For everyone who hasn’t seen the first season, or only seen a couple of episodes, I want to start off by running though the major events from the pilot to the season finale! So like I started to say last week, the pilot episode begins with Monica, Phoebe, Joey, and Chandler drinking coffee and discussing Monica’s dating life. Then we see Ross, Monica’s brother enter very sad and declaring to the group that his marriage was over. Why? He and his wife have one similarity that sort of forces them to end their marriage. They both like women. Well this is awkward…
Anyway, so as if this conversation couldn’t get any stranger, in storms Rachel, Monica’s best friend from high school, and Ross’s first big crush, but more on that later. So Rachel comes in looking for Monica, her old bff who she didn’t even invite to the wedding. Aside from that awkward detail, Monica invites Rachel up to her apartment to clean up. While in Monica’s apartment, Rachel informs her father that she is not marrying Barry, her ex-fiance and she will be staying with Monica since he is “cutting her off”. This becomes the set up for the show. Rachel and Monica live in an apartment. Chandler and Joey live across the hall from them, and Phoebe and Ross have their own places that they pretty much only shower and sleep in considering 90% of the episodes are filmed in Monica and Rachel’s and Joey and Chandler’s apartments.
A few episodes pass and we see Ross find his own place after moving out of his apartment with Carol, his soon to be ex-wife, who by the way is carrying his baby. Rachel begins her first job ever at Central Perk, and we get to see her comically attempt to make a living with no prior work experience serving coffee to strangers, and of course her friends. Phoebe, the offbeat member of the group known for her hippie-type phrases and folk-type “music”, works throughout the first season as a masseuse. She has a serious relationship with a man named David, but it is cut short after his job forces him to relocate to Minsk for career-making research. Joey is seen as a womanizing unsuccessful actor who is trying to claw his way to stardom, usually unsuccessfully, although he almost got to play Al Pacino’s butt. Yeah, you read that correctly. Monica is a chef just starting out but we see her career plummet and rise as the series progresses. Chandler’s main storyline throughout the first season involves Janice, his irritatingly loud girlfriend who he spends an entire episode trying to break up with. But don’t you worry, she’ll be baaacccckkkkk……
Phew! FINALLY, we have Ross and Rachel. Ross is infatuated with Rachel however things keep getting in the way, whether it’s Rachel’s ex husband trying to win her back, an Italian guy named Paolo, and a bunch of other stuff. Anyway, he loves her she’s in the dark. Well after he leaves for a trip to China for work, Chandler lets it slip that he loves Rachel… WHAT? Rachel freaks out, in a good way. She realizes she has feelings for him as well and decides to pick him up at the airport and confess her feelings for him. The season ends with her at the airport with a smile as big as the flowers she’s holding and Ross coming off the plane with his new girlfriend Julie… Yeah, it just got interesting!!!!!