Friends: Ranking all 10 Friends Thanksgiving episodes
By Callum Gunn
4. Season 3 – “The One With The Football”
After the abysmal Friends Thanksgiving episode from season 2, the show had to do something when season 3 came round. Thankfully, they not only delivered, but scored a touchdown.
“The One With The Football” has it all. You have a game of football that settles a sibling rivalry, boys and girls battling it out, and Joey and Chandler going head to head over a girl. It’s sport at its finest.
The episode doesn’t have the traditional Thanksgiving dinner setting of other themed episodes. But that’s okay. Everyone has dinner in the end, and football is a Thanksgiving tradition in and of itself, so it works.
This episode is also filmed outside the usual Friends spaces. We don’t see much of Monica’s apartment, Chandler and Joey’s apartment, or Central Perk. That lets us take a fresh look at the characters.
The football game itself is a blast. The stakes aree high for both Monica and Ross, who give it their all to win the Geller cup. Rachel, who is terrible football player, is ignored so thoroughly that she leaves to get a snack and nobody notices, and Phoebe uses some unconventional tactics to get ahead.
In the end, after the teams get switched around and it’s boys vs girls, Rachel is the one to deliver the winning touchdown. Or so it seems. She is just short of the line and the ball is still live. Ross and Monica make a dive for it at the same time, and both hold on tight. Eventually, after several minutes, the rest of the gang leave them to it and they go off to have Thanksgiving dinner. The episode ends with the embattled siblings clutching the ball late into the night.