Episodes I love of shows that I love: Friends - The One Where Rachel Finds Out (1995)

A month or so ago, I finally decided to splurge and buy the complete box set of "Friends" (the "extended, exclusive & unseen" edition to be exact) after years and years of contemplating buying it. It's not like Friends is inaccessible or anything to me, as I still own a tonne of VHS tapes from the original home video releases, a couple of seasons on the super old DVD releases and Friends still enjoys morning and night coverage on Comedy Central here in the UK. But the promise of unseen extras and extended episodes proved too tempting for me. 

So, over the last few weeks I've been flying through the episodes at hyper-speed and it's been a real blast fro the past in some cases. As a previously mentioned, Friends still runs in the UK every single day on Comedy Central & before that E4 (and before that it was on it's original run on Channel 4!) but due to the fact that the episodes are often shown in a "best of" format, it can be kinda hard to follow plot lines and as a result of this, there are a handful of episodes I haven't seen for a seriously long time. 

An episode that has really stood out to me during my marathon of the series is the season one finale, "The One Where Rachel Finds Out". I've watched season 1 more times than I can remember and this episode has always been one of my favourites but this time around it really hit me how well executed this episode is and how solid a performance the cast gives (Jennifer Aniston in particular) in conveying the emotional roller-coaster that is the season finale. For me, this episode is a testament to how well the series could mix in more dramatic elements to the comedy of the show and pull it off. The humor is still very much there but it doesn't take away from how genuinely emotional the ending of the episode is. 

The final scene where Rachel is stood in the airport waiting for Ross while we see this paralleled with footage of his plane landing & then getting off the plane with Julie while Madonna - Take a Bow plays in the background seriously gets to me EVERY SINGLE TIME. WHAT THE HELL ROSS. 

Despite airing almost 20 years ago, this episode still seems fresh and is pretty much a blueprint of "how to do a sitcom season finale really really well."