14 “Friends” Mistakes You Totally Missed
There are thousands of shows at the tips of our fingers and with so many to choose from, many get lost in the fray. Dozens of series are lucky to get past a first season. But some shows stand the test of time and their fan base by going on from season to season and before they know it, they're reaching their tenth season!
Friends is one of those sitcoms that went on for many years and still finished strong when it ended after ten amazing seasons. Viewers just couldn't get enough of the six twenty-somethings who'd get together in a coffee shop and trade barbs, leaving the audience in stitches. Who can forget the love story of Ross and Rachel? Or Monica and Chandler? Or the love-hate sibling rivalry between Ross and Monica? Or Phoebe's quirks and Joey's airhead comments? But like all long-running TV shows, its writers inadvertently overlooked some little details, leading to inconsistencies in the scenes and timelines. Here are some mistakes on the show that only a Friends super fan would have caught.
14 Rachel's Necklace
Episode two of season seven is entitled “The One Where Ross Finds Out” and is one of the pivotal points of the earlier part of Ross and Rachel's relationship. Ross had been dating Julie, a girl he met on his trip to China, much to Rachel's chagrin, as the latter had just realized that she was in love with Ross. When Ross told the group that he and Julie were getting a cat together, it dashed Rachel's hopes further that anything would become of her and Ross. In the scene where the camera zooms in on Rachel when she finds out about the cat and she says, “together?” she's not wearing a necklace. The camera cuts to Ross and Julie for a fraction of a second, then when it goes back to Rachel saying “both of you?” she's suddenly wearing a necklace. When the camera goes to her again, the necklace is gone yet again!
13 Ross and ice cream
Among all the characters in Friends, the Geller siblings are probably the most neurotic. Monica is definitely the more anal of the two, but Ross has his strange quirks as well. There was the time he said he was “writing music” when in fact he was just messing around with the sound effects of electric keyboard. Then there was the time he had a pet monkey Marcel, who he got so attached to but had to eventually give up. Then there's his apparent aversion to ice cream. When asked why he doesn't like ice cream, he said, “it's too cold!” Yet, he's been shown at least twice throughout the series eating a frozen treat. He was eating an ice cream on a cone when he had Marcel on his shoulder. And in another episode, he was eating ice cream with Elizabeth, the college girl he met and dated while teaching at New York University.
12 Tape marks on the ground
In season 10, Ross is dating Charlie, a colleague of his in the paleontology field. Charlie is beautiful and seems to get along with Ross intellectually, so it seems like a good fit. But as with all TV relationships, complications arise. Ross is a candidate for a scholarship grant and to get it, he needs to be interviewed by Benjamin Hobart, a Nobel prize winner and incidentally, Charlie's ex-boyfriend. Benjamin admits to Ross that he's still in love with Charlie and blackmails Ross into breaking up with her in exchange for the grant. Ross refuses and says he wants to remain with Charlie and win that grant fair and square. But Benjamin was having none of that and all but sabotaged the interview. In the scene of the interview, you can make out the tape marks on the floor to indicate where the swivel chairs were to be positioned for the scene.
11 Rachel's stand-ins
Using stand-ins in films and TV shows is commonplace, especially in scenes where only one actor has speaking lines and the ones beside him are just looking or listening on. But on Friends, the crew was pretty sloppy when it came to replacing Rachel with body doubles. In the season nine episode entitled, “The One With The Mugging,” the first scene after the credits shows Joey, Monica, and Rachel in Monica's apartment and the girls are congratulating Joey for landing an audition. When the camera focuses on Joey, you see a stand-in for Rachel at the left corner-and the person wasn't even wearing the same clothes! Similarly, in season ten, Rachel is shown at the airport arguing with an airport employee, who's holding her passport. The passport photo that's seen in the foreground of the shot looks nothing like Rachel!
10 Emma's hat changes
Season nine of the series opens with Rachel having just had her and Ross' baby and mainly features how the couple navigates living together as friends and co-parents to baby Emma. The second episode entitled, “The One Where Emma Cries” shows Rachel watching her sleeping baby adoringly. Phoebe wonders why Emma is always sleeping, when she knows that newborn babies are supposed to be crying constantly. Phoebe proceeds to waking up the baby, which leads to Emma crying-and crying and crying, driving everyone crazy. In one scene, Rachel picks up a crying Emma from her basinet and the baby is wearing a pink hat. Cut to the next frame where Emma is in her mother's arms, and she's suddenly in a white hat, instead of pink. Needless to say, the baby eventually stopped crying when she was placed in her Aunt Monica's arms.
9 Rachel: “Chandler who?”
In the pilot episode, when a very haggard-looking Rachel runs into Central Perk in a disheveled wedding dress, she and Monica start up a conversation and Monica is obliged to introduce her to the rest of the gang. Rachel remembers Monica's dorky older brother Ross and seemingly meets Joey, Phoebe, and Chandler for the first time. Only, we find out in later episodes, that Chandler and Rachel actually had met several times in the past, given that they were friends with Ross and Monica respectively. They had met a couple of times in high school, including that time Monica accidentally dropped a knife onto Chandler's toe. They also met and flirted when Rachel was still engaged to her ex-fiancé Barry (as seen in “The One With The Flashback” in season three). Rachel and Chandler's appearances didn't alter too much in 10 years, so it would have been strange if they didn't recognize each other, given that they had hung out in the past.
8 The dog trainer's head
In episode 21 of season two, Phoebe has discovered where her birth father supposedly lives and drives up in her taxi cab to his place, accompanied by Joey and Rachel. Instead, she discovers she has a half brother named Frank Junior and that their father walked out on the family four years prior. As Phoebe walks up to the house, a small dog starts attacking her, making her run back to the cab. For a little dog, it seems fierce and is able to jump up high enough to reach the window. In an effort to distract it, Rachel throws Joey's sandwich out the window, but the dog doesn't seem interested in it. Instead, it starts jumping up onto the window, but in the scene, you see the dog's trainer's head bobbing up from his crouched down position beside the cab.
7 Ross' first time
At the beginning of the first season, Ross was getting over his broken marriage, as Carol had left him to be with Susan. He becomes Mr. Dramatic when he tells the guys one day that he's not in the mood to do anything fun because it was the anniversary of the day he first slept with Carol. When Chandler can't understand what the big deal is, Ross admits that his first time with Carol was his first time ever-and that's when understanding dawns on Chandler. But in later episodes, it was revealed that back in college, he got drunk and slept with the cleaning lady at his and Chandler's dorm. It's impossible that he slept with Carol before the cleaning lady because he was faithful to Carol the entire time they were together. It's definitely an inconsistency that the writers overlooked.
6 When are their birthdays and how old are they?
Throughout the series, there's always been some sort of debate on how old all the friends were. It was mentioned that Ross is two years older than Monica. That means Chandler is Ross' age because they were college roommates and Rachel is around Monica's age because they were best friends in high school. In season one, Monica is 26 and we're assuming so is Rachel, while Joey says he's 25. But in “The One Where They All Turn Thirty,” Rachel was said to be the last one to turn 30, meaning she's the youngest in the group. And when are their birthdays? In season four, Ross tells Gunther “mine's December… ” before Gunther cuts him off. But in season nine, Ross says it's October 18th. In season nine, episode five, Phoebe implies that her birthday is around late October. But in season three, she tells her brother Frank Junior that her birthday is February 16th.
5 Phoebe and her dad
Among all the friends, Phoebe is the one with the most colorful family background. She has a twin sister named Ursula whom she doesn't get along with, their mother supposedly committed suicide and they were raised by their grandmother. They were told that their father ran out on them even before they were born. But in the episode where Phoebe's grandmother dies, she meets her biological father, Frank Buffet at the funeral service. He initially denies it, but ends up agreeing to meet with Phoebe at Central Perk so he could explain himself. He said he used to sing to Phoebe when she was a baby, a song whose melody very much resembled Phoebe's famous composition, “Smelly Cat.” So what happened to Phoebe's story of her father leaving before she was even born? There wouldn't be a “Smelly Cat” if that had happened.
4 Does Phoebe really speak French?
The tenth season's thirteenth episode is entitled “The One Where Joey Speaks French” because he basically lied in his resume and says he's fluent in the language. It's revealed that Phoebe is fluent in French and was kind enough to offer to help Joey speak it like it's his first language. Unfortunately, Joey's lessons are a disaster as he doesn't pick up on the language at all. In fact, during his audition Phoebe had to tell the director (in French) that Joey had a screw loose and to just humor him. But in the episode “The One With Rachel's Date,” Phoebe talks to Monica's colleague, who introduces himself as Monica's sous chef, and Phoebe mistakenly thinks he's her boss. If she was fluent in French, shouldn't she know that sous means “under” in French? In other words, she should have known that he was Monica's assistant-not her boss.
3 Joey's butt
Among all six friends, it's Joey who seemed to have struggled the most in terms of career and financial stability. He was a struggling actor for most of his twenties, auditioning for commercials, films, and plays to very little or no success. In the sixth episode of the first season, he excitedly announced that he landed a part in a movie that would star Al Pacino. When the gang presses him for further details on the role he'll be playing, he very reluctantly admits that he will be playing Pacino's butt double in a shower scene. In the scene where they show Joey in the shower with his back turned to the camera, his butt is covered by the director. But you can clearly see Joey's shadow in the shower wall behind him and it's pretty obvious that his butt is not exposed. He's wearing boxer shorts!
2 Monica and Chandler's apartment numbers
The location most prominently featured throughout the entire series is Monica's apartment. In the pilot episode, she was supposed to be sharing the apartment with Phoebe. But she didn't know that Phoebe had actually moved out secretly. Her next and probably longest roommate was Rachel before she finally moved out as well, so Monica and Chandler could move in together when they became a couple. For Friends aficionados, they would probably have noticed that the apartment number on Monica's door changed as the series went on, as did Chandler's across the hall. At the start, the apartment numbers were four and five, but as the series progressed, they were subtly changed to 19 and 20, the rational being apartments with lower numbers would have been on the ground floor. But the friends' apartments are shown to be much higher, so low apartment numbers wouldn't have made sense.
1 How could they afford their apartments?
Monica's apartment has always been the converging point for all six friends, mainly because it's huge and she's the hostess with the mostest. She's loves cooking for her friends and having them invade her fridge and crowd her couch. But realistically speaking, could Monica have afforded a place like that, given the rent prices in New York City? The apartment is supposed to be located in the West Village, with a huge bay window and balcony, which means that rent would cost an arm and a leg. Sure, it was stated several times that Monica inherited the apartment from her grandmother, but given inflation rates, the apartment would cost around $4,500 a month today. That's a steep price for someone who at one time, was jobless and another time, was waitressing before getting a steady job as a chef, even if she had a roommate to split the rent cost with.
Sources: huffingtonpost.com, buzzfeed.com, inquisitr.com, self.com
