One of the greatest TV plot twists of all time.
It’s been 25 years since one of the most talked-about episodes of Friends dropped in 1998.
Titled ‘The One with Ross’ Wedding’, the two-part finale to season four of the hit sitcom was set in England and centred around Ross Gellar marrying his fiancé Emily, only to accidently blurt out his ex-girlfriend Rachel’s name at the alter.
The episode saw one of biggest cliffhangers in TV history and didn’t pick up the aftermath until the season 5 premiere, ‘The One after Ross says Rachel’, four months later.
The episode cemented Friends into the cultural zeitgeist at the time, with some massive moments across both half-hour parts. Not only did it feature Ross catastrophically messing up his wedding vows, it also contained the origins of Monica and Chandler’s relationship – with the two hooking up for the first time in a London hotel.
As well as that, it had some memorable guest appearances, including Jennifer Saunders as the bride-to-be’s mother Andrea and Hugh Laurie as a particularly irked passenger on Rachel’s flight to London.
Speaking about the Monica and Chandler storyline in the episode, Friends creator David Crane told EW, “the original plan wasn’t that they were going to then become a couple for the rest of the series.
“It was one of those things where originally the thought was, ‘Oh it was just a big, quick, funny mistake and how are they going to get out of that?’ Then the more we explored it, the more stories it provided and it really reinvigorated the show.
“There was a live studio audience in London and all three times, that moment where we revealed Monica and Chandler in bed together, what you’re hearing on the actual show when you hear the audience scream is maybe a third of the length of what actually happened. They went crazy and we had to, for the running time of the show, pare it down. It was one of the reasons that we went, ‘Wow, maybe there’s a real ongoing thing here.’”
With the sheer amount of off-the-wall plotlines covered in just an hour of one of the most popular sitcoms ever, it’s clear that The One With Ross’ Wedding is the most shocking episodes of the show ever aired.
It’s hard to believe the hit show has been off the air for nearly 20 years at this point, but there will always be a certain generation who holds the sitcom dear in their hearts.
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