Friends was a funny show. It was a goofy show. It was, at times, a silly show and even a dramatic show. Heck, just watch “The One with the Morning After” and you’ll see the most heart-wrenching breakup in TV history and also the gang trying to fight starvation by eating leg wax. Friends did it all… but it was never surreal. It was never weird.

Okay, Ross having a pet monkey for a season was weird. Rachel making an English trifle with meat and peas was weird. The entire cast spending an episode obsessed with walking in on each other in the shower? Also weird. But all of that was playfully weird, not weird weird. Not Arrested Development weird. Friends never went into over-the-top flights of fancy or veered into surreal dark humor. Even when Friends spent a double-sized episode exploring an alternate reality, things stayed grounded in the show’s heightened and sanitized version of late ’90s New York.

And then there’s “The One with All the Thanksgivings.”

Twenty years ago, Friends aired its Season 5 Thanksgiving episode and dove right into the deep end of surreality. The episode is one of Friends‘ many Thanksgiving episodes and also one of its many flashback episodes (they really loved all that ’80s fashion). In it, the overstuffed cast all lazes around Monica and Rachel’s apartment, recounting the worst Thanksgivings they ever had. We finally see the infamous Thanksgiving that made Chandler hate the holiday forever, and we see the Thanksgiving that Joey got his head stuck in a turkey (that’s silly, not weird). Early on, though, Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) states that she has, definitively, the worst Thanksgiving memory of anyone. Cut to:

“Thanksgiving 1862” is not something you would see on any Must See TV sitcom, but here it is! Phoebe, who we know is all hippy dippy New Age, is remembering a Thanksgiving from a past life. And instead of just having her talk about this kooky quirky belief, which is totally the tactic the show took in every episode before and after this ep, the show actually dives into Phoebe’s head and replays her memory of serving as a battlefield nurse during the Civil War!

Rachel dating a Ross lookalike named Russ is goofy. Seeing a blood-soaked Phoebe frantically tending to a dying Union soldier is weird. And it gets weirder!

She loses an arm! And responds to it with the same kind of exasperated annoyance she uses when a generic mix-up happens! How many other chill, hang-out sitcoms feature someone’s body part getting blown off? Did I miss an episode of Seinfeld where Newman loses a foot?

The episode continues as normal from there, after an overly annoyed Ross (is there any other kind?) interjects with, “In this life, Phoebe.” Chandler loses a toe (we don’t see the blood!), Joey and Monica both wear turkeys on their heads, and an “I love you” is accidentally blurted. It’s good ol’ Friends fun. And then the credits roll and we return to the battlefield once more, except this time during World War I. Turns out Phoebe’s had a few bloody Thanksgivings!

And that’s how the Season 5 Thanksgiving episode ends, with a World War I Phoebe bummed about losing another arm in another explosion. Friends wouldn’t get this weird again, which leaves these surreal flashbacks a total outlier in the entire run. But whatever–I’m totally thankful that Friends got weird this once.

Stream Friends "The One with All the Thanksgivings" on Netflix