12 of pop culture’s best birthday moments

The Friends birthday episodes

Friends is famous for its Thanksgiving episodes. Some of the sitcom’s funniest encounters and experiences unfold before, during, or after turkey and pumpkin pie (or mac and cheese, if you’re Chandler). But the Thanksgiving episodes’ prominence tends to obscure the fact that the Friends gang actually had quite a few noteworthy birthdays among them throughout the show’s 10 seasons.

The two birthday storylines that immediately come to mind are, of course, “The One With The Two Parties” and “The One Where Chandler Can’t Remember Which Sister.” Sure, there’s the more blatantly birthday-centric “The One Where They All Turn Thirty” or the one about Emma’s birthday party where everyone’s trying to leave and there’s a pornographic bunny cake involved, which should honestly get some points just for making Emma a central character as she’s mostly forgotten about in the series once she’s born. But I digress.

In “The One With The Two Parties,” Rachel’s parents are in the early stages of going through a divorce and in order to avoid any drama between the two, the other friends work together to sneakily throw Rachel two separate birthday parties across the hall from one another, one for her dad to attend, the other for her mom.

The episode is great for a lot of reasons. First, it’s classic sitcom funny. There are misunderstandings and physical humor, and it’s one of those episodes where all six characters are (roughly) in the same location together for the entire episode, a structure the show’s creators always said sparked the strongest episodes (think other classics like “The One Where No One Is Ready” or those aforementioned Thanksgiving episodes). But it’s also an episode where the characters are trying to navigate young adulthood in all its harsh realities. Show creators Mara Kaufman and David Crane were also often quoted as saying the heart of the show was exploring the time in your life when your friends act as your family. And this episode, in particular, zeroed in on that dynamic, with the group supporting Rachel with their elaborate plan, and Chandler sharing an especially emotional moment with Rachel as she grapples with her parents’ crumbling marriage.

And then there’s the one where Chandler gets wasted and hooks up with one of Joey’s sisters. It sounds like a much less sentimental episode than the previously described one, but in actuality, there are quite a few parallels. Namely, there’s a party, funny things happen at the party, there’s a conflict to overcome, and there’s eventually a meaningful resolution. In this case, the funny thing that happens is Chandler pounding Jello shots at Joey’s birthday party and behaving accordingly by fooling around with one of Joey’s seven sisters, only he can’t remember which one. The conflict is Joey finding out. The meaningful resolution is Chandler asking Joey for his forgiveness for mistreating his family. It’s a nearly perfect 30 minutes of situational comedy, wrapped up in a lovely birthday bow.

Both episodes do what Friends did best.

-Gwendolyn Purdom, editor