My wife is one of the biggest fans of the television show Friends. After only a few weeks of marriage I became a fan of the show as well. And as fans of Friends, it is only natural to ask the question which is the best show of the series. Is it the One with the Free Porn, The One with Chandler in a box, or the Last One. Many other fans have posted on various sites what their top ten episodes are. Now my wife and I could just list our ten favorite episodes and call it a night but that could leave out hidden gems within this wonderful series.
To solve this dilemma we developed a rating system to try fairly rate each episode of the series and develop a grading rubric that could be objective as possible. This method has surprised us with some episodes that we would never consider to be the best and some episodes which we would consider our 'favorites' did not rate as well.
We developed five categories in our grading rubric that are scored on a scale of 0-10 for a total episode grade out of a possible 50 points. These five categories are emotional response, humor, memorable, quotable, and story writing. Emotional response is an important category because any tv series that lasts a while will eventually draw an audience in and start to write to create emotions of sadness, anger and joy. When Ross and Rachael brake up the first time, there is a strong emotional response from the audience and when Phoebe gives birth to the triplets and talks to them at the end of the one hundredth episode it draws another strong emotional response. Friends is a comedy and humor is one of the most important categories. If you did not laugh in the episode it was not worth watching. Then there are Iconic episodes of Friends that are memorable and make lasting impressions in your mind with some of the most iconic moments of the show. "We Were On a Break!!!" Being able to quote your favorite show is important to enjoy it. Quotable shows keep you thinking about them all week. Then finally, a well written story keeps you watching and rounds off the final category in our grading rubric.
It is our hope that you enjoy our blog as we talk about the best episodes of each season and the best episodes of the whole series. Please feel free to comment and discuss these episodes with us as we all enjoy one of the most iconic Television shows of all time...
