5) Friends – The One Where No One’s Ready
Friends rarely ventured out of the cast’s apartments or Central Perk and it felt strange when they occasionally did, but the action would regularly flirt between the two with a host of guest stars thrown in for good measure. “The One Where No One’s Ready” took the show’s typically small-scale focus and tightened it even further by setting the entire episode in just one apartment.
The premise of the episode focuses on Ross’s attempts to get everyone ready for an event at the museum where he works, but really, this is just an excuse to hone in on the quirks that made each individual character so iconic within the landscape of 90’s comedy.
Highlights include fights over a chair, drinking the fat out of a frying pan and use of the phrase “Going commando” that subsequently made its way into the popular lexicon.
Friends is one of those shows that’s almost universally loved, but it’s easy to overlook precisely how well written each episode actually is. Anyone who doubts why a simple sitcom about six twenty-somethings became elevated to iconic status could do worse than using this bottle episode as a starting point.