10 Worst Friends Characters Who Appeared After Season 1

They'll be there for you. Unfortunately.

Friends Janine
NBC

For a show that was ostensibly about celebrating the joys of friendship, Friends had more than its fair share of a**holes.

Ever since season one introduced the toxic tag team of Pablo and Barry - two very different men who shared the same love-rat mentality - Friends wasn't shy about filling its world with a cast of characters who ranged from irritating to downright intolerable. From slimy exes to sisters from Hell, the Friends crew had to contend with a Who's Who of human crap over the course of the show. (And yes, that line is absolutely stolen from Phoebe).

Having said that, not all the characters on this list are here because they're bad people - some are instead here simply because they were badly written.

Don't get your writer wrong, Friends fully deserves its legendary status as one of the greatest shows in the history of television. Still, the truth is that this juggernaut of a series wasn't flawlessly perfect, and some of its characters suffered from poor writing that gave them (and the audience members who liked them) short shrift.

Characters such as...

10. Kathy

Friends Janine
WB

Some people paint Kathy as nothing more than the harlot who almost broke up TV's greatest bromance, but we beg to differ.

One thing that Kathy-bashers seem to forget is that Chandler was just as into her as she was into him - arguably even more so, as seen by the latter risking life and limb in New York traffic just to say "hello" to her. Also, she was willing to deny her feelings and walk away in order to save Joey and Chandler's friendship - hardly the actions of an incorrigble tart.

Yet when the time came for her and Chandler to break up, that's basically what she became. After one big fight, Kathy immediately hooked up with her theatre co-star and that was that.

It was an abrupt ending to Kathy's time in Friends, and it felt like the writers had written themselves into a corner with her. Once the love-triangle was resolved, it seemed like the powers that be had no idea what to do with Kathy and decided to simply write her off as quickly as possible.

Having Kathy cheat on Chandler over a single fight never rang true with the show's previous depiction of her, and felt like a betrayal of the audience's investment into their relationship.

And speaking of Chandler's relationship troubles...

In this post: 
Friends
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Hello! My name's Iain Tayor. I write about video games, wrestling and comic books, and I apparently can't figure out how to set my profile picture correctly.