10 Major Flaws in ‘Friends’ That Are More Noticeable Now

“I’ll be there for you” is the message of Friends theme song, but 30 years after the show first aired there are some noticeable flaws that make it seem as though that may not entirely be the case.

Sure, we all still love the hit 90s sitcom, but a lot can change in 30 years, and on a second look, fans have found lots to critique within the show. It’s not just plot holes and continuity errors, there are some bigger problems that are hard to look over when rewatching the series, no matter how nostalgic it may be.

10 Plot Holes

One can’t talk about the flaws in Friends without mentioning the many plot holes and inconsistencies throughout it. Of course, any show will suffer from the occasional plot hole, but Friends has a lot of them. One thing that has always stood out was the fact that in the pilot episode, Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) supposedly met everyone (except Monica (Courteney Cox) and Ross (David Schwimmer)) for the first time.

Yet, in the Season 3 episode “The One with the Flashback”, we see that she met Chandler (Matthew Perry) a year before the pilot episode. It’s a total oversight by the showrunners, and even though it made for a funny episode, it’s maddening to watch. Other details such as inconsistent birthdays, ages, and a Bruce Willis cameo create major holes in the Friends universe.

9 Joey’s Character Downfall

Another flaw of the show that many have pointed out is how Joey’s (Matt LeBlanc) character changed throughout the series. When we first meet Joey he’s extremely charismatic and charming. He always has a date, and he’s always flirting.

But as the show goes on, Joey gets progressively dumber. Granted, Joey was never the smartest guy, but the show eventually made it seem as though he literally had nothing in his brain. He started not even feeling like himself. He suddenly didn’t know what an Adam’s Apple was, referring to it as a “Joey’s Apple”, and claimed not to know how to use air quotes. It was not at all the suave ladies’ man we met in the early seasons, and it’s one of the more bizarre choices the show made.

8 Joey’s Treatment of Women

Speaking of Joey, his treatment of women has always been a flaw of the show, but looking at it through today’s lens really brings new attention to just how problematic a partner he was. In every episode he was taking home someone new, and while that in itself is not problematic so long as both parties are consenting, what is problematic is how he treated them the next day. He would make these women feel as though he was falling in love with them, and that he really wanted something with them just to get them into bed, and then the next morning he would get Chandler to let them down for him. He often never calls again, something we learn from the times he runs into past lovers throughout the show.

Not to mention, Joey is always objectifying women. He’s always checking them out and having lewd thoughts, sometimes even voicing said thoughts out loud to his friends. Sure, he’s charming, and he has a way with flirting that makes the ladies swoon, but let’s face it, Joey, as loveable as he is, is kind of a pig!

7 Ross is a Cheater

Something nobody talks about enough is how Ross is a cheater. A serial cheater at that. He cheats on Julie (Lauren Tom) and Bonnie (Christine Taylor) by kissing Rachel while he’s dating them, but it’s never pointed out as something bad because it’s Rachel he cheated with.

Yet, when Carol (Jane Sibbett) cheated on him, he never got over it, and still brought it up, even when he was in a relationship himself. It’s a total double standard, and yet it’s never brought up because most love him and Rachel together, and see any love interest in between as nothing but a temporary roadblock. But I’ll say it, Julie and Bonnie didn’t deserve that, Ross. Shame on you!

6 Unrealistic Financial Situation

This is a topic that is brought up a lot nowadays and for good reason: how the heck were the friends affording their apartments? Especially in those early seasons when none of them were working particularly flashy jobs. Sure, they all have roommates, but there are still some pretty swanky apartments in Manhattan, no less. By the end of the show, it makes more sense for them to be living in the apartments they do, but in the early seasons, they make a lot of mentions of barely scraping by, so how the heck are they affording such nice apartments?

The only one who has a stable and well-paying job all throughout the show is Chandler, as he is in IT and is said to make a good amount of money. But Rachel takes a while to get high in the ranks of fashion executive, Ross doesn’t become a paleontology professor until midway through the show, Monica is often bouncing between chef jobs, Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) is a masseuse, and it takes a bit for Joey to get a steady acting gig that pays him well. None of this adds up to the sort of dream life laid out for them on the show.

5 Everyone is a Stereotype

A minor detail that may seem easy to overlook, is actually really noticeable on a rewatch, especially nowadays when shows and movies take pride in creating well-fleshed out and dynamic characters. But all the characters on Friends fit into a stereotype of some sort.

Rachel is the popular one, Joey is the flirt, Ross is the nerd, Chandler is the funny one, Monica is the detail-oriented one, and Phoebe is the black sheep. This, of course, makes for an interesting dynamic between a friend group, especially on a sitcom, but it also means that these characters are painfully stuck in a box and don’t grow out of it all that much. That’s not to say the characters in Friends had no growth at all. That would be unfair, but by the end of the show, they sort of deep dived into the stereotypes of each character and really honed in.

4 Fatphobic Jokes

One of the running “jokes” in Friends is that Monica used to be overweight. It’s consistently brought up by her friends and family, but never in a praising way, always in a negative way, or as a way to tease her. Flashbacks often depict a younger Monica, in which actress Courteney Cox donned a “fatsuit” and was the butt of the joke for the episode. In “The One with the Prom Video”, Joey quips “That girl ate Monica!”

While these jokes may have been funny at the time, they’ve aged so poorly now, and are just cruel to watch. Especially when we see flashbacks of Monica deciding she needs to lose weight because Chandler (who she had been crushing on as a teenager) called her fat. And hey, if Monica is the one making the jokes, then whatever, they are her jokes to tell, it’s her life and her body. But coming from her friends and family, the ones that are meant to love and support her? It’s hard to watch.

3 Sexist and Misogynistic Storylines

Friends has some storylines that have not aged well, but there are some that stick out for being particularly sexist and misogynistic, that make fans turn up their noses. Conveniently, a few have to do with Ross. One example is the episode “The One with the Metaphorical Tunnel” in which Ross gets uncomfortable because his son wants to play with a Barbie doll. He tries to force him to instead pick up a GI Joe doll, but it’s to no avail and Ross is left defeated and strangely uncomfortable throughout the episode at the idea of his toddler son playing with a Barbie.

This weird trend continues later in the series after he and Rachel have a baby together and decide to hire a nanny. One of the applicants is a man named Sandy (Freddie Prinze Jr.). He’s absolutely perfect for the job, he has a list of referrals, he’s great with Emma, and he wins Rachel over immediately. But Ross refuses to hire a male nanny, no matter how right he is for the job.

2 How the Show Handled Chandler’s Dad

From the beginning of the show, we know that Chandler has a difficult and estranged relationship with both of his parents. He repeatedly makes comments and jokes (because Chandler’s coping mechanism is humor) about how his father had an affair with the pool boy. In Season 7, we finally meet Chandler’s dad when he and Monica go to his dad’s drag show “Helena Handbasket” with a wedding invite. When they arrive, we learn that Chandler’s father is not only a drag queen, but a transgender woman (co-creator Marta Kauffman has confirmed this, and thus I will be going by her word). Unfortunately, the show doesn’t even remotely handle this storyline right. She is never once referred to by her pronouns (something Kauffman has since apologized for) and she was played by Kathleen Turner, a woman, yet the character was meant to be a transgender woman, and should have been played by one.

It was all in all a messy storyline that had the potential to really break barriers on mainstream television had it been handled right. Turner, who portrayed the character, said she likely wouldn’t take the role today, and that there was never any consideration from the showrunners about hiring a transgender person or drag queen. Yikes.

1 Lack of Diversity

The biggest flaw of Friends is the lack of diversity among the main characters. Every character in the core group is white, and there are rarely any people of color brought in as guest stars either. There’s Julie and Charlie (Aisha Tyler), and they’re great, and bring a nice breath of fresh air to the show, but they don’t stick around for long, and they’re not a part of the core cast. It was the 90s, and unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of diversity among the casts in shows at that time, but it doesn’t make it any less disappointing.

There are some moments of diversity in other aspects. For instance, Monica and Ross are Jewish, and the show aired the first lesbian wedding on network television. So, yes, there are moments, but they’re few and far between and overall, for a show that spans 10 seasons, the lack of much diversity is a huge flaw that hangs over the show. In a 2022 interview with LA Times, Marta Kauffman shared her remorse for not including more diversity within the series. “I’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years. Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy. It’s painful looking at yourself in the mirror. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know better 25 years ago.”

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