The 15 Worst Episodes Of Friends Ranked

No friend group has a perfect history — especially not one filled with as much drama, scandal, and literal monkey business as the ensemble of “Friends.” The NBC sitcom is one of the most popular TV series ever produced, even more than two decades after it ended, with new audiences discovering its best episodes through streaming. But those new fans — and even the old ones, perhaps ready for a rewatch — are in for more than a few stumbles along the way.

From early missteps and problematic plotlines to groan-worthy signs of the show’s overextended lifespan, certain episodes from the show’s 10-season run are borderline unwatchable. Whether or not a viewer wants to complete the entire series will likely depend on how much they can tolerate instances of juvenile joke-writing, jarring and unearned tonal shifts, and “romantic” subplots that miss the mark so dramatically they’ll make your stomach turn. Indeed, “Friends” fans have enjoyed a mostly beautiful 30-year relationship with the series — but the 15 worst episodes will have you screaming for a break.

It’s never a bad thing for a sitcom to use broad humor to engage with difficult or complicated subject matter. It’s a needle “Friends” was able to thread consistently throughout its run, whether exploring divorce, grief, or psychological trauma. In the Season 9 episode “The One with the Donor,” however, that needle falls tragically into a haystack of complacent, predictable jokes and weak attempts to find real human drama.

The episode’s greatest sin is its wasted guest star: a post-“Full House,” pre-“ER” John Stamos plays Zack, a work acquaintance of Chandler’s whom he impulsively considers as a potential sperm donor for his child with Monica. Stamos has little to do but be a sponge for the repetitive bit of the couple awkwardly trying to assess his candidacy without simply inquiring about his interest. Matthew Perry and Courteney Cox valiantly navigate the tonal whiplash between their characters’ cartoonish questioning and, later, mature emotional revelation about wanting to adopt, but this sudden play at earnestness falls flat given everything that precedes it.

An earlier episode of “Friends” that tries to deliver on a moment of character development for Chandler also struggles to support itself dramatically due to thin and predictable writing. Long before he and Monica would even think about having kids, “The One with the Butt” sees Chandler suddenly swept off his feet by a woman (Sofia Milos) he unexpectedly connects with on a startling level. She’s beautiful, funny, and exciting – but she’s married. And also dating two other guys (three, by the episode’s end).

The big “dilemma” he faces is whether to continue dating someone he objectively has no future with, which is a passable premise for a plot that shares an episode with Joey (Matt LeBlanc) getting cast as Al Pacino’s butt-double. But rather than explore Chandler trying to fit into this unconventional dynamic comedically, the episode takes the well-worn path of him realizing that he wants to be her one and only. It’s a storyline so light on humor or surprise that its culmination feels didactic and completely deflated.

Every “Friends” fan has their favorite friend — and, of course, the one they absolutely can’t stand. For those who find themselves particularly annoyed by Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow), “The One with Phoebe’s Rats” is especially hard to sit through.

Nine seasons in and apparently out of ideas for stories, this episode hits fans with a trio of unimaginative plotlines, anchored by one in which Phoebe takes responsibility for seven baby rats orphaned after she and her boyfriend Mike (Paul Rudd) kill their mother. (Elsewhere in the half-hour, Rachel throws a birthday party, and Joey wants to sleep with Emma’s new nanny.)

The writing here makes Phoebe even more oblivious and self-centered than usual, which by extension requires everyone around her — especially Mike — to absorb her behavior as though it were remotely understandable. The only funny joke that comes out of the ordeal is Phoebe suddenly dropping to a stunned Mike that she was the surrogate for her brother’s triplets, a fact to which he’d not yet been privy.

Another Phoebe-centric episode that drags, “The One with Phoebe’s Ex-Partner” is arguably worse than “The One with Phoebe’s Rats” because the premise is actually solid on paper. Phoebe’s baffling music career is one of the more consistently fun aspects of her character, and digging a little deeper into it via a juxtaposition with her old writing partner (Elizabeth Daily’s Leslie) gives “Friends” the opportunity to add some texture to a running gag.

Unfortunately, the back-and-forth between Phoebe and Leslie about whether the latter sold out yields little emotional weight and even less comedy, making for an episode that’s as much of a chore to get through as it is a breeze to forget. Ross and Rachel’s (Jennifer Aniston) subplot — in which his insecurity about her friendship with a co-worker compels him to crash a fashion presentation — is notably disappointing as well, laying hard into Ross’ most grating personality traits to manufacture tension between the couple ahead of their split an episode later.

Though Ross (David Schwimmer) begins “Friends” as something of a romantic underdog, certain storylines that pop up as the series progresses make it exceedingly difficult to keep rooting for him to find love. Perhaps the worst of them is his relationship with Elizabeth (Alexandra Holden), which begins in the Season 6 episode “The One Where Ross Dates a Student.”

As much as the episode tries to paint over the obvious ethical issues laid bare in its title, there’s no salvaging a storyline that revolves around a sexual relationship between a teacher and one of his students. Even putting aside the fact that Elizabeth isn’t old enough to drink (Ross, meanwhile, is at least 30), the fact that Ross would indulge in a dynamic with such a clear and direct imbalance of power is gross, and ultimately hurts the character by forcing the audience to either accept his indefensible actions as “morally gray” or, understandably, judge him despite his clear role as the “hero” of this story. 

Suffice it to say, Elizabeth and Ross deserve to be remembered as one of the worst relationships on “Friends” (though Bruce Willis’ role as Elizabeth’s dad in later episodes is almost amusing enough to make it worth watching).

We’re willing to give “Friends” a lot of leeway as a sitcom when it comes to choosing humor over believability — but there’s a limit the show quickly finds with “The One with the Baby on the Bus.” The titular plot of the episode sees Chandler and Joey entrusted with watching Ross’ son, Ben (against Ross’ better judgment). Of course, because they become distracted by attractive women, they get off a bus without him.

Even more than Phoebe and her rats, “The One with the Baby on the Bus” dumbs Chandler and Joey down so much that Ross has to forgive them for putting his child in grave physical danger (and if one could believe that they’d be so careless as to forget a living thing in their care, would no one on the bus notice and tell them?!). It’s also worth mentioning that this whole plot is largely a vehicle for lazy homophobic jokes that haven’t aged well.

No one enjoys going back through a show — especially a sitcom — that aired over two decades ago and pointing out all the ways it doesn’t hold up to contemporary scrutiny (okay, some people do enjoy this, but we try not to be those people). At the same time, it’s fair to call out the ways sexism and homophobia plague the rewatchability of “Friends” — certainly when they’re the basis of otherwise plain hacky writing.

What we’re talking about here is on full display in “The One with the Male Nanny,” an episode that uses a sliver of self-awareness to try and sell as profound an episode that’s basically just rote 20th century gender-role comedy. Freddie Prinze Jr. guest-stars as Sandy, a male nanny whose emotional sensitivity makes him the target of Ross’ ire and the butt of the episode’s jokes. While it does technically come full circle by having Ross confront how his dad’s toxic masculinity emotionally stunted him, it really only serves as a set-up for him to cartoonishly sob — his own emotional sensitivity now the butt of the joke.

It’s almost impressive how undone “The One with the Fake Monica” is by a simple, silly B-plot. Sure, we can take or leave Monica using an experience with identity theft to find a more exciting side of herself (it’s a fun premise, but the execution is pretty forgettable overall), but the episode truly digs itself to new depths of disappointment thanks almost entirely to Marcel.

The arc involving Ross adopting a monkey is often regarded as an early misstep for the series for relying on broad, low-brow humor throughout, and “The One with the Fake Monica” brings it to a close precisely on those terms. It sees Ross ridiculously scramble to send Marcel away with little logic involved, the stupidity of his adoption finally made obvious by the monkey’s violent humping of everything he sees. Speaking strictly in terms of comedic value, it may be the most distracting and antagonistically unfunny subplot ever included in an episode of “Friends.”

“Friends” has earned a reputation for having some of the best holiday episodes on TV (especially those iconic Thanksgiving episodes), but Season 9 somehow managed to bring down what should have been the reliable highlight of its run. To add insult to injury, it did so in the form of a clip show.

When crafting this list, we elected to eliminate clip shows from consideration (they were made for a different era of television, and it simply wouldn’t be as interesting to criticize them). The one exception we made was for “The One with Christmas in Tulsa,” as it isn’t bad just because it’s a clip show, but because the framing device for the flashbacks is an unnecessary, unearned plot that throws Chandler and Monica’s relationship into jeopardy for easy drama. Stranded at his company’s Tulsa office for the holidays, Chandler finds himself unexpectedly sequestered with a co-worker (Selma Blair) whom Monica believes he will be tempted to sleep with.

Thankfully, Chandler doesn’t reciprocate and quits his job to return to New York, but it still drops “The One with Christmas in Tulsa” far below our favorite Chandler-centric episodes of “Friends.” More than that, Monica’s level of distrust in her partner is so ridiculous and manipulative to the audience that it borders on insulting.

In fairness, “The One with Chandler’s Dad” is an ambitious episode of television for 2001, and one that has admirable aims. Two weeks out from their wedding, Monica convinces Chandler to invite his estranged father — in actuality a trans woman, played by cis actor Kathleen Turner — to their wedding. This leads to some genuinely touching moments as Chandler tries to overcome his discomfort and unresolved feelings about his upbringing to reconnect with someone he clearly cares about (Perry and Turner both deliver great performances).

Despite that, however, the episode never gets to a place where Turner’s character is fully realized. It’s more than fine for Chandler to have a complete misunderstanding of her identity and complicated, negative feelings about her impact on his life, but it feels like the show itself doesn’t have the understanding of the trans identity necessary to dig into a story like this.

Though she’s clearly a trans woman, she is essentially written as a drag queen, with the story erroneously using a perceived, non-existent separation between her “performed” gender and her “true” gender as cheap dramatic and comedic fodder. As for the latter, the jokes are as rough as you’d expect for the 2000s, but even more disappointing as they’re often used to undercut an attempt at seriously engaging with the episode’s chosen subject matter. For example, during their initial reunion, the show needs a comedic button — so they have Monica misgender a server at a gay club. When Chandler does finally invite his dad to the wedding, the necessary laugh of the moment comes from him choking through calling her “ma’am.”

Much of Season 9 suffers from desperate premises and overly broad execution, but “The One with the Memorial Service” stands out for squandering a bizarre set-up that could have made it one of the funniest episodes of “Friends” overall. On its face, the idea of Ross getting so insecure over a joke between him and Chandler that he throws himself a funeral is a bit much for a “Friends” episode, but it could’ve been salvaged if the eventual memorial service had the unhinged energy to match the plot.

Rather than commit to the bit, the episode unfolds with all the excitement of an actual funeral, unwisely trusting Ross’ insecure hand-wringing to pull all the comedic weight. Well, almost all — when Ross isn’t whining, the episode makes plenty of room for lame homophobic jokes spun out of Chandler’s “coming out.”

At its lowest, “Friends” tended to resort to reductive characterizations for its star players. The show would lower the emotional (and often intellectual) intelligence of everyone involved despite their history together, usually in the service of justifying some ridiculous misunderstanding. While it isn’t the most frustrating example of this, “The One Where No One Proposes” does perfectly showcase its impact on the show and characters.

Rachel and Joey’s misunderstanding about whether or not he proposed is a total waste of time, regardless of your opinion on their relationship. It was silly enough (and kinda disrespectful to Rachel as a character) that she said yes to a proposal mere moments after giving birth in the previous episode, but the Season 9 premiere’s contrived and overextended lack of communication between her and Joey starts the show’s worst season off on an ominously annoying note.

For some readers, “The One with the Ick Factor” is the worst of the worst “Friends” has to offer — and, even though it’s just cracking the Top 3 on our list, we can understand why. If you’ve scrubbed this episode from your memory, it’s similar in tone to Chandler’s storyline in “The One with the Butt,” except here it’s Monica who is faced with the ethical dilemma of lying about her age to sleep with a college senior (Stan Kirsch). The titular “ick factor” comes in when she learns that he has been lying about his age as well: He’s a 17-year-old high school senior.

That in itself is enough to earn this episode a place on our list, with much of the humor surrounding a comedic treatment of a gross, near-criminal sexual relationship between an adult and a minor. Even worse, it tries to end on a sentimental climax with Monica offering that they’d be a good fit for each other if not for their age difference. “Ick” indeed.

Finally, the most insulting of many misunderstanding episodes — “The One with the Sharks.” Our last contribution from the near-skippable Season 9 makes fools of its characters — and the audience, as well — by subjecting them to a plot in which Monica is genuinely convinced, after witnessing a baffling hotel tableau, that Chandler has a secret kink. For sharks.

The idea that two married adults with such a long and explicit sexual history as Chandler and Monica would have a miscommunication of this kind is hard to swallow in and of itself; surely they’re each aware of what the other likes by now. But the sheer, stupid absurdity of Monica believing and attempting to embrace that Chandler is aroused by sharks is beyond juvenile. After a decade of commitment, the audience of “Friends” deserved stories that respected them far more.

Love him or hate him, Ross’ dating life and sexuality were so uncomfortably scripted throughout the series that it felt at times like character assassination (like if Brutus took a decade to take out Julius Caesar, and somehow did so through a series of humiliating social transgressions). The hardest to push out of our mind is his creepy sexualization of his own cousin in “The One with Ross and Monica’s Cousin.”

At a fairly mature point in his progression as a character, fans were treated to an episode in which an aroused Ross spends the runtime leering at and lustily hyperventilating around a family member (played by Denise Richards). After getting way too excited watching a movie together (perhaps the most excruciating scene of the series at large), he disturbingly convinces himself that she’s asking him to make a move — so he then tries to make out with his cousin.

Disgusting and dreadfully unfunny, “The One with Ross and Monica’s Cousin” ducks under low-hanging fruit to play in the mud. Forgive us if Ross’ orgasmic expression — as a blood relative reaches into a popcorn bowl on his lap — makes us lose our appetite for “Friends” entirely.