Why It's Fashionable To Hate Friends Now

5. The Fat Shaming

For the flash-back (and one what if) episodes of Friends, there's nothing funnier than the idea that Monica - a slim, beautiful woman - was once overweight. And look, when she dances she wobbles! That bit was so hysterically funny to some executive or other that they ended one episode with her dancing to some techno while eating a pastry. Nuanced comedy this was not.

And the fat shaming comments are correct: the show DOES have a problem with fat people. Even though the story of how Monica loses weight to get vengeance on Chandler - the ultimate fat shamer - is designed to make Chandler the bad guy, there are repeated gags at the expense of her being fat as a child. It comes up a lot, and usually in a way that makes her the over-sized butt of the joke.

Hell, if the show was accurate, Joey's over-eating would have made him hugely obese, but this was a world governed by beauty, so there was no way they'd make one of their own a fatty.