The 5 worst/weirdest moments in 'Friends'

We all love 'Friends' but these moments made it difficult

Don't get us wrong, we love 'Friends'. Love, love, love watching 'Friends'. It's up there with 'The Simpsons' as one of the few shows that we will rewatch over and over again.

But, and you knew this was coming, it wasn't always great. Much like 'The Simpsons', the quality of the series began to freefall after a certain point. In 'The Simpsons', it's argued that it was either everything after the 'Who Shot Mister Burns?' double-episode, or it was after we found out that Principal Skinner wasn't actually Principal Skinner. In 'Friends', we can pinpoint it to an exact moment: when Monica and Chandler got engaged. Even though the show was still sporadically great after that episode, it was still never quite as good.

Anyway, here are the five moments in the run of 'Friends' that really irked us the most:

1. ROSS TRIES TO BANG HIS COUSIN DENISE RICHARDS

The first of many instances in 'Friends' when the writers seem to think the incest is some kind of hilarious joke - there was also Ross dating the daughter of the man (Bruce Willis) that Rachel was dating, as well as Ross dating Rachel's sister Reese Witherspoon - and unfortunately, we don't agree with them. For anyone who's seen 'Wild Things', we can all agree that Denise Richards is hot, but there should be a part of your brain that turns that off when you know you're related. Ew, Ross, just … ew.

2. CHANDLER GOES TO TULSA

Once the writers finally got Chandler and Monica together, it became apparent that they had absolutely no idea what to do with them next, so kept hurling random obstacles in their path. The one that stuck out the most was suddenly sending Chandler out of New York for work, which culminated in a truly awful joke about Monica walking in on Chandler watching porn, him switching stations really quickly to a shark documentary, and Monica somehow coming to the conclusion that her husband was really into sharks. Which is just stupid.

3. DANNY DEVITO PLAYS A CRYING STRIPPER

There have been some great celebrity cameos over the years in 'Friends' (Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Gary Oldman, Susan Sarandon, Tom Selleck), and there's also been a few duds - Jean Claude Van Damme, Sean Penn, Rebecca Romijn, that Robin Williams and Billy Crystal pay cheque opening - but the worst of the lot had to be Danny DeVito. Before we loved him on TV again in 'It's Always Sunny...', he popped up as a stripper who's made fun of at Phoebe's bachelorette party, starts crying, and generally delivers some terrible one-liners. It's just incredibly awkward to watch the Oscar-nominated actor stoop so low.

4. ROSS AND MONICA MAKING OUT

Actually revealed in the same episode as the Danny DeVito stripper (geez, this was a bad episode), we find out that years ago, Chandler made out with Rachel - which really messes up the continuity of the 'Friends' storyline - only for it then to reveal that Ross accidentally made out with his sister Monica. Another example of the writers somehow finding incest to be hilarious, this was stomach-churningly not funny, and one of the darkest, most disturbing moments in the entire show. Yuck.

5. THAT WHOLE RACHEL AND JOEY DEBACLE

Everything about how this would-be romance was handled wrong. Joey gets a sudden crush on Rachel, but he's dating Charlie, who ends up hooking up with Ross. When Ross finds out about Joey and Rachel hooking up, he flies off the handle, despite hooking up with Charlie behind Joey's back. Then when they do finally get Ross's blessing, Rachel keeps slapping Joey away (which isn't terribly far from the giggling sessions she had when she was starting off with Ross), and after a small pep talk from Chandler, decide to give up on their potential relationship forever.

Which is a drag, because if you think about it, Rachel and Joey make for a much better fit than Rachel and Ross do, and we get the feeling it was written in a hurry, and ended just as suddenly because the Joey spin-off was about to happen, and he needed to be single in that show. It was just a total mess, and a big example of just how off the rails the writers of the show had gotten by this point.