As great as Friends was, the show still left us hanging a little too often.
From relationships that just kind of vanished to issues that were never fully resolved by
the orange couch crew, even the most ardent Friends fans are left asking themselves at
least a few key questions no matter how many times they binge the full series.
With so many dangling threads, it's no wonder fans want a reunion so badly.
Here are the biggest unanswered questions from Friends.
The one with the missing middle names
Throughout the show, we learn most of the characters' middle names.
"Joseph Francis!"
"Rachel Karen Green!
"Your middle name is Muriel!"
With Ross Geller, the subject of his middle name never comes up at all on-screen, but
fans later find out his middle name is Eustace.
That leaves just Monica Geller and Phoebe with giant question marks over their middle
names.
It might not matter so much if not for the fact that the series actively toys with audiences
about that very subject.
In Season 2, we find out that Monica's middle initial is "E."
"I was going by it the other day, and I saw that there was a stock with my initials, MEG,
on it."
Then in Season 3, Phoebe decides to make up Monica's middle name when she signs for her
mattress delivery.
"Ooh, do I have a middle name?
Alright.
Monica Fallulah…"
As for Phoebe, well, we might never know her middle name, thanks to her twin sister selling
off her birth certificate.
"Your middle name is Pamela?"
"Yes."
"I never knew mine.
Do you remember what it is?"
"Yes, Phoebe."
"That's my first name."
We do at least get a brief bit of middle name resolution when she legally changes her name.
"Meet Princess Consuela Banana Hammock."
Who knew unstated middle names could be such an irritating open end?
The one with Phoebe's true story
It would take a pretty meticulous historian to piece together all of the details of Phoebe's
backstory, and even then, it would be wildly incomplete.
What we do know is that she and her twin sister were raised by their parents' lover, Lily.
The girls' birth mother chickened out on raising the twins, and their biological father abandoned
them.
Phoebe's step dad ended up in jail, and Lily ended her life, so Phoebe and Ursula were
left to fend for themselves in the streets, and it did not go well.
"I spent my sweet sixteen being chased around a tire yard by an escaped mental patient who
in his own words wanted to kill me or whatever."
"I was living in a Gremlin with a guy named Cindy who talked to his hand."
"I mugged Ross!"
As an adult, Phoebe marries a gay ice dancer to give him citizenship, eventually moves
in with Monica, and becomes the lovable little weirdo we meet in Season 1.
But despite all that twisted history, there are still a couple of stories Phoebe never
gets to tell on the show, like who she dated in Europe.
"I had a similar problem when I lived in Prague."
"Prague?"
"So much you don't know."
She also refuses to discuss her rap sheet in front of her friends.
"I gotta tell you, I looked at your record, you've done some pretty weird stuff."
"Yeah, we'll talk at dinner."
There's also the matter of how she came to stab a cop.
"Someday I'll tell you about the time I stabbed a cop."
"Phoebe!"
"What?
He stabbed me first!"
In other words, of all the characters' open ends, we really need to get some kind of Phoebe
Buffay spin-off series going just to fill in all the crazy blanks that are left by her
random asides throughout the series.
The one where Rachel's out of a job
The Friends finale does manage to settle at least one massive issue that informs the entire
series: Will Rachel and Ross ever get their happy ending?
Although we don't get to see enough of their second real shot at romance, Rachel abandons
her plans for her future after realizing that she does love Ross.
The two decide to make it work this time, refusing to "screw it up" for their daughter
Emma's sake, and… that's about all we get.
After ten seasons of random teaser hook-ups, all we get is a few moments of Rachel and
Ross reuniting before the whole show is over.
It's pretty cruel, really.
But now, it's not clear what Rachel will do for work.
She'd accepted a job in Paris after hitting a wall at Ralph Lauren and getting fired from
her old job after being caught interviewing for a gig at Gucci.
It's just coincidence that her old pal Mark passes by in just the nick of time and offers
her a new position.
"You don't want me to get a job?"
"Yeah, I'm sure he's going to give you a job, maybe make you his sex-retary."
Ross manages to bribe her old boss into offering her job back, twice, but she still chooses
to take the other job and even boards her flight… before changing her mind for Ross.
While it's settled that she and Ross are going to make some kind of go at a relationship
again, her professional prospects take a nosedive.
"I'm fine going back to a job where I've pretty much gotten everything out of it that I possibly
can."
Is she going to professionally stall out just to make her relationship with Ross work?
That's a bit of a bummer, considering how far she managed to come.
The one where Phoebe stops playing music
Phoebe has never been a good musician by any means, but that doesn't stop her from taking
the stage at Central Perk and playing her weird songs for the crowd, until she meets
Mike.
Once he comes into the picture, her playing time drops off significantly, and after she
and Mike reconcile, the only time we see Phoebe pick up a guitar again is to play a quick
birthday tribute song for Emma's birthday.
She never takes the stage at the coffee house in front of Mike.
In fact, it's not clear if he's ever even seen her play — and once they're together
for the long haul, she seems done with music altogether.
Taking off her rings to put on Mike's engagement ring is supposed to be some symbol of her
giving up some strange part of her life to achieve a semblance of normalcy, but is she
also surrendering another piece of herself in the process?
The fact that she declines to play in front of him seems to spell trouble for their long-term
compatibility.
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