What the hell happened on Friends last night?

Factual Questions
1

Don’t watch the show that often (though it does come on right after my nightly Simpsons rerun. Anyway, saw a bit of it last night (during prime time) that made me stop and go ‘guhunh?’ Watched the last twenty minutes hoping to find some explanation of what the hell was going on. The dark haired character was roly-poly, the actor was successful, dumblonde was a stockbroker, and no one seemed to have any memory of the past several seasons. What gives? Nothing to explain it at the end that I saw. Have I been hallucinating these past several years? What else have I missed? Simpsons are still the Simpsons, no?

Sorry, by the way for not knowing any real character names. Hope you understand who I meant.

Rhythm…

Once in a while you can get shown the light
in the strangest of places
if you look at it right…

2

Corky’s sister died from the stab wounds she received last week and Rocket Romano, in a fit of rage -

Oops, wrong show.

3

It was a “What If…?” episode. You must have missed the “real life” intro where they set up the fantasy.

4

Okay, I’ll take pity. It was a “what if” episode, where they all wqondered what would have happened if just one thing in there life had been different.

My feeling is that the producers should never slow down the show enough for us to realize how close to being pathetic losers all these characters are.

5

I raised this question in MPSIMS yesterday, just nanoseconds after the show ended:

http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum4/HTML/005206.html

When will all the rhetorical questions end?