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I Just Realized Something Really Obvious About "Friends" And I'm Embarrassed

Lol, I feel dumb.

If you're a Friends fan, you know there's a two-part Season 2 episode called "The One After the Super Bowl."

The episode features a ridiculously star-studded lineup of guest stars, including Julia Roberts, Brooke Shields, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and...Marcel the Monkey.

Since I was 6 years old when the episode originally aired on Jan. 28, 1996, I didn't watch it live. Instead, I first saw the episode nearly 10 years later when I started binge-watching the show when I was in high school.

If this isn’t perfect timing... I’m literally about to watch part one of “The One After the Superbowl”. I’ve been w… https://t.co/RZEYRwE9ZW

Because of that, one thing never made any sense to me: "Why is this called 'The One After The Super Bowl' when there was seemingly no reference whatsoever to the Super Bowl in either part of the episode??"

I’m so confused. The One After The Super Bowl parts 1 & 2 appear to have nothing to do with the Super Bowl (apart f… https://t.co/hydlfNXiRH

^This tweet made me feel SEEN.

Whatever, I honestly never really thought about it, TBH. Whenever I'd see the episode again in TBS reruns or on Netflix, it was just a known fact that that's what the episode was called.

That brings me to this week. Unless you're living under a rock, you know that there was a huge episode of This Is Us that aired after the Super Bowl this year.

And I started seeing tweets like this about the episode:

the only episode i’ve seen of This is Us was the one after the Super Bowl & i still haven’t recovered from it lol

@Nirvana__R Girllllllll the one after the Super Bowl is gonna killlll us!

I’m gonna skip all the This Is Us episodes I missed and just watch the one after the super bowl!!!

And I was like, "haha, the one after the super bowl! That's like that Friends episode...OH WAIIIIIIIIIIIIIT."

And that, friends, is the true story of how I came to realize that two-part episode of Friends aired immediately after the Super Bowl back in 1996.

Go ahead and roast me in the comments! I've earned it! But, I will say that several of my friends were ALSO surprised by this little factoid, so if you're someone who was in the dark like me, I hope you find this *enlightening*.