[1] With an ensemble cast starring Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer, the show revolves around six friends in their 20s and early 30s who live in Manhattan, New York City.

However many obstacles stand in his way, including his insecurities, Rachel dating an Italian neighbor named Paolo, and the fact that he is expecting a baby with his lesbian ex-wife, Carol Willick (played first by Anita Barone and then Jane Sibbett), who gives birth to Ben Geller (Cole Sprouse) later in the season.

When Joey claims in a soap opera magazine interview that he writes many of his own lines, offending the show's writer (James E. Reilly), his character is killed off.

Ross, hurt and somewhat drunk, immediately sleeps with Chloe (Angela Featherstone), "the hot girl from the Xerox place," causing Rachel to break up with him completely.

Joey falls in love with his acting partner Kate Miller (Dina Meyer), but is jealous of her dating Marshall Townend (Reg Rogers) the director of their play.

After her boss Joanna (Alison La Placa) dies, Rachel is demoted to personal shopping and meets and later dates a customer named Joshua Burgin (Tate Donovan).

Joey's television series, Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E is canceled, but he is offered his old role on Days of Our Lives; the show is retconned with the revelation that Dr. Drake Ramoray has been in a four-year coma and is revived with a brain transplant from Cecilia Monroe (Susan Sarandon)'s character Jessica Lockhart.

Rachel is promoted at Ralph Lauren and impulsively hires a young assistant, Tag Jones (Eddie Cahill), based on his looks, passing over a more qualified woman Hilda (Jean St. James).

After being apart from Monica during Christmas, Chandler quits to pursue a new career in advertising, starting as an unpaid intern at an ad agency, and eventually being hired as a junior copywriter.

And it's about friendship because when you're single and in the city, your friends are your family.David Crane and Marta Kauffman began developing three new television pilots that would premiere in 1994 after their sitcom Family Album was cancelled by CBS in 1993.

"[65] In the weeks after NBC's pick up of Friends, Crane, Kauffman and Bright reviewed sent-in scripts that writers had originally prepared for other series, mainly unproduced Seinfeld episodes.

[60] Although the writers originally planned the big love story to be between Joey and Monica, the idea of a romantic interest between Ross and Rachel emerged during the period when Kauffman and Crane wrote the pilot script.

[60] When the series was criticized for incorrectly depicting New York, with the financially struggling group of friends being able to afford huge apartments, Bright noted that the set had to be big enough for the cameras, lighting, and "for the audience to be able to see what's going on".

[77] Local NBC affiliates organized viewing parties around the U.S., including an event at Universal CityWalk featuring a special broadcast of the finale on an outdoor Astrovision screen.

Following the finale, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno was filmed on the set of the Friends' Central Perk coffee house, which featured the cast as guests.

"[102] The Chicago Sun-Times' Ginny Holbert found Joey and Rachel's characters to be underdeveloped,[103] while Richmond commended the cast as a "likeable youth ensemble" with "good chemistry.

[106] Noel Holston of Newsday, who had dismissed the pilot as a "so-so Seinfeld wannabe" in 1994, repudiated his earlier review after re-watching the episode and felt like writing an apology to the writers.

Havrilesky found the character-specific jokes and situations "could reliably make you laugh out loud a few times each episode", and the quality of writing allowed the stories to be "original and innovative.

"[108] However, Liane Bonin of Entertainment Weekly felt that the direction of the ninth season was a "disappointing buzzkill", criticizing it for the non-stop celebrity guest spots and going into jump the shark territory.

[111] Sarah Rodman of the Boston Herald praised Aniston and Schwimmer for their acting, but felt that their characters' reunion was "a bit too neat, even if it was what most of the show's legions of fans wanted.

"[113] Ken Parish Perkins, writing for Fort Worth Star-Telegram, pointed out that the finale was "more touching than comical, more satisfying in terms of closure than knee-slappingly funny.

[145] Notable individuals who have also said that the sitcom helped them learn English include Liverpool Football Club manager Jürgen Klopp,[146] South Korean band BTS member RM[147] and Belgian professional golfer Thomas Pieters.

The images of youth and the roles they portray are better defined and represent a lifestyle that centers around creating and sustaining relationships between friends running their own lives and seeking help from each other.

In the episode, amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) investigates the murder of Ricki Vardian (Cindy Katz) a producer for Buds, a fictional television series about the daily lives of a group of city friends.

James Michael Tyler, who plays Gunther, the Central Perk manager in the series, attended the grand opening of the Dubai café, where he worked as a waiter.

[162] Central Perk was rebuilt as part of a museum exhibit at Warner Bros. Studios and was shown on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in October 2008 when Jennifer Aniston visited the set for the first time since the series finale in 2004.

[165] In India, there are six Friends-themed cafes which features many icons from the original TV series, including Chandler and Joey's ugly dog statue, the orange sofa, the purple door of Monica and Rachel's apartment, and Phoebe's pink bicycle.

For the remastered episodes, Warner Bros. restored previously cropped images on the left and right sides of the screen, using the original 35 mm film source, to use the entire 16:9 widescreen frame.

[199] Netflix added all ten seasons of Friends in high definition to its streaming service in the United States in January 2015 before the platform discontinued the series in late 2019.

In October 2014, Warner Bros. chairman and chief executive officer, Kevin Tsujihara, announced that the company had licensed the North American streaming rights of all ten seasons of Friends to Netflix,[200][201] in a deal said to be worth around $500,000 an episode,[202] or about $120 million in total.