The One Where No One Drinks: How ‘Friends’ Used Alcohol As A Negative Plot Device For Ten Seasons

If there’s one thing New Yorkers like to do — other than constantly complain — it is to drink. A lot. Probably too much, in fact. Which is why, while going back through Friends on Netflix and Seinfeld on Hulu, I couldn’t help but notice that New York-based network TV shows have lied to the rest of the country for decades about what it’s actually like to socialize in this giant watering hole of a metropolis.

Last year, when I went for my annual check-up, my doctor inquired about my alcohol consumption. “How long have you been living in New York? How many drinks do you consume per week? Have you ever felt drinking is a problem for you?” Over five years, not exactly sure, and in college maybe — but doesn’t everyone have a drinking problem in college? Even after concluding that I’m healthy as a horse on the outside and that my drinking is a non-issue “by New York standards,” my doc suggested (probably since I’ve been dwelling in this sobriety-challenged city for half a decade now) that I sit in for a sonogram and have a look at my internal organs. To my surprise (and relief, I suppose), the sonogram technician asked if I had recently moved here. “You don’t have a Manhattan liver,” he joked. “Not even close.” Maybe it’s my valiant genes, or perhaps I’m just lucky. But after being congratulated on my lack of cirrhosis, I couldn’t help but think about how drinking in New York City has rarely been depicted in an accurate light outside of paid cable programming.

This undeniable fact makes revisiting Must See TV by way of streaming nothing short of maddening. In the case of Seinfeld, it isn’t simply the sitcom’s choice to rarely have any of its four main characters consume alcohol; it’s also the framing of alcohol as the cause of all narrative turmoil, which we see season after season in Friends.

For all of its groundbreaking qualities, depicting social drinking was not one of Seinfeld‘s strong suits. In fact, the series all but ignored the concept altogether. Sure, we see Elaine, George, or Kramer (as well as their dinner dates) with the occasional glass of wine (which they rarely so much as sip). Jerry, on the other hand, very seldom indulges; he prefers the jolt of energy he gets from canned soda or coffee from Monk’s over the downer qualities of alcohol. Not once in the history of Seinfeld’s nine seasons does Jerry get drunk. In fact, he’s only seen consuming one beer in a singular episode: Season Seven’s “The Shower Head.”

Friends, on the other hand, regularly features alcohol consumption across its ten-season run, albeit in a pretty poor light. The maddening part of this whole rediscovery, however, isn’t the the series’ unfairness to the notion of social drinking — or the fact that alcohol is featured but very rarely drunk. Rather, it’s the inaccuracy of creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane’s representation of New Yorkers through this very special group of West Village-inhabitants: they don’t need to drink to have a good time, but when they do, the very structure of the series is changed indefinitely. Thus, Friends, time and again, uses drinking solely as a dramatic narrative device. Consider the five following scenarios in chronological order:

“The One with Russ” (Season 2, Episode 10)

Monica is back together with Fun Bobby, who, despite not previously living up to his name back in Season One’s New Year’s Eve celebration, has returned — flask in-hand. After Ross concludes that he’s “never seen Fun Bobby without a drink in his hand,” Monica decides to talk to him about how worried she is after he decides to turn his morning coffee “Irish.”

“The One Where Ross and Rachel Take a Break” (Season 3, Episode 15)

When Rachel is unable to get away from the office for their anniversary, Ross makes an off-hand comment about how her career is “just a job.” In a fit of rage, Rachel suggests that maybe the two should take a break, leading Ross to go pound drinks at the bar where the cute girl from the Xerox shop down the street comes onto him before they eventually go home together — forever damaging his relationship with Rachel and igniting the “were they, weren’t they” on a break argument.

“The One in Vegas Parts I and II” (Season 5, Episode 24)

After continuously trying to embarrass each other on the way to visit Joey in Las Vegas, Ross and Rachel’s fun comes to a screeching halt when Ross draws a permanent mustache on Rachel while she’s sleeping. Refusing to go out and gamble, Rachel forces Ross to play blackjack with her in her room, leaving the two to get blackout drunk before tying the knot at a nearby chapel.

“The One with the Videotape” (Season 8, Episode 4)

Upon the newlywed Bings return from their honeymoon, Rachel explains to the group how Ross got her drunk and knocked her up.

“The One Where Ross is Fine” (Season 10, Episode 2)

Though Ross is back together with Charlie (Aisha Tyler), he’s heartbroken to find out Rachel and Joey are seeing each other. In an effort to put his feelings aside and be happy for his friends, he hosts a margarita-filled get together where he gets wasted on tequila and embarrasses himself in front of the group, leading to the beginning of the end with Charlie.

Other New York-based comedies like Sex and the City, which often showed Carrie Bradshaw and her gals tossing back cosmopolitans (the same cocktail they made famous) at lunch (like many New Yorkers), rarely used drinking as a way to further the plot. Will & Grace, also featured alcohol in a similar manner — it used Karen’s (Megan Mullally) martini-guzzling antics as way to better develop her character — but didn’t necessarily drive the show’s narrative arc.

Friends, however, only uses social lubrication as to ignite drama or force it into scenarios where liquid courage is encouraged, rather than depicting how city-dwellers typically socialize outside of coffee shops (Central Perk, mind you, used to be a dive bar where Joey and Ross first met). Granted, Friends was a multi-camera sitcom that lived on NBC in the mid-’90s, so not only were there continuity errors to be mindful of (character has a drink in their hand in one shot that disappears in another) — there was also a certain amount of family-friendliness to abide by, considering it originally aired on Thursday nights at 8:30 PM before being pushed up to 8:00 slot from Seasons Two through Ten. Yet, through its six leads, the series continuously reiterated that consuming alcohol can and will change your life — usually for the worse.

To be clear, this isn’t an attempt to bash the friends of Friends for not getting wasted more often. Nor am I suggesting it’s the responsibility of a showrunner to cater to societal norms or norms that are more specific to a particular area (in this case a happy-hour crazed, bar-hopping city). It is television, after all. What I do believe, however, is that Kauffman and Crane could have done a better job of acknowledging that consuming beverages other than coffee is part of the culture of living in New York. Frankly, avoiding booze is like trying to avoid any other staple of this city: tourists, roaches, rats, crippling debt. But who knows? Maybe there’s a lost episode somewhere in the Warner Brothers Television offices that features the friends attending a bottomless brunch that leads to all-day binge drinking affair before calling an Uber to drop them off at the door of Central Perk.