The One With The Blackout. This wonderfully hilarious episode takes place when there’s a blackout in New York City and most of the friends get stuck in Monica’s apartment building, with the exception of Chandler, who gets stuck in an ATM vestibule with the supermodel Jill Goodacre. This episode also includes Rachel meeting Paolo, who becomes her boyfriend, because of the cat that jumps on Ross. Surely this scene sends us all into side-splitting stitches every time!

A life lesson that can be taken from this episode is: never underestimate the power of minor situations, or times when life has slowed down. You might feel like your life has come to a standstill and like nothing important is really happening, but these are the times when you could potentially happen upon a bigger event in your life. Even though it is quite normal for the characters in Friends to be dating, and boyfriends and girlfriends come and go often, this likely isn’t the case for lots of people. When Rachel is searching in the dark hallways of the building for the cat that escaped from Monica’s apartment, she comes across a man leaning against a door with the cat in his arms. Rachel immediately knows she wants to date this guy, and luckily for her he wants to date her too. She comes back with him to the apartment and introduces him to the others as Paolo. When she was searching for the cat, I’m sure she didn’t expect to find a boyfriend as well as the cat. And you could argue that it is normal for the friends to be dating people all the time, but it is definitely an important part of the plot line, and most of the relationships they have are important to them … with the exception of Joey and his multitude of girlfriends. But hey, some of those relationships definitely meant something to him! Relationships are an important part for the majority of people, and a lot of them can be formed when you are least expecting it. This is why you should never underestimate what minor situations in your life could lead you to.

The One With The Butt. In this episode Joey finally gets a big break in a good movie (with a very weird role), Chandler dates a girl whom he finds out is also seeing 3 other guys, and we get to see how crazy Monica is about organization and cleanliness.

A life lesson that can be taken from this episode is: take every opportunity you get in your career, and on an even bigger scale, in your life. Joey portrays this very well in this episode by being proud of himself for landing a role in the new Al Pacino movie, despite the fact that he has to play Pacino’s butt double. All his friends make fun of him for this, and honestly, we as the audience are laughing our heads off too, but it doesn’t matter to Joey because he finally got into a movie. He has been trying quite hard to make it as an actor and has only been able to land roles in minor plays and such, so this is an opportunity for him to be able to start getting into bigger, better, and more important things. He knows that playing the butt double of somebody, even Al Pacino, is not an amazing role, but more importantly he knows that this could be his segue into a better world of show business. Over the seasons in Friends Joey takes many other odd jobs, these being in show business or not, to be able to find a way to still pursue his passion of being an actor. All these opportunities lead him to truly making it as an actor, and over the next couple of seasons we can see this evolve. Never fear to take all the opportunities you can get, and to always follow your dreams.

The One With The East German Laundry Detergent. In this episode you’ll get many laughs out of Chandler and Phoebe breaking up together, Monica and Joey making a plan to break up a couple so they can each date one of them, and Ross and Rachel going to do laundry on their first unofficial “date”.

A life lesson that can be taken from this episode is: always try to stick up for your friends as well as Ross does. No matter what the consequences might be for him, he tries to make sure that his friends come first, and this episode showcases that well. When he and Rachel go to do their laundry together he sticks up for her in more than one way. The most obvious one is where he confronts the lady who tries to steal Rachel’s machine and he makes the lady give the machine back. He doesn’t care that all the other people in the laundry room are staring at him, he just makes sure to get Rachel her machine back. I mean, yes, he also could be doing this because he’s in love with her, but as of right now in the show he’s just being a great friend. Secondly, he sticks up for her when she admits that she’s never done laundry before, and he makes sure not to mock her or make fun of her for it. In this example he’s only shielding her from humiliation about herself, but still I think he does it in a very nice and kind way. Finally, he sticks up for her when he sees that she has accidentally turned all her white clothes pink, because of the red sock. He even goes as far as to make up a laundry song to try and shield her from disappointment. Now if this is not called sticking up for your friends, I don’t know what is. Out of all the characters on the show, Ross definitely wins the prize for “kindest friend”.