There are many things synonymous with Thanksgiving: Turkey and stuffing. Football. Traffic. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Stretchy pants. Food-coma naps. And, then, of course, there's "Friends."
All 236 episodes of "Friends" are streaming on Max.
Every season during its 10-year run, "Friends" aired a Thanksgiving episode in which the gang gathered around Monica's Thanksgiving table to banter, laugh and cry. Well, every season with one exception. In season 2's "The One With the List" — an all-time great episode that takes place after Ross and Rachel's first kiss — Monica takes a job developing Thanksgiving-themed Mockolate recipes; but (hot take!) since no one actually eats Thanksgiving dinner, it doesn't count.
Just like stuffing, though, there are plenty of "Friends" Thanksgiving episodes to go around, and some of them are absolute bangers. If you're looking to start a new Thanksgiving tradition, skip the food-coma nap and watch a few of these, instead.
9. Season 10, Episode 8: 'The One With the Late Thanksgiving'
The last Thanksgiving episode of the series sees Monica justifiably tired of hosting Thanksgiving every year, and she declares that she's not doing it anymore. Right when we're cheering Monica for drawing some boundaries — seriously, no one helps her with anything, or even brings wine — Phoebe tricks her into trying to top last year's Thanksgiving ("You’d be in competition with yourself!"). Aaaand we're back on, folks. Monica caves and spends all day cooking, only for everyone to show up an hour late because they were out doing other things: Joey and Ross went to a Rangers game, while Rachel and Phoebe entered Emma into a baby beauty pageant.
Perhaps, like Monica, the show was getting tired of Thanksgiving by this point, because the overwhelming vibe is that Joey, Ross, Rachel, and Phoebe are terrible friends who couldn't be bothered to pick up the pies. Monica locks them out, Joey gets his head stuck in the door, and it's all feeling a bit sour-spirited until Monica gets a phone call with news that saves the episode: She and Chandler are going to be adoptive parents.
8. Season 7, Episode 8: 'The One Where Chandler Doesn't Like Dogs'
Clunkers! Who doesn't love an adorably shaggy dog named Clunkers? Chandler, that's who. After Phoebe brings her friend's dog to the apartment, Chandler reveals that he isn't, in fact, allergic to dogs — he just hates them, and he banishes Clunkers to Ross's apartment.
The main relationship plot centers on Rachel telling her assistant Tag that she has a crush on him (inappropriate!), and though Tag immediately rushes off because his car is being stolen, he returns and kisses her, saying, "Please don't fire me for doing this" (yikes).
Whatever you think of the Rachel-Tag pairing, the hijinks of everyone trying to hide the dog from Chandler are largely forgettable, and this isn't one of the sharper Thanksgiving episodes. But it does contain Joey uttering one of the greatest "Friends" quotes ever: "This is all a moo point. It’s like a cow’s opinion. It doesn’t matter. It’s moo."
7. Season 9, Episode 8: 'The One With Rachel's Other Sister'
Christina Applegate won the Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series Emmy for her role as Amy, Rachel's breezily self-involved sister. In this, the first of her two appearances, Amy shows up unannounced and is invited to Thanksgiving dinner after her boyfriend dumps her.
Despite never having met baby Emma before ("Is this Emmett?") and having no maternal instincts whatsoever, Amy is outraged that Ross and Rachel would choose Monica and Chandler, instead of her, to take care of Emma in the event of their deaths. Chandler joins her in being upset when he learns that if Ross, Rachel, and Monica were to die, Emma would go to Monica and Ross's parents, not him.
Cheery subject for a sitcom, right? Not a lot happens plot-wise, and the topic of "what would happen if half these characters die" is a tad morbid (especially in retrospect, given Matthew Perry's untimely death). Still, Applegate is terrific and funny as Amy, and Monica trying to keep everyone from breaking the fancy wedding china makes for an amusing subplot.
6. Season 1, Episode 9: 'The One Where the Underdog Gets Away'
The very first Thanksgiving episode of "Friends" shows some seams, to be sure. The humor is broader, the characters more exaggerated versions of what they later become. Remember when Rachel was a ditz and a terrible waitress, and her manager was a guy named Terry? (He appeared in two episodes before making way for Gunther.)
After she fails to earn enough money to go skiing in Vail for Thanksgiving, the friends pitch in and buy her a plane ticket. But just before dinner, when Chandler excitedly announces that the Underdog balloon from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has gotten loose, they all head outside to the roof … and naturally get locked out.
This was a show only starting to figure itself out, so not all of the comedy lands (Rachel's repeated "Shoop! Shoop! Shoop!" skiing pantomime gets old fast). But we get so much else out of this episode, and that's not even counting Joey on a VD poster. It's the first time Monica cooks Thanksgiving dinner, catering to everyone else's Thanksgiving memories (Ross wants mashed potatoes with lumps, Joey wants tater tots, and Phoebe wants whipped potatoes with peas and onions), the first time we learn that Chandler boycotts "all the Pilgrim holidays," and the first time the friends salvage a disastrous Thanksgiving dinner by showing up for each other and understanding that it's the company, not the food, that makes the meal. To quote their final toast, "Here's to a lousy Christmas…" "And a crappy new year!"
5. Season 3, Episode 9: 'The One With the Football'
The competitiveness between Monica and Ross is reliably one of the show's strongest beats, and it gets a meaty showcase here in the festering grudge-match that is the Battle for the Geller Cup. When the gang wants to play touch football, Monica and Ross initially decline because they "aren't allowed" to play ever since Monica "accidentally" broke Ross's nose in Geller Bowl VI. But they're mature grown-ups now, right? What could go wrong?
The episode doesn't bother breaking down any gender stereotypes, with Phoebe not understanding the rules and Rachel being told to "go long" so that no one has to throw it to her. But the true matchup is Monica vs. Ross, and watching Monica in ultra-competitive athletic mode — all while she has to keep running to the kitchen to check on the food — will never get old. "Friends," a football game, a beautiful Dutch stranger picking Chandler over Joey, Rachel catching the (almost) winning touchdown, and Monica and Ross clutching onto the football in the dark as it starts to snow … as Chandler would say, could this episode BE any more classic?
4. Season 8, Episode 9: 'The One With the Rumor'
Brad Pitt, who was then Jennifer Aniston's husband, is hilarious as Will, Ross's high school friend and co-founder (with Ross) of the I Hate Rachel Green Club. It's delightful to watch Pitt, making an uncredited cameo at the peak of his golden-boy fame, embrace his character's pettiness and glower at "Queen Rachel" for making his life a living hell. (Upon learning that she and Ross dated for two years: "You went out with her? We had a pact!")
On the other hand, denying the fact that the rumor he and Ross started to hurt Rachel's reputation — that she had both male and female reproductive parts — is problematic by today's standards, making this an episode that's simultaneously fun and discomfiting to watch. (Co-creator Marta Kauffman suggested to USA Today that she wouldn't have done that storyline today.)
3. Season 5, Episode 8: 'The One With All the Thanksgivings'
Unlike the other episodes, this one starts after dinner is over and spends most of its time on flashbacks to Thanksgivings when Monica, Rachel, Chandler, and Ross were teenagers. High school Monica has a crush on Chandler, and she's devastated upon overhearing him tell Ross, "I don’t want to be stuck here all night with your fat sister." The next Thanksgiving, a slimmed-down Monica seeks revenge by awkwardly trying to seduce and dump Chandler. While fondling the kitchen knife (don't ask), she accidentally drops it and severs Chandler's toe.
Any scene with Monica in a fat suit is bound to be a little cringe. But this episode would be worth it for the '80s outfits alone, from Chandler's Flock of Seagull hairstyle and Ross's Members Only-style jacket to the following year's spot-on Miami Vice suits. On top of that, the episode milks reliable tragicomedy from teenage Ross's infatuation with Rachel, and it also serves the distinction of being the episode where Monica meets Chandler for the first time.
The emotions and history that link the show's two most enduring couples are touchingly on display here, so it makes sense in the present day, we also get to see Chandler say "I love you" to Monica for the first time. Granted, she's dancing with a turkey on her head to apologize for the whole toe-amputation thing, but it still counts. The real tragedy of it all is that we never got to hear the song Ross and Chandler wrote, "Emotional Knapsack."
2. Season 6, Episode 9: 'The One Where Ross Got High'
Two words for you: Beef. Trifle. Rachel's botched Thanksgiving dessert is so iconic, they ought to call this episode "The One Where Rachel Makes Trifle." Backing up, though, Monica hasn't told her parents that she and Chandler are dating, let alone living together. It turns out they can't stand him, in large part because they smelled pot in Ross's college dorm room and he blamed it on Chandler. Monica pushes Ross to tell the truth, culminating in a glorious, breathtaking escalation of truth-telling as warfare. ("Monica and Chandler are living together!" "Ross married Rachel in Vegas and got divorced — again!")
But let's get back to the trifle. Because the cookbook pages were stuck together, Rachel accidentally made half an English trifle and half a shepherd's pie ("raspberries, more ladyfingers, then beef sauteed with peas and onions, more custard…"), and Joey and Ross convince everyone to pretend it tastes good so that they can go party with Joey's dancer roommate. Everyone's desperate attempts to avoid eating it get funnier and funnier, and even Jack and Judy Geller try their best.
But what are you going to do while gamely scarfing down a dessert that "tastes like feet"? If you're Joey, you eat it all anyway. Thus was born one of the show's most memorable Thanksgiving episodes, as well as a dessert legend. If you don't believe us, Google "beef trifle" and make it yourself, if you dare.
1. Season 4, Episode 8: 'The One With Chandler in a Box'
"Friends" may be a sitcom, but the show's best episodes are the ones that combine humor, love, and heartbreak in equal measures. That's the case with this episode, set in the aftermath of Chandler kissing Joey's girlfriend Kathy. Hurt and upset that Chandler didn't come to him first, Joey refuses all of Chandler's attempts to reconcile until Chandler suggests locking himself in a box for six hours, replicating Joey's experience of being trapped in the entertainment unit while their apartment was being robbed.
This is a weird concept, even for this show. Yet somehow it works. At first, Chandler can't resist making snarky jokes while the rest of the gang eats dinner, but eventually he quiets down in an effort to prove to Joey that he's serious about earning back his friendship. This makes it all the more devastating when Kathy breaks up with him through the box's air hole to avoid coming between two best friends, and Chandler's finger sadly waves goodbye to her as she walks out the door. Joey urges Chandler to go after her, the friendship is repaired, and love wins in the end.
One couple that doesn't end up together? Monica and Tim (guest star Michael Vargan), the smoking-hot on-call eye doctor who happens to be the son of Monica's ex Richard. Is it creepy for Monica to lust after her ex's son? 100% yes. Fortunately, it only takes one kiss to bring the ick factor home in a hurry; and all is forgiven the minute a defensive Monica utters this series-defining line: "Fine, judge all you want to, 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 the fire, live in a box!"
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