The 25 Most Essential ‘Friends’ Episodes to Watch on HBO Max
Friends is an iconic TV show for a reason, but what are its best episodes? What are the most essential episodes to understand and encapsulate what makes Friends so great? That’s no easy task, but we were up to the challenge.
With all 10 seasons of Friends now streaming on the newly launched streaming service HBO Max, now feels like as good a time as any to look back on the best episodes of the Emmy-winning series. Whether you watched it for the laughs, the tears, or the will they/won’t they of Ross and Rachel, Friends really does have something for everyone.
The One with the Blackout
Season 1, Episode 7
This episode features everything that was so great about early Friends — a big ensemble episode, Phoebe’s (Lisa Kudrow) songs, angsty Ross (David Schwimmer) — and adds in Chandler (Matthew Perry) off on perhaps the greatest solo side plot of the show’s entire run. “Gum would be perfection.”
The One with All the Poker
Season 1, Episode 18
A personal favorite, this episode combines some of the best one-liners (“The fifth dentist caved and now they’re all recommending Trident?” and “Phoebe just threw away two jacks because they didn’t look happy”) with some great stuff between Ross and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), back when people were still super into Ross and Rachel. Also, it introduces the running gag of how competitive Monica (Courteney Cox) can be.
The One Where Rachel Finds Out
Season 1, Episode 24
Friends definitely knew how to do cliffhangers and Rachel rushing to the airport to greet Ross after finding out he has feelings for her, only to see him kissing another woman was one of the best.
The One with Ross’s New Girlfriend
Season 2, Episode 1
The opening scene where Rachel breaks it to the gang about Julie (Lauren Tom) is some of Aniston’s funniest work in all 10 seasons. “Isn’t that just kick-you-in-the-crotch, spit-on-your-neck fantastic?” There are also two really solid side plots — Phoebe cutting Monica’s hair to look like Dudley Moore instead of Demi Moore and Joey (Matt LeBlanc) finding out he’s been being molested by his tailor for years. Which is not funny, of course, but… it’s funny on the show. “That’s how they do pants!”
The One Where Ross Finds Out
Season 2, Episode 7
Early Friends wrote really great stuff for Aniston and Schwimmer, not least of which is when Ross gets Rachel’s drunken answering machine message where she tells him she’s over him. “Over me? When were you… under me?”
The One with the Prom Video
Season 2, Episode 14
Again with the Ross-Rachel stuff, but it was just so good in the early seasons! This one also introduced the great use of flashbacks on the show. “He’s her lobster!”
The One Where No One’s Ready
Season 3, Episode 2
Bottle episodes can sometimes force TV shows to do some of their best work because the stories are contained, there are no recurring characters or guest stars to muddy things up and the writers are able to just drill the show down to its most basic elements. This is one of the greatest bottle episodes in sitcom TV history.
The One with the Football
Season 3, Episode 9
Another personal favorite, this is the episode that launched Friends’ string of excellent Thanksgiving fare. Sure, Season 1 had the one where Underdog got away, but then Season 2 skipped Thanksgiving. This is the one that started the wonderful Turkey Day tradition.
The One Where Monica and Richard Are Just Friends
Season 3, Episode 13
This one is on here mostly because it features one of the best C-plots of the entire series when Rachel and Joe read each other’s favorite books, Little Women and The Shining, respectively. “Do you want to put the book in the freezer?”
The One with Chandler in a Box
Season 4, Episode 8
Chandler kisses Joey’s girlfriend and must spend Thanksgiving in a giant box as punishment, while Monica invites Richard’s son (a young Michael Vartan!) to dinner as her date. It all leads to one of Monica’s greatest rants ever on the show. “Fine, fine, judge all you want. But — married a lesbian, left a man at the altar, fell in love with a gay ice dancer, threw a girl’s wooden leg in a fire, live in a box!”
The One with the Embryos
Season 4, Episode 12
This is a strong contender for the all-time greatest Friends episode. If the title has you confused, this is the one where Chandler, Joey, Monica, and Rachel play Ross’ homemade trivia game and end up swapping apartments. It is some of the best comedy writing TV has ever seen, plus the added bonus that we all get to cry a little at the end when Phoebe stops everyone fighting by announcing that she’s pregnant.
The One with Ross’s Wedding
Season 4, Episode 23/24
This one isn’t so much hilarious as it is important in the Friends pantheon. Rachel is still in love with Ross but makes the very mature decision not to ruin his wedding to Emily (Helen Baxendale) by telling him, only to have him say her name at the altar. It’s a great cliffhanger that then, unfortunately, sent Ross on a horrible trajectory that the character never really recovered from. But also, Monica and Chandler sleep together! So this is definitely the turning point where Ross-Rachel lost their Friends couple crown to Monica-Chandler.
The One with the Kips
Season 5, Episode 5
This episode kicked off one of the best running plots of the fifth season: Everyone finding out about Monica and Chandler. Joey putting it all together over Monica’s off-hand comment about an eyelash curler and then starting to freak out as Chandler tackles him into the bedroom is some delightful physical comedy on the parts of LeBlanc and Perry. This episode also hits a good emotional beat when Emily asks Ross not to be friends with Rachel anymore, which has Rachel worried she’ll be phased out of the group.
The One with All the Thanksgivings
Season 5, Episode 8
This episode is vintage Friends silliness, flashing back to everyone’s worst Thanksgivings. It also features one of LeBlanc’s greatest comedic moments of the show when he sees Monica wearing a turkey on her head and loses his ever-loving mind.
The One Where Everybody Finds Out
Season 5, Episode 14
Phoebe and Chandler’s game of sexual chicken was absolutely the right way to play this scenario out, especially because it culminates in him blurting out “Because I’m in love with Monica!”, which is a heart-stopping moment. Also, Ross spying Chandler having sex with Monica from the apartment across the alley is terrific: “GET OFF MY SISTER!”
The One Where Ross Got High
Season 6, Episode 9
Turns out the Gellar parents don’t like Chandler because Ross told them back in college that Chandler was a pothead to cover up for his own drug experimentation. Ha! And also, it’s the infamous trifle debacle.
The One with the Proposal
Season 6, Episode 24/25
This one is full of sitcom “misunderstandings,” but it’s such an emotional payoff that the contrivances can be overlooked. If you aren’t crying along with Monica as she proposes to Chandler then you don’t even have a heart. “There’s a reason girls don’t do this!”
The One Where Chandler Doesn’t Like Dogs
Season 7, Episode 8
This is another weirdly personal one, but the C-plot where Ross is obsessed with naming all 50 states took over my group of my friends for the couple weeks immediately following this episode. And there’s an especially good throwaway joke where Joey thinks there are 56 states.
The One with Monica and Chandler’s Wedding
Season 7, Episode 23/24
This is another episode that’s more important than it is super funny. It’s sort of the last episode before the show took a bit of a downturn for the final three seasons. The mystery pregnancy storyline was a good plot and cliffhanger, until (like with Ross after his wedding) the show completely mismanaged most of Rachel’s storyline in the final three seasons.
The One with the Secret Closet
Season 8, Episode 14
Season 8 was not exactly rife with strong episodes and while the Joey-Rachel-Ross stuff in this one is not great, the side plots of Monica making sex noises during massages and Chandler becoming obsessed with finding out what’s in Monica’s secret closet are both very solid.
The One with the Fertility Test
Season 9, Episode 21
One of the best things Friends did in the later seasons was giving Monica and Chandler fertility problems. The show managed to explore that topic without being flippant and found some really great emotional moments, like in this episode where they find out they just aren’t going to be able to conceive naturally.
The One with the Late Thanksgiving
Season 10, Episode 8
The final Friends Thanksgiving episode is not the show’s strongest Turkey Day entry, but it does feature another big emotional payoff in the Monica-Chandler saga — they find out a woman in Ohio has picked them to adopt her baby.
The One with Phoebe’s Wedding
Season 10, Episode 12
Thank goodness the show decided to bring in an outsider for Phoebe to end up with rather than having some contrived romance between her and Joey — and Paul Rudd was a great choice for said outsider. Their snowy wedding outside Central Perk is one of the highlights of the final season.
The Last One
Season 10, Episode 17/18
You gotta end a binge with the series finale, which was generally a really solid goodbye for the series. By this point, did anybody really care about Ross and Rachel? Probably not, but you knew they were going to end up together, so you just have to lump it with that storyline. But the final scene of the friends leaving Monica’s apartment together is a beautiful way to cap off the show.
