7 20 years ago, when Friends first aired on TV, People magazine gave it a D+ rating and Time magazine called them “dysfunctional morons”.

There are both good and bad reviews about Friends when it debuted on TV. One of the criticisms was from Variety magazine that said “Concept is OK, but the humor’s less sophisticated than expected.” There were many comparisons between the show and its contemporaries back then such as “Seinfeld” and “Dream On”. The People magazine has accused the show of rimshot writing and said that “the show’s saving grace is that, as the weeks go by, the characters begin to grow on you.”(source)

8 Joey’s white dog statue was originally gifted to Jennifer Aniston for good luck by her best friend when she started acting. She offered to lend it to the show for the episode in which Joey becomes rich and buys lot of stuff. After that episode, the producers decided to keep it. 

9 When the episode “The One with the Lesbian Wedding” aired in which Ross’ ex-wife and another woman gets married the producers “expected thousands and thousands of phone calls and hate mail” in response, but actually received only four complaints by telephone.

The episode contained a large amount of gay-positive jokes, with the lesbian wedding going on, Chandler’s father being gay, and Rachel fooling around with a girl back in college. Same-sex marriage at that time wasn’t yet legal and the episode attracted some controversy and censorship. Two of the networks that aired the show, refused to air the episode. But it went on to become the highest rated television program during that week with 31.6 million viewers.(source)

10 The original theme song for the show was “Shiny Happy People” by R. E. M., but was later changed to “I’ll Be There For You” by The Rembrandts.

11 In season one, Chandler and Joey’s apartment number was 4, and Monica and Rachel’s was 5. The numbers were later changed to 19 and 20 because the building in which the show takes place was too big to have 4 and 5 as apartment numbers. 

The change in the apartment numbers was done rather haphazardly. Sometimes, the earlier episodes of the first season had higher numbers and the later ones had the small numbers. Even the production numbers of the episodes were not in order. This was because one of the guest stars had a scheduling conflict and so the production schedules had to be changed.(1, 2)

12 Hank Azaria, one of the voice artists for The Simpsons and The Family Guy, auditioned for the role of Joey. But he was rejected, so he auditioned again and again, and was later cast as David, Phoebe’s scientist boyfriend.