It's 2018 in New York City, and the gang realise they can't just sit around and drink coffee all day
After three years of hard graft, Rachel is still doing unpaid work for Ralph Lauren - food and travel expenses covered, though - as she tries to climb the ropes from assistant to senior assistant. Having been told by her boss that her thighs were getting too big for the new Winter collection, she is on a diet of quinoa, spinach flax smoothies, cigarettes and vodka. Clocking in over 12 hours of work a day means she barely gets to hang out with the gang at the newly refurbished coffee haunt, Vagabonds Coffee - an ironic name, she thinks, considering a flat white costs $4.50.
Rachel fucked Ross again last weekend after too many 2-4-1 margaritas. But it was worth it as it gave her a bed to sleep in for the night instead of her usual go-to on Monica and Chandler’s couch in Brooklyn. Ross liked her Instagram photo of her morning-after coffee, and now she wonders whether they might rekindle their relationship. However, Ross’s ‘frowned upon’ liaisons with his 20-year-old student Elizabeth has prompted student protests criticising men of abusing their positions of power in academia. 1,500 women at NYU signed a petition to have Ross removed from his post as a paleontology lecturer, but instead the university promoted him and upped his salary.
Phoebe’s ‘hippie dippie bullshit’, as the rest of the gang refer to it as, has turned into big business. She runs a spiritual workshop at a vegan cafe in Chelsea four times a week, with her tarot card and astrology readings proving most popular. Her bi-monthly zine NamasYAY sells at $5 a pop plus postage, 10% off Indian head massages inside as well. Her lawyer-turned-musician husband Mike has just opened his own jazz club in Harlem, with Phoebe helping behind the bar on weekends. The pair both insist they’re not gentrifying the historically black area but are instead paying homage to its cultural roots. The $17 Rum Old Fashioned, made only with Caribbean liquor, of course, is evidence of this.
After spending years toiling away in the catering business, Monica is doing pop-ups of French-inspired cuisine across the city, as well as running a wellness and clean eating blog as a side project. She is also a local ambassador for Weight Watchers after her enormous eight-stone weight loss, often including before and after photographs of herself on Monica’s food for Thought to inspire others to ditch carbs, gluten, sugar, meat and dairy like her. Sponsored Weight Watchers online content seemingly brings in more revenue than actually cooking for people IRL.
Her beau Chandler won’t quit his monotonous office job, even though he says he wants to move into advertising. Being bored shitless for big bucks just fuels his latest habit of snorting away his paycheck by buying bags of cocaine. Monica wants to try for a baby, but he’s too scared to tell her that he blew their savings six months ago on high grade blow. Could he be in any more trouble? His BFF Joey’s failed attempts to make it big in the acting game ousted him out of the rental price market in Manhattan so the pair mainly catch up on Facebook Messenger via memes and gifs. Joey moved out to New Jersey a year ago where he rents a room overlooking a couple’s garage for $700 a month. It’s basically Manhattan, he tells himself; the train only takes two hours.