Getting To The Bottom Of The Bottle: 25 Best Bottle Episodes

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Friends – “The One Where Nobody’s Ready”

Like many multi-camera sitcoms of the late ’90s, Friends was limited to a handful of locations at best. We saw them hang out in either one of the apartments, the downstairs coffee house, and rarely, someone else’s apartment or job. “The One Where Nobody’s Ready” was the first to be completely contained in Rachel and Monica’s apartment, and that did not feature any other guest star or one of their revolving love interests.

In this episode, Ross is trying to wrangle the group out the door and into a cab for a fancy work event at the museum. It closely follows the sitcom story trope of “small but impossible task,” and it succeeds solely on the character dynamics. Each character has their own setbacks: Monica is obsessing over a message from her ex; Phoebe and Rachel struggle with what to wear; and Joey and Chandler feud over a chair.

This chair-feud, however, sets up one of the most iconic moments in TV history. Joey puts on all of Chandler’s clothes, does some squats, and then announces he’s not wearing underwear. This launched the term, “going commando” into the popular lexicon, and we have Friends’ writers to thank for gifting us with this gem.