Ross wakes up the morning after sleeping with Chloe from the copy shop to find a voicemail from Rachel saying she wants to reconcile. He hides Chloe behind his apartment door as Rachel arrives, gets back together with her, then races to silence the gossip chain — Chloe to Isaac to Jasmine to Gunther — before Rachel finds out. He fails. Rachel confronts him in Monica's apartment while Monica, Phoebe, Chandler, and Joey are trapped in the bedroom, and the fight ends at three in the morning with Rachel ending the relationship.

This is the episode that defines the rest of the series. It covers the argument at the center of Ross and Rachel's dynamic — whether a break constitutes a breakup — and shows why the answer matters less than the cover-up that followed. By the end, the relationship is over not just because of the betrayal but because of w ...