Friends Season 9
Overview
The penultimate season, and you can feel the show starting to say its goodbyes — slowly, because nobody wanted to rush it. Rachel is raising baby Emma, Ross is still hovering hopefully nearby, and in the season's most debated storyline, Rachel and Joey give romance a brief, awkward try that divides fans to this day. The best addition is Paul Rudd as Mike, Phoebe's piano-playing boyfriend, who slots into the group so naturally you'll wonder where he'd been hiding for eight years. Monica and Chandler get the season's sneaky heartbreaker of a story: the jokes about starting a family turn serious when they learn conceiving won't be easy for them, and the show handles it with more honesty than you'd expect from a sitcom in 2002. Chandler, meanwhile, quits the job nobody could ever describe and stumbles sideways into advertising. The finale ships everyone off to Barbados for a palaeontology conference that somehow involves a high-stakes game of table tennis and a proposal on the beach. One season left after this — and season nine makes sure you know the end is coming.
