Every gang has their favorite hangout spot, and if you've ever seen an episode of Friends (if you haven't...I mean...how?) you know that for Monica, Phoebe, Rachel, Ross, Chandler, and Joey their go-to spot was Central Perk.
It's where the show started.
There were breakups.
And makeups.
And pretty much everything in between.
Spending 236 episodes in a coffee shop means that the friends must have drank an absolute bonkers amount of coffee. But how much coffee did they consume? Well, that's where ~math~ comes in.
While you could spend a week rewatching every episode and counting for yourself, lucky for you Twitter user Kit Lovelace already did and actually calculated how many cups of coffee each friend drank over the course of the show. Turns out, Phoebe drank the most, topping out at 227 total cups.
Digging through old stuff, just found my results from the time I went through all 236 episodes of Friends to see ho… https://t.co/NIR6ao0zwd
Lovelace broke it down by character and by cups of coffee consumed each season. For the most part, the gang actually drank less coffee as the show went on — except for Rachel, who drank more coffee in Season 10 than she did in Season 1, but, I mean, she had a kid so it makes sense.
Moreover, I then went ahead and broke it down season by season to see how their habits developed and changed over t… https://t.co/CgLORMO8u2
I'd also just like to point out that Rachel's line spikes as soon as she starts working a full-time job.
But wait: How much did all of this coffee cost them? Lovelace even broke that down too.
Using some simple calculations, Lovelace figured out that the six Friends spent a total of $2,077.20 (including tips) on coffee over 10 years, which...seems pretty low, actually, but math doesn't lie.
And if you're wondering if Lovelace overestimated the tip, well, nope.
(FYI: We know they leave 20% tips because in the episode The One With Unagi Joey questions the amount left and Chandler confirms it as 20%.)
So how on Earth did Lovelace accrue all this data? By rewatching every Central Perk scene and keeping an eye out for any mug moments.
@helennianias @joelgolby I scrubbed through the non-Central Perk scenes, keeping a keen eye on any mug/potential cu… https://t.co/Uehsb3JRWV
Lovelace did admit that some assumptions about the coffee consumption had to be made, but all of the conclusions make a lot of sense.
@CasparSalmon I do remember at the time deciding to make the assumption that anything in a mug was coffee unless otherwise stipulated...
So there you go. If you ever thought that what you learned in math class wouldn't be useful in real life, Lovelace just proved you wrong. Thank you for doing the lord's work, Lovelace. Keep it up.
