Andrew Bullock asks: does the hit show stand the test of time?

Friends at 20

Everyone on the planet is reminiscing about how Friends is reaching its 20th anniversary. I was obsessed with it! But while everyone looks on it with fondness, I’m going to highlight something the show was always appalling at. A factor we would always overlook because the show was so wonderful. Time!

Aside from chunky TVs and massive house phones, the show has survived the ageing process so far. But what was always infuriating to me was how it dealt with actual time. Each season was supposed to take place over the course of a year, yet was actually shot between September and May. Yet things that took place in this time frame often didn’t match up.

Birthdays always got my goat too

For example, the biggest case of apparent time travel was Rachel’s pregnancy. In the episode The One With The Cheap Wedding Dress, Monica tells the woman who she fights over a dress for that she and Chandler are getting married in May. We learn, in The One With The Videotape (which I suppose today would be The One With The iPhone Recording), that Rachel and Ross conceived Emma six weeks prior to the wedding. So, the law of biology tells us that Rachel should have given birth around Christmas.

But the season 8 Christmas episode sees Phoebe explain to Rachel that during the fourth month of pregnancy, she is likely to be feeling especially horny. So where did five months of Rachel’s pregnancy vanish to?

Rachel eventually goes into labour in The One Where Rachel Is Late, yet states it’s 100 degrees outside. And the end of the season was typically set in the spring/summer. So, theoretically, Rachel’s gestational period is about 15 months. Poor girl.

Birthdays always got my goat too. Rachel’s seemed to skip around all over the place. In seasons 1 and 2, her birthday would be at the end of the season. Again, this ties in with the fact that the show would typically end its season in May. When Gunther asks her when her birthday is in season 4, she says May 5th. Yet, in later episodes, her birthday takes place in January (The One With Phoebe’s Rats) and February (The One Where They All Turn Thirty). In season 1, Phoebe celebrates her birthday in February (The One With Two Parts), but in The One With Phoebe’s Birthday Dinner, she goes out to celebrate on Halloween and, in The One Where They All Turn Thirty, they are celebrating her 30th outside in short sleeves. Ross states in season 4 that his birthday is in December, yet in season 9 tells Joey it’s in October. When is it?

This leads on to the age of the friends. Monica states in season 1 that she is 26, yet Rachel turns 30 in season 7 – six years later. She and Monica are the same age. Two years seem to have slipped through the cracks here. Ross states, in The One Where Monica And Richard Are Friends, that he doesn’t want chocolate milk because he is 29. However, at the start of season 5, a year and a half later, he’s devastated that he will be divorced twice before turning 30. I could go on. But I won’t.

Because Friends is the reason I discovered Pottery Barn.

Andrew’s blog can be read at drewjbullock.wordpress.com