Friends: 10 Most Messed Up Episodes
Who knew the Friends writers liked incest stories so much?
Friends is without a doubt one of the most famous, most iconic, and most popular shows in the history of TV. It captivated an entire generation for ten years, and has since been a constant on TV with reruns for almost two further decades.
It's relatable, for the most part the six main characters are incredibly loveable, and it is the epitome of easy watching. You could load up Netflix and just watch Friends for hours on end, or you could pick up on any episode and enjoy it without having to catch up with any complicated previous narratives.
However, it's not all sunshine and sarcasm. There are a handful of episodes that can be jarring and not in line with the usual fun of the show. Sometimes the writers took the group of six, or one or two of them in particular, and threw them into situations you have to question.
Whether it was a toxic relationship, questionably young dating partners, or straight-up incest, Friends storylines could get seriously messed up. It may be that these things weren't so strange in the '90s, but looking back now, you have to wonder what on Earth the writers were thinking.
10. The One With The Free Porn (S4 E17)
Chandler and Joey never made it a secret how much they enjoyed pornography over the years. They were both adults, and perfectly within their rights to enjoy such material, but there is a time and a place for this, and one episode threw all that out the window.
During the short time the pair lived in Apartment 20, one day saw porn randomly turn up on their TV. They hadn’t paid for it, it was just there. Mr. Treager told them it happened to him once, and seeing the regret on his face from turning it off and losing it forever, Joey and Chandler vowed never to do the same.
For the next few days there was porn on the TV 24/7. Regardless of who came round, whether they were eating dinner, or any other occasion. If you were round Joey and Chandler’s, you were watching porn. It was even on in the background when Emily told Ross that she loved him.
Yes, this episode was back in a time when there weren’t literally countless websites to peruse at their fingertips, but were these two truly so desperate and so obsessed with porn that they would let it warp their realities and let it control their lives so much?