Turner fuels Friends reunion talk

I guess you're right. Just about all of the humor involving the men, though, is centered around them doing or saying something lame or stupid. If that's true to the same extent for the female characters (I'm not sure that it is), then they at least come off as less sort of pathetic in these instances.

A website made up the scoop that NBC was preparing a series of four hour-longs. It's since been disproven. You may have read an article that was based on that erroneous information.

I don't think that Monica is supposed to read as unintelligent. Crazy, controlling and nightmarish, but not unintelligent. Rachel isn't a rocket scientist but she's not supposed to be stupid, either. You could make a very strong argument that even though Ross and Chandler have all of the signposts/accolades that people associate with intelligence, they aren't really any smarter than Monica and Rachel; in fact, Monica's career doesn't have the same type of academic path, so she can't really be compared on the same scale, and Rachel spent too much time self-absorbedly looking a husband to be a trophy wife towards to build up academic credentials.

Also I'm not sure why we're talking about academic achievement. When the writers sit down and say "Ross/Rachel/Monica does something dumb", they don't mean "fails to conjugate a latin verb".