How many total episodes does the sitcom Friends have?

How to get close to this number

Multiply seasons by the network season length. Ten seasons at around twenty-four episodes each gives roughly two hundred and forty, and the answer sits just under that. The American network season of twenty-two to twenty-four episodes is the single most useful constant for any television count question.

The contrast with the cable drama on this site is the point: sixty-two episodes for five seasons there against two hundred and thirty-six for ten here. Twice the seasons produces nearly four times the episodes, because the formats have completely different production models.

The finale audience in the explanation is the historical marker: over fifty-two million viewers, still among the most-watched scripted finales of the century. That figure comes from an era when a broadcast network could gather a third of a country simultaneously, which the Super Bowl question on this site shows is now almost impossible for anything but sport.