Friends, one the most successful comedy shows ever, became a cultural phenomenon soon after it began in 1994. The program appeals to everyone—or so we thought.

When the series landed on Netflix, a whole new generation of viewers watched it for the first time. They were promised a fast-paced, feel-good comedy, but all they saw was homophobia, sexism, and fat shaming. To the Gen Z audience, it had as much allure as a lipstick mark on a cup of cold coffee.

Times and attitudes have changed. Although you can’t blame younger audiences for not finding the show as cute as their parents did, the truth is that Friends has always been full of contradictions. All six main characters possess fuzzy morals, huge egos, and so much spite and jealousy that you wouldn’t want any of them for a friend.

There are also gaping plot holes and lazy attention to detail that became obvious once we were able to binge-watch whole seasons. So, let’s take a look at the most confusing and troubling aspects of the show that would have been called out years ago if it wasn’t for Friends‘ unique charm.

Top 10 Friends Seasons

10 Rachel’s Lucky Breaks

Rachel arrives on the show as a spoiled rich girl trying to make it on her own in New York City with zero work experience. She gets her first-ever job as a waitress at Central Perk, and she is awful at it. But she stays there for about three seasons.

Rachel’s true calling is to work in fashion. After about a week spent in a terrible garment factory, she lands her dream job at Bloomingdale’s. Just like that, she is transported to assistant buyer at a top store. No unpaid internship or slogging away at entry-level jobs and no calling in of favors.

When her boss dies, Rachel is demoted to personal shopper (which seems more realistic). Then, in a flash, she is hired by Ralph Lauren and given a fancy office and her own assistant. Lucky Rachel appears to have climbed the career ladder at a speed matched only by members of Ralph Lauren’s immediate family.^[1]

9 What’s With The Weird Animals?

Animals are always a hit on comedy shows. Everyone loves an adorable dog or a fluffy kitten. So, in Season 3, the writers decided to give roommates Joey and Chandler a couple of pets.

Unbelievably, they plumped for a chick and a duck. These critters quickly grew from mildly cute pets into flapping, squawking farm animals running loose in an apartment with no proper facilities and no way of being toilet-trained.

During the series, we were also treated to a monkey and a bald cat. Again, they were housed in rent-controlled buildings that usually prohibit the keeping of domestic animals as pets. But they’re totally fine with livestock and monkeys that poop in your shoe.^[2]

8 The Trouble With Joey

They don’t make characters like Joey anymore, mainly because people don’t find predatory sex pests funny these days. That’s not the only trouble with Joey. He loves food so much that he can eat a whole Thanksgiving turkey by himself and once tried to save a sandwich from a bullet.

Yet he is also an actor who relies on his looks for a living. Despite gorging on pizza, he never struggles with his weight or goes to the gym. He is proud of his Italian roots, but he can’t utter a word of the language to his non-English-speaking grandmother.

Most perplexing of all, Joey is a trained actor with an agent. This means that he must be able to read and understand scripts, take direction in a stage play, and grapple with the complexities of language. Despite having all these skills, Joey is so stupid and uneducated that he thinks a “moo point” is a cow’s opinion and he cannot pronounce “supposedly.”^[3]

7 Stuck In A Rut

Picture this: You are young, good-looking, and single. You live in a cool apartment in New York City. The world is at your feet—unless you are a character in Friends. These hot young things spend all their time hanging out with the same small group of people (two of whom are related) at the same coffeehouse, except for an occasional party held at the same two apartments.

The friends never seem to travel or explore their city. They don’t even mix things up by visiting Starbucks. Instead, it’s just the six of them sitting on the same sofa. There’s no goofy friend who drops in and out of the group to liven things up. Instead, they just have Gunther. They really needed to get out more.^[4]

6 Chalk And Cheese

Phoebe is the one character who seems to have fallen from space and landed in the group. She has no connections and nothing much in common with the other friends. So, where did she come from, and how does she fit into the group?

We do know that Phoebe and Monica once shared an apartment, and Phoebe certainly fits the part of the weird roommate. Beyond this, how would Monica—with her love of straight lines and cleaning products—ever maintain a friendship with Phoebe?

Phoebe has a murky criminal past as a thief who lived behind a dumpster and on the streets of Prague. She even mugged a teenage Ross. Phoebe is exactly the type of person whom Monica would move seats on the subway to avoid, and yet they are the best of pals.^[5]

Phoebe’s living arrangements have always been confusing, too. She sometimes shares an apartment with her grandma and then the mysterious Denise, who is mentioned once and never heard of again. When her grandmother dies, Phoebe appears to inherit the older woman’s apartment. So, where was this generous, property-owning grandma when Phoebe was a homeless teenager?

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5 Family Ties

The other problem with Phoebe is her complicated family background. We know that she has a twin sister and that their mother, Lily, committed suicide when their father, Frank, left them. So far, so not funny.

Things took a surreal turn when she met Phoebe Abbott (played by Teri Garr). Phoebe Sr. explained that she became pregnant with twins after having a teenage menage a trois with Frank and Lily.

Phoebe Sr. handed over the babies to the couple. Then she disappeared to live at the beach and make erotic pottery. The head writer must have been on leave when they dreamed up that one.^[6]

Phoebe’s missing father, Frank, only appeared in one episode. But she did get to meet her half-brother, Frank Jr., just long enough to become a surrogate for him and his wife and have triplets.

If all this wasn’t confusing enough, the whole Buffay clan abruptly vanished from the later episodes. Not a single family member was seen at Phoebe’s wedding to Mike—which was probably a good thing.

4 What About Kathy?

Poor Janice is forever remembered as Chandler’s badly treated girlfriend. But she wasn’t his only victim. Chandler fell in love with Kathy, who was dating Joey. Not only did Chandler betray his best friend but Chandler also didn’t see why he should tell Joey.

When Chandler finally got to be with Kathy, he went on a jealous, controlling, gaslighting rant after watching her in a love scene onstage. Although it’s true that Janice was repeatedly and cruelly dumped by Chandler, Kathy was publicly shamed at the theater, had her acting skills trashed, and still got dumped by Chandler.

Joey and Chandler remained the best of friends, though, and never mentioned the incident again.^[7]

3 The Trouble With Monica

Monica and Richard were billed as the great love story. He was the suave, older man—old enough, in fact, to be best friends with her parents. Of course, this meant that he had known Monica since childhood. She even went to school with his daughter. This was creepy, even by 1990s standards.^[8]

Quite a few of Monica’s relationships left the viewers feeling queasy. She once had a passionate affair with Ethan, who was still in high school. Then she hooked up with Richard’s actual son. Thankfully, Monica moved on and married Chandler, her best friend with whom she had enjoyed a close brother-sister platonic relationship. That’s not much better at all.

2 Bad Timing

There are a lot of shifting timelines in Friends. Given the gaps between filming and the large teams of writers, it’s understandable. Still, no pregnancy should last longer than nine months unless you are an elephant—or Rachel Green.

Rachel took a pregnancy test on the morning of Chandler and Monica’s wedding. (You would have thought Rachel could wait one day.) We know the wedding was on May 15 as Monica told a rival bride the date. So, simple math tells us that the baby should be due around February.^[9]

Cut to a scene in Ross’s apartment where Rachel is nine months’ pregnant and enduring the sweltering heat of a New York City summer. Something doesn’t add up.

1 You’re Wrong About Ross

Of all the characters, Ross receives the harshest criticism. He is hated for his treatment of Rachel and for his jealous nature. But is he just misunderstood?

Ross is the most emotionally mature member of the group, the only one to have been married and to have had a child. His insecure behavior is a direct result of the painful end to his marriage and his lack of confidence.

Ross is capable of great kindness, like the time he bought Phoebe a pretty pink bike as she had never owned one. Then he spent hours teaching her how to ride it.

He bought Joey a ceramic dog just to make him feel better. Ross even agreed to help Rachel date another man by taking Emily to the opera. It’s time to give Ross a break—just don’t mention that break.^[10]

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About The Author: Annie is a true crime enthusiast and lover of words.

Ever heard a doctor use terms like “tracheotomy,” “dysphagia,” or “haematopoiesis” and thought, “What in the world does that even mean, and how did they remember it?” You aren’t alone. Even medical professionals themselves can struggle to learn these terms at first. However, once you understand how these words are made, learning them gets a whole lot easier.

Medical language is built almost entirely on affixes, additions to a word that gives it a specific meaning. For example, in regular language, you often hear “anti-,” which you probably know means “opposed to.” When a product comes out on the market called “antifreeze,” you go, “Hey! That must stop or prevent freezing.” These cues help us navigate the language, and it does the exact same thing in medicine.

10The Dreaded Captain ‘-Itis’

This fun-loving word means “inflammation.” Inflammation of course sounds like fire, and it also feels like fire because it kind of is. It is the process by which a part of your body swells, gets all red and puffy, and usually burns like you got on the wrong side of a hornet nest (in fact, that may be exactly what happened to you). This is due to your body sending tons of fluids with all manner of healing properties to the affected site, and as more fluids arrive, the pressure increases, the area swells, and things get all hot and bothered.

Now you know that if your general practitioner tacks “-itis” onto another word, you can discern that something is inflamed (which, in all honesty, you’d probably already know because it burns like an SOB). You most likely have heard “-itis” preceded by “bronch-” or “derma-,” which mean “bronchioles” (those branch-like tubes that stretch down into your lungs) and “skin” respectively. So if your skin is all red and swollen, it is dermatitis. If your coughing has irritated the bronchioles and it feels like your lungs are burning, it is bronchitis.

Here is the tricky business with “-itis”: While it may tell you that something is inflamed, it won’t tell you why or how it got that way. Bronchitis is a symptom, not a cause. It could be caused by anything. A cold might make you cough, which injures the bronchioles, which makes them inflamed—or maybe you are a heavy smoker and have done some damage—or maybe you are a maniac who drank bleach. “-Itis” tells you none of those things.

9From The Greek Word “Haima,” Meaning Blood

This one has a lot of variations like “hemat-,” “haemato-,” “haem-,” and “hem-,” which all refer to blood, and “hema-” and “hemo-,” which specifically mean “blood.” If you are an alien and are unaware, we humans are big on blood. We need it big time. So when a doctor says “hee-muh” or “hee-moh,” you know that something is up with your blood.

One “hema-” disorder to watch out for is hematemesis. This is when you vomit blood or there is some blood in your vomit. There are a multitude of reasons one could vomit blood, and the bad news is most of them are very dangerous. These include but are not limited to: bleeding ulcers (holes in your stomach), tumors in the stomach or esophagus, hemorraghic fever (your brain is bleeding due to an infection causing a fever), and my personal favorite: severe radiation exposure. Hematemesis is a sign of some very dangerous conditions, and if you’re thinking, “Hey! I just vomited blood this morning after eating some Frosted Flakes,” please stop reading this and go to the hospital.

8You Are What You Eat

Here is a fun one. “-Phagy” refers to the act of feeding upon whatever word precedes. This term is used widely in biology to describe the diets of many animals and insects. For example, coprophagy is a nasty habit that plagues fuzzy little rabbits and involves them eating their own feces.

Hopefully you recognize the prefix on “hematophagy.” Hematophagy is the act pf consuming blood, the pastime of some of our favorite novel, TV, and movie characters. In animal biology, this crops up with unfortunate frequency, from Desmodus rotundus the vampire bat, which laps up the blood of sleeping mammals after cutting them with razor sharp fangs, to the ire of every human ever, Culicidae. the mosquito.

7No Job? You Have An-Income

The prefix “a/an-” is one of those things that’s everywhere, but you never noticed it.

A good example of this is “anaerobic” and “aerobic,” which you’ve probably heard mentioned. This specifically relates to work done by cells that require oxygen. Aerobic processes require oxygen. Anaerobic exercises, which don’t require oxygen, are of a higher intensity and will lead you to fatigue more quickly. If your doctor prescribes some exercise of either type, you will know what he or she is talking about.

6Try A Junk Food-Ectomy

The suffix “-ectomy” is attached to what is being cut out of you. A common way you may have heard this is an appendectomy, which involves removing an appendix, usually due to appendicitis. “What’s appendicitis?” you ask. Really, you forgot already? Go back to the start of the article.

Another good example, and one that makes a man like me cringe, is a vasectomy. This procedure involves the clamping of a tube called the vas deferens that connects the testicles to the urethra and allows the passage of sperm. Once it’s clamped, it’s “goodbye, swimmers.” However, semen will continue to be produced and released during ejaculation. It is possible that trace sperm are still kicking it in the urethra after the procedure, so patients must still use contraceptives until there is no sperm detected in their urine.

Fun fact: The body still produces sperm despite the cutting of the vas deferens, but it is simply reabsorbed by the body. You can decide for yourself if that is cool or creepy.

5A Pumpkin Pie-Otomy Is My Favorite

Related to the “-ectomy” is the suffix “-otomy.” Instead of cutting out, an “-otomy”cuts into. A perfect example of this might be something you would see in a hospital soap opera. When someone has an allergic reaction and can’t breathe, the trachea (commonly referred to as the “windpipe”) would be cut open to clear the airway. This procedure is called a tracheotomy.

Another one you might have heard of is a gastrotomy. If you can figure out what is being cut into here, 10 points to Gryffindor! (Just kidding. If anyone is going to cut into your stomach it would be Ravenclaw; they seem to be the scientifically minded ones.) Note that a gastrostomy, however, is the insertion of a feeding tube through the abdomen, so mind the “s.”

4A Whole New Meaning For Cold-Hearted

“Cry(o)-” translates to “cold” in Greek and is used in procedures and for afflictions. One such example of this is a cryoablation, which involves destroying tissue for the benefit of the patient.

This is one I’ve actually experienced, when my super ventricular tachycardia was limiting my quality of life. For some background information, this is a condition in which the highest ventricular chamber of the heart produces an abnormally fast heart rate. (“Cardia” means heart and “tachy” means rapid—those are a couple bonus affixes for you.) To fix this, I went under for a procedure called a catheter ablation, in which a tiny tube with a camera is inserted into a major artery and reaches the heart. Once it’s there, the problem cells are destroyed with cold or heat (in my case, cold).

3Dys-Pepsi, The Discomfort In Drinking Pepsi

One word you are bound to hear in your life is “dyspepsia.” The prefix “dys” means anything bad, difficult, abnormal, or defective. The other half, “-pepsia,” means digestion. So this term ends up being used for a host of problems relating to digestive discomfort. This can encompass a range of problems like nausea, heartburn, indigestion, and upset stomach (though not diarrhea, which would complete Pepto-Bismol’s famous symptom list).

2This Is Bound To Be Epi-C

“Epi-” refers to something being on or upon. There are many examples of this and generally are involved in treatments. An epidural, for example, is often performed on women giving birth. It is an injection of painkillers through the lower back onto the nerves, which then become desensitized. These nerves carry signals from the uterus to the brain, and by deadening the nerves before they complete their path, voila, no pain.

Note that an epi-pen is not an example of this prefix as “epi” here refers to epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, a hormone produced naturally. In the case of an epinephrine injection, the hormone is concentrated.

1Just Drink Water

“Hepat-” and “hepatic-” mean “of or pertaining to the liver.” The study of the liver is hepatology, and the most famous medical term with this prefix is hepatitis.

Please tell me you remember what “-itis” means—oh good, you do. Hepatitis is inflammation of the liver. Types A, B, and C are the most common of the infectious types and the ones everyone should be vaccinated for at some point in their life. Many causes of non-viral hepatitis have also been discovered, such as toxic hepatitis caused by chemicals and autoimmune hepatitis, in which the body’s immune system attacks the liver. There’s also my preferred method, alcoholic hepatitis, caused by overconsumption of alcohol. All of these can temporarily or permanently damage the liver, causing scarring labeled as cirrhosis. Other consequences can include liver cancer, liver failure, and of course no medical warning is complete without death.

Next time you see your friends, throw a few of these terms around. Then you can seem smart and sophisticated. Your secret’s safe with me. However, if you attempt to do this with your doctor, symptoms may include scorning, stink eye, and loss of physician.

My name is Rick Loxton. I am a 21-year-old small town guy with a penchant for writing and a bad habit of spending far too much time on the Internet. I can be reached socially on my twitter account @RG_Loxton. Thanks for your time.