I'll start this off...One of my most disgruntled moments is in TOW Monica's Thunder when Rachel tells Ross they never had a "bonus night". They did! Right after they got back from the beach. I don't know why that one comment from her has stuck with me for so many years and constantly bothered me.

I can ignore all the issues with rents and jobs but for some reason not this.

That wasn't a bonus night, though. They got back together for a few days. It may have only lasted an episode but I do believe it spanned a few days at least.

And I still love that break-up.

"Don't worry about me not sleeping. I still have your letter!"

At the very least, the drunk night in Vegas was apparently a bonus night.

And don't even get me started on the ages/birthdays thing.

I had completely blocked Vegas from my mind...Now I hate that statement even more.

Yeah the birthdays bug too. What was the purpose of at the very end changing Rachel's birthday which was one of the most consistant of any of them?

I've got to give you Vegas... although do either of them remember it? Still, I think the whole point of that was that Rachel wanted an excuse to 'steal Monica's thunder' and went for anything she could. She was jealous of Monica and acted out in that Rachel way of hers.

The birthday thing, however, dude.

As much as I hated that, after years of Rachel's birthday being given as a May date, they suddenly started moving it around to January/February, the part that really fries my biscuits is changing their ages. When the show started, it was rather clearly implied that Monica/Rachel were born around 1969. There were many episodes that reference their ages, and by those airdates they would have been born in '69 (hee hee). And suddenly, in "TOW They All Turn Thirty," she turns 30 in 2001??

I thought they never slept together in Vegas... which leads me to my biggest peeve of the series - Ross' divorces. None of them were really genuine divorces, i.e. break-ups of real marriages, and only one was his fault. If anything I think all of them could have been annulled. All I know of annullment comes from the Catholic standard, which is that a marriage is invalid if something is wrong from its inception. Carol was gay and neither one of them had any control over that. He never slept with Emily after the wedding, and I think non-comsumation is kind of an automatic out, isn't it? This would go for the Rachel marriage, too, especially since they were drunk as well.

The one thing that bugged me the most was from Phoebe's baby shower (blanking on the episode right now.) When Rachel and Monica where planning it they said that someone should get Phoebe the leather pants she'd always wanted. That is SO out of character for Phoebe. She won't eat meat, and she didn't want the fur coat, but leather pants were ok? I didn't get that.

I always get bothered when I see the episode where Chandler and Monica get engaged, and they remark that Ross has proposed 3 times. He didn't propose to Rachel!

The marriage jokes, on the whole, really played out quickly. I do think that they were funny at the end of season six (Rachel saying Ross would know a good engagement ring since he bought so many and he says, "You didn't get one") and beginning of season seven (Ross telling Rachel that Monica's night isn't that great since he gets married all the time), but overall, it wasn't like he was some incredible manwhore. He had one truly failed marriage, one that was ill-advised, and one that he didn't know about. I hated that of all the cool quirks Ross had, this became one of his essential characteristics. (D'oh, I wrote all that and now I see that kat_may wrote something similar...I guess I'll leave mine, too).

Okay, this is almost a question, but it always bugged me. When Monica is dancing around with the turkey on her head and Chandler says he loves her, that's supposedly the first time and their relationship is still a secret, right? So why in the reveal episode (to everyone but Ross) do they say it (again?) for "the first time". I thought I saw the episodes out of order at first, but that doesn't make sense. Can someone help me out?

I always wondered that, too, sparklebunny27. I asked about it in the old thread and was told that, in the one with the turkey, since after Chandler said it, he acted like he didn't mean it and took it back, so it didn't count. And since he meant it in the reveal episode, they assume that was the real "first time" he said it. Something like that. That's something that bugged me a lot, too.

sparklebunny - Chandler said "I love you" when Monica was dancing around with the turkey on her head, but he took it back. She didn't say it to him because she was so surprised he said it and when she questioned what he said started saying he didn't say anything.

So in "The One Where Everyone Finds Out" when she hears him tell Phoebe that he can't sleep with her because he's in love with Monica, it is the first time that he says it with the purpose of saying it, like he's not scared to say it because he knows it's true and he's really ready to admit that he's in love. I think that's why it's the "first time" and it is the first time that Monica says she loves him.

sparklebunny27, I'm bothered by that turkey scene for another reason. The whole episode takes place after everyone has eaten Thanksgiving dinner and they are really full. Why does Monica have an entire raw turkey that she can put on her head? Who makes Thanksgiving dinner and then has a second thawed raw turkey on hand for dancing in?

And vegetarian Pheobe was the only one who could identify the Salami Buddy wedding present that the Tribbianis gave to Monica and Chandler.

Not to mention - a raw turkey on your head? That's just begging for salmonella poisoning.

In The One With Ross' Tan (which I hated. It was like the writers had eaten too many donuts), why did Ross just stand there like an imbecile while he was spray-tanned on the same side again and again? It is just so out of character for him to be so moronic.

The true mother of all Friends inconsistancies, IMO, is "When did Rachel first meet Chandler?"

Lets see shall we:

1st one is the very first episode where it is made absolutely crystal clear that Rachel is meeting Phoebe, Chandler and Joey for the very first time, as Monica introduces her to everyone in a manner that says "these are clearly people she has never met". Okay, not a problem, but then we start getting into murkiness in the same season.

2nd one comes in an epsiode where I forget the title off hand, but Rachel says when she first met Chandler she thought he was gay, but then when Chandler spent Phoebe's birthday talking to her (Rachel's) breasts she figured out that he wasn't. This naturally would put Phoebe's birthday sometime between the piolt (assuming the piolt shares the same time frame as the rest of the season, which in other seasons the first episode doesn't normally) and that particular episode. Well fast forward a few months and we are celebrating Phoebe's birthday in the same season, and we assume that the entire season has been running in real time so did Rachel know at least Phoebe and Chandler before her wedding day?

3rd one is in TOW The Flashbacks where we see an engaged Rachel wander into the bar that will become Central Perk with her girls from Long Island. Chandler, playing pool, overhears Rachel wanting to have one more "stupid fling" before getting married tries to make a play and fails miserably, leading Monica to reconize her old HS friend. While that Rachel probably would be that shallow to not reconize Chandler (and even a year later when he doesn't have a goatee and had whatever that hair do Matthew Perry was doing back in Season 1) it appears that she has never seen this man in her life.

4th, and the final time, the one that they kept for the rest of the rung is TOW All The Thanksgivings where Rachel meets Chandler when Ross brings him to Thanksgiving.

Again, granted Rachel was shallow enough to not remember people she met once or twice, it is still a major inconsistancy with the show, and is a prime example of the show's writers, especially in later years, to let facts in past shows be damned and write whats funny to them.

And what about the flashback episode in Season 10 when Rachel & Monica went to a party at Ross & Chandler's college? She had a conversation with him, just the two of them!

The whole Rachel/Chandler thing just doesn't make any sense. Unfortunately, continuity is not one of the Friends' writers strong suits, which is highly irritating for us fans.

Thats what I meant by the fact that the Thanksgiving episode would ultimatly be the final "first meeting" point. The flashback that you are referring to happens after that episode, both Monica and Rachel refer back to the incidents shown in the first Geller Thanksgiving flashback.

And why did Rachel spend those Thanksgivings with the Gellers anyway? She had her own family in town.

You know what, EXCELLENT POINT!

In fact, didn't her family go to Vail, Colorado every Thanksgiving? (Shoop, shoop, shoop)

It always bugged me that in "TOW Ross and Rachel...You Know", Rachel tells Ross that she didn't want to wear her glasses on their first date (at a subtitled movie). But to my recollection we never once see Rachel wearing glasses in the entire series either before or after that episode, and we know that she has an issue with things being put in her eyes so she doesn't have contacts either.

Eh, have we ever seen Rachel do anything that would require glasses for far-sightedness? Which is what you'd wear glasses to a movie with subtitiles for. For the most part, she never drives, and the majority of her things are close to her.

No harm, no foul.

SteveJRogers, I think you mean near-sighted - speaking as one who wore glasses to see far away . . . I never needed them until I started driving.

I agree with the heart of your post, though, if she could see fine close-up, she might not have worn them very often.

TOW Rachel Smokes...

Joey and the one kid are up against Ben and the other guy for the commercial. And they're the only people left. Joey doesn't get it and then Ross says Ben didn't either. So no one got the commercial?

Is that normal for a commercial like that? For no one to get it.

Joey got the commercial, but he kept screwing up the lines so he was fired. I think the actor that was paired with Ben was then hired to play the dad in the commercial.

I thought that Joey didn't get the commercial, but that he was screwing up his final audition. Hmm, I must have missed something. Thanks.

Not when it comes to grooming matters (think of his teeth in the Missy Pyle episode, or his hair... well, anytime).

The when-did-Rachel-meet-Chandler thing doesn't bother me. They could have met at Thanksgiving twice and made out at college once and not remembered one another. At the Thanksgivings, they were each there with their own friend and hardly noticed each other. At college, it was dark and they were probably drunk. (I don't remember everyone I made out with in situations like that!) When they met in the one with the bar, I think they probably remembered one another later (in the pilot) but it didn't occur to them to say so since they hardly knew one another when being introduced. They'd intersected several times but never really met.

But then, I'm great at justifying these things for humor's sake.

No, Rachel knew from Monica that Chandler had called her fat, and that was why Monica lost all the weight. That was a major lifestyle change, and Rachel knew that Monica really wanted to get back at him. If that weren't memorable enough, Monica then sliced Chandler's toe off, requiring a trip to the hospital. Why on earth wouldn't Rachel remember THAT years later? It's also a good point that Rachel should have been with her family in Vail, not spending Thanskgiving with Mon two years in a row.

Chandler doesn't exactly have a forgettable John Smith name either. Rachel's a damned idiot if she can't recall that Thanksgiving, and Chandler's a damned fool not to have tried jogging her memory in the Flashback when he dropped his pool ball. "Hey, you remember me? We had Thanksgiving together once, until Mon sliced my toe off." Only, you know, funnier and Chandler-esque. It's just screwed up. Instead of this crap, couldn't the writers have spent any one of the flashbacks showing us what Joey and Phoebe were doing back in the 80s, huh?

That drives me mad! I've heard it explained away due to Rachel being so shallow she would have forgotten him, but after Monica was so affected by his "fat" comments, I think she might have remembered (although I'm not too sure about that history of Monica and Chandler either, to be honest). If Rachel and Chandler had already had Thanksgivings together, shouldn't Monica have acknowledged that when she introduced them in the first episode (by saying, "I think you've met Chandler"/"You remember Chandler?")?

I didn't like that Monica's crush on Chandler was written into the flashbacks, and him being her motivation for losing weight. I don't think this contradicted any other information about Monica's weight loss, but it felt like we were unnecessarily being shown that Monica and Chandler were always meant to be together. I really liked that they had been purely platonic friends for so long. Leave the long history of unrequited love to Ross and Rachel!

As long as we're on the subject, and because I'm going to say it sooner or later, Monica's weight stuff? Makes zero sense. I feel like it's a huge character inconsistency to begin with (because she's so obsessively clean and controlling and "fat Monica" is essentially a human pig, slovenlyness included). But even putting that aside, people do not go from being fat Monica sized to being skinny Monica sized. And they definitely don't do it and work as a chef.

And in a year's time without some form of plastic surgery to get rid of all the spare skin. I'm right there with you on that one Chunky

Actually...less then a year since Mon and Rachel went to that college party sometime after Thanksgiving and she was still FatMonica. Although I guess you could say she'd started losing weight just hadn't lost a noticeable amount yet.

Actually it was six months. The Prom Video episode occurred in May, between the Thanksgiving 1987 (Chandler called her fat) and Thanksgiving 1988 (Chandler lost his toe). Monica was still fat in the prom video.

And, on that note while this is not necessarily a nitpick, it still bugs me. Yes, Monica was overweight, but she was not sooo terribly huge. I am a slender person, but after a while, some of the fat jokes really grated on me.

Ok, THIS drives me nuts. The whole "Chandler can't cry" episode. Yes he CAN and he DOES. He gets choked up all over the place in the first season and throughout the run of the show.

1. When Phoebe gets a bike "And Chandler's about to cry"
2. When he breaks up with Phoebe and she yells at him to go see strippers "I'm sorry" *hugs*
3. When he proposed to Monica on the floor of the apartment.

I KNOW there are more episodes where he cries. This drives me INSANE.

Also I get the feeling Chandler never hated dogs... I think there was an episode where he liked dogs. And that drives me nuts.

To be fair, points one and three in your post about Chandler were AFTER it'd been revealed he could actually cry as they were middle of seventh, end of sixth respectively.

The Chandler not hating dogs...maybe you're thinking of the episode where he agrees to babysit three dogs with Monica and Phoebe reveals it's actually the triplets. That always drove me crazy. That Thanksgiving one about the dogs was so incredibly lame aside from the states game.

This isn't a nitpick about continuity in the writing, but it's something the writers flubbed and it bugs me whenever I see it. In TOW the East German Laundry Detergent, Monica meets Bob, who she believes to be Angela's brother, and the following dialogue is exchanged:

Monica: (to Angela and Bob) So, where did you guys grow up?
Angela: Brooklyn Heights.
Bob: Cleveland.
Monica: (confused) How, how did that happen?

It's played as if this is supposed to be Monica's first clue that Bob and Angela aren't really related. The problem, however, is that there is a Brooklyn Heights in Cleveland, so the joke doesn't really follow. As worded, it's quite possible that Bob and Angela are related, and therefore Monica's confusion is unfounded.

A very small nit in the overall scheme of things, but a Buckeye's got to vent!

I see your point, but I think someone like Monica, who grew up on Long Island and now lives in Manhattan, most likely does not know a Brooklyn Heights exists in Cleveland (I've lived in the NYC area all my life and I had no idea, and one of my best friends is from Cleveland), so if someone says he/she grew up in Brooklyn Heights, Monica is automatically going to assume he/she means Brooklyn Heights in Brooklyn, NYC. I think this is probably a case of the writers not being aware that a Brooklyn Heights exists in Cleveland.

One thing that always bugged me...in the episode where Chandler hates dogs, it was also revealed that Ross hates ice cream. He states that "it's too cold!". However, in the episode where he and Rachel go on a break, when she suggests the break he misunderstands and thinks she means a break from arguing, and suggests that they go get some frozen yogurt. If Ross hates ice cream because it's too cold, wouldn't he also hate frozen yogurt???

4. He and the other guys cried after the vet got Emily's ring back from the duck.

Also, we see Ross eat ice-cream in season two, as part of the montage of things that he does with Marcel when they're re-united for a day (TO After the Superbowl Part 2?). Ross is eating an ice-cream cone, then Marcel steals it away from him while he's not looking.

Ross was also eating ice cream with Elizabeth when they were confronted by Judgey von Holier-Than-Thou and he discovered that the relationship wasn't frowned upon but against policy.

I don't know if this really qualifies as a nitpick, and I hesitate to mention it because it's one of my favorite episode/mini-storyline, but even though I love it I just can't buy Janice's stupidity when Chandler "goes" to Yemen. It's bad enough that she doesn't realize something is going on when he "suddenly remembers" that he has to leave the next day, and when none of his best friends, including his roomate for God's sake, know or care about it, but they really pushed it too far with some of Chandler's quotes:

"[I'll be gone] until we find an energy source to replace fuel."

and

"15 Yemen Road, Yemen."

And af this wasn't bad enough, when she sleeps with Ross in the next season she still believes that he lives there, and yet one season later she miraculously realized he lied to her, and doesn't mind at all that he did or that Ross or any of the others never told her the truth. Janice had a lot of flaws, but she wasn't a moron.

As for a "real" nitpick: so Phoebe's step-dad was in jail when she got married, but why couldn't her real father walk her down the aisle? Where did he disappear to after they first made made contact? And while I'm at it, where the hell did her birth mother go after she tried to convince her not to be a sugorrate mother? Why wasn't she at the wedding? And why weren't Frank Jr. and his family there as well? At least they gave us closure on her grandmother, but if they wanted her to be family-less, they shouldn't have introduced so many new family members.

While I can't vouch for all the other instances, this one can be explained away simply based on frozen yogurt being the first thing that comes to mind. "Lets get some frozen yougurt or something..." since it was mid-evening and a good place to simmer down after arguing is a ice cream shop or something.



Can be explained away with "What you want them to travel, in a SNOW STORM TO New York City at the LAST MINUTE?" Frank & Alice live upstate somewhere, presumeably north of Westchester/Rockland/Orange county and Phoebe Sr. lives out on Long Island. I don't see how they would be able to make it in time for the inpromteau wedding. That would have been unrealistic, unless you want them to still be in the City for the rehearsal dinner.

By the way, I believe Terri Garr flat out didn't want to do the show anymore and that is why you never saw Phoebe Sr. anymore after the puppy episdoe.

I just spend a large amount of time wondering where the hell that window that Monica threw the basketball out of and Rachel's pigeon flew into above the sink leads to. Especially because, when you see them out in the hall, there's a great big WALL where that window is supposed to be. Where is that window!?

Not to mention - the whole 'Joey Doesn't Share Food!' thing. He totally does. He's shared his sandwhich, his jar of jam, Chandler and Rachel's stolen cheesecake ... etc.

mistiec you mentioning the window made me think of another window nitpick I had.

In the episode where someone keeps looking into Monica's apartment and everyone gets upset, Joey said that she was looking at him earlier when he was in his underwear. I can't remember off the top of my head if he said he was in his apartment or not, but I'm pretty sure I remember it being implied. How could that person have looked into both apartments? They are across the hall from each other so there's no way that is possible.

Of course I could be crazy and it was never implied that she was looking into the guy's apartment and my whole issue with this is over nothing.

-Umm, the wall and the window do not match up, so it is a functional window. Not sure what you mean with the hallway wall? The wall is not inside the apartment. Could be a funky old school style town house or something that is structered in such a way.

-Could just have been a social date thing. I mean it is annoying when someone goes for your food either without asking, or implying that they would rather have what you are having.

To clarify, I don't think that at that time Terri Garr was able to be on Friends anymore. She has M.S., and I believe that it had flared up badly at that time. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I saw her, aside from a documentary on M.S. at least a year ago.

ETA: Ok, this may be a little bit my bad, she has a number of listings on IMDB since that time, but I suppose she could have been having exacerbations. Anyway, carry on.

Do the writers of a soap opera really have enough power to write out a star? Especially one highlighted in Soap Opera Digest as an up and comer (not that that really means anything in the grand scheme of things, but someone getting press is always a good thing to shows). It just seems that a contract of sorts would've been signed and it wouldn't have been THAT easy to write him out of the show.

Also because I'm feeling cranky and I dislike the coma guy b-plot a lot, wouldn't he have had identification on him when he got hit by the ambulance and as a result his chart would be at the foot of his bed with his name on it so the girls wouldn't be making up names for him?