Now one mom is going viral as she re-watches the sitcom with her daughter and shares which plot points and tropes she’s had to explain to the 14-year-old.

Writer and creative director Rebecca Makkai tweeted over the weekend that she’d begun a “Friends” marathon with her daughter.

“We are on season 2,” she wrote. “Here is a running, but incomplete, list of all the things I have needed to explain to her.”

Makkai had to explain the 20th-century practice of printing photographs of missing children on milk cartons, she tweeted. She also had to clue her daughter into the identities of Demi Moore, Joan Collins and Hank Azaria.

Her daughter had also never heard the terms “kickback” as in a social gathering, “closure” as in the finite end of a relationship, or “great rack” as in an aesthetically pleasing body part, she tweeted.

Communication technology from the 1990s was also a hot topic. Her daughter didn’t know “people used to memorize each other’s phone numbers,” she wrote, and “you could call your own answering machine to get your messages.”

Makkai asked for help from her followers in explaining the difference between a “pager” and a “beeper.” Not even Twitter could suss this one out. One user wrote, “the beeper just beeped and the pager could show you numbers and text? I think that was the key difference.” But others insisted they were the same device, referred to as different names.

Some of the tropes Makkai had to explain to her daughter still exist today, she wrote. As for why she needed to explain things that still exist, like secretaries answering desk phones, she speculated, “Young COVID teenagers just might not be super into hickeys or professional office culture?”

Makkai also marveled at how “marrying someone you didn’t love for a green card” was such a popular trope in ’80s and ’90s television.

Sexism and Homophobia in ‘Friends’

Some Twitter users who stumbled on Makkai’s thread expressed hope that she was speaking to her daughter about the parts of Friends that are more controversial.

“Yes of course we’re talking about the homophobia and fat-shaming and whitewashing and sexism,” Makkai responded.

While Friends is full of examples of outdated technology and social norms, fans often also point out offensive jokes and plot points that wouldn’t fly today.

When Friends: The Reunion aired on HBOMax in June 2021, it reignited conversations about the show’s lack of diversity. The special’s director Ben Winston even weighed in to defend the show.

“The cast is the cast,” he said at the time. “It was made in 1994. I think it’s remarkable how well it does stand the test of time.”

The special also included cameos from BTS, Malala Yousafzai and Mindy Kaling, he pointed out, as well as “three women from Ghana, one who talks about how Friends saved her life.”

Twitter users still couldn’t help but point out the show’s racial homogeneity in response to Makkai’s re-watch.

“A great point for this convo is how the show itself was whitewashing,” one wrote. “[If] it wasn’t for Living Single we wouldn’t have Friends. But once Friends came out and was successful, it drove Living Single off the air.”

The show is also subject to complaints of sexism. Another user said her teen daughter noticed “how dominant Ross is over Rachel” in a re-watch. “He is impatient, bossy, demeaning and demanding… lots of mansplaining and toxic masculinity. I felt disturbed that I hadn’t seen that before.”

Others said the show contains examples of transphobia. The character Chandler Bing’s dad is a transgender woman named Helena, who Chandler refers to as Charles.

Kathleen Turner, the actress who played Helena, acknowledged in an interview with Gay Times that those parts of the show didn’t “age well.”

“It was a 30-minute sitcom,” Turner said. “It became a phenomenon, but no one ever took it seriously as a social comment.”