Who was the lead character in Friends? The Data Science Answer

It has been more than 13 years since the last episode of Friends aired. But we never stop talking about it. Do we? I do not remember the last time I had a pizza without watching a random episode of Friends.

While watching Ross’ hilarious performance in one of my favorite episodes, “The One With Ross’ Tan”, I started thinking, who actually was the lead character in Friends? Was it one of Ross and Rachel with their everlasting love angle? Was it Chandler with his sarcastic comedy? Was it the cleanliness freak Monica? Was it the ladies’ man Joey? Or was it our favorite singer Phoebe?

Ask around, and you will receive different answers. But what does the data say? Lets find out the data science answer to who was the lead character in Friends.

To determine an answer to this question, I downloaded transcripts of the ten seasons from this amazing fan site. I have used different parameters to find out who stood out among our six friends.

The entire analysis has been done in R. I converted the raw transcript files to a structured tabular form followed by an exploratory data analysis.

You can find the R code in my GitHub repository.

Let’s start by looking at how many lines each of them had. I could not get the actual screen time of the characters but I think the number of lines would give us a reasonable estimate.

Rachel and Ross both had 9k+ lines. This was really close. While Phoebe had the least number of lines – 7.4k. Chandler, Monica and Joey had almost the same number. Let’s also look at the number of lines per season.

It seems that the writers have done a really good job in distributing the number of lines among the six friends. Ross had the most number of lines in the first three and the last season. Well, these were the times when the Ross-Rachel angle was in its prime. Could this be a reason?

Chandler had the most number of lines in season 4 and 6 and by a very small margin, Joey beats him in season 5. Rachel dominates seasons 7 to 9. Monica maintains her position in the top half in almost all the seasons.

Phoebe gets the short end of the stick with the fewest lines in most of the seasons. But she had her own ways to make us fall in love with her. Didn’t she?

Okay, now that we have looked at the lines I was wondering if the number of words also had a similar  distribution.

Well, the number of words more or less follow the same distribution. So who is leading up till now? I would say there is a tough competition between Ross and Rachel. 

Now, let’s have a look at the number of screen appearances. I have considered a character to be present in a scene only if they had a line to speak.

Okay. This is interesting. Chandler with 1400+ scenes had the most number of screen appearances. Though, Ross and Rachel were not very far behind with around 1330 and 1370 appearances respectively. Phoebe had the least number of appearances.

The number of individual scenes can also be a good parameter to answer our question. For this part, I consider scenes in which only one character among the six was present. This also counts scenes where other supporting characters were present but with only one of these six.

Well, Ross is a clear winner in this category. Rachel is not even close this time.

Let’s move on to one last parameter. I also want to find out how many times they were mentioned in the episode title. Let’s have a look.

So Rachel takes the lead this time. She was mentioned 27 times followed by Ross who was mentioned 24 times in the episode titles. Monica was last with only 8 mentions.

The Answer?

Let’s do a quick recap.

• Rachel and Ross had the most number of lines with a negligible difference between them. The number of words also showed the same pattern.
• Chandler had the most number of screen appearances but again Ross and Rachel were not very far behind.
• Ross was a clear winner with the most number of individual screen appearances. Rachel was not even close. 
• Rachel had the most number of mentions in the episode titles. But Ross was just 3 episodes behind.

It is really close between Ross and Rachel. There was very little difference in most of the parameters. Ross, however, beats Rachel in the individual scene appearances by a wide margin. Hence, I will have to give it to Ross.

It was really fun doing this. I came across some other facts that you might find interesting.

• There was only one scene in the entire series where Ross, Monica, Joey, and Phoebe were present without Chandler, Rachel or anyone else. The episode was “The One with the Blackout” where Chandler gets stuck in the ATM vestibule.
• Chandler and Joey as a pair had the most number of screen appearances than any other pair.
• Other than the 6 main characters, Gunther had the most number of screen appearances.
• Of all the scenes, Central Perk had around 16% of the scenes and Monica’s apartments made 26% of them.
• Phoebe had more number of appearances in Central Perk than anyone else. Of all scenes of Central Perk, Phoebe was seen in around two-thirds of them.

• Of course, no surprises here. Monica had the most number of appearances in scenes shot in her apartment followed by Chandler and then Rachel.

Thanks a lot. I hope you found this interesting. Stay tuned for more. 🙂