantic lines, but it is not true: real lobsters do not pair up for life at all. Our seafood page covers some real lobster history.
In another, Ross, Rachel and Chandler try to carry a new sofa up a narrow staircase, with Ross shouting PIVOT over and over, and the word has been shouted by people moving furniture ever since. Joey's greeting, how you doin'?, Chandler's jokey way of asking could this be any more awkward, and Ross's SANDWICH, stolen by a colleague at work, all became part of everyday speech for a generation.
A big finale and a reunion
The final episode, in May 2004, was watched by more than fifty million people in the United States, one of the biggest audiences of the decade. The cast came back together for an unscripted REUNION special in 2021, sitting on a rebuilt set and talking about their memories. The grid also holds EMMA, Ross and Rachel's baby daughter; JANICE, Chandler's on-off girlfriend with a laugh nobody forgets; SMELLY Cat, Phoebe's famous song; and the surnames GELLER, BING, BUFFAY and TRIBBIANI. Our sitcoms page covers how shows like it are filmed.