Like a precursor to Dwight Schrute in “The Office,” Phoebe is a Trojan horse for dark humor on a network sitcom. Ross has his dinosaurs, Rachel has Bloomingdale’s, Monica is a neat freak, but Phoebe gets the grit of the world. Her mother killed herself in the family kitchen, her father abandoned their family, her stepfather went to prison, her twin sister rarely acknowledges her, her childhood toy was a barrel, she has at least one green-card marriage under her guitar strap, and she spent her Sweet Sixteen “being chased round a tire yard by an escaped mental patient who, in his own words, wanted to ‘kill me’ or whatever.”

Miraculously, she emerged from this history as a bomb of self-confidence (“I’m very bendy”) and open-mindedness in a show that has some painfully politically incorrect moments. Phoebe doesn’t have to try for inclusivity; it comes naturally to her because she’s the only one who knows what life looks like outside these rent-controlled walls. She has made her friends her family not as a perk but because she had to. She had no other option but to solicit their help in creating the Thanksgiving she never had or to run like a little kid around Central Park with her. And because she gives as good as she gets, she’s the one you’d most want to be friends with.

During one of the final episodes of the show, Phoebe and Rachel spot Chandler getting into a car with a woman who is decidedly not Monica. Convinced that he’s cheating on their friend, Phoebe suggests they follow him.