How can Rachel be turning 30 in this episode? She said she was 28 in The One With The Fake Party(4.16), and this episode is three seasons and two episodes later. Shouldn’t she be turning 31?

In the 'Monica's 30th' segment of this show, which obviously takes place sometime after The One in London, Joey refers to his Adam's apple as "My Joey's apple" after which Chandler long-sufferingly corrects him. However, in a Season 2 episode (I can't seem to track down which one) Joey naively reminisces about dating a girl with a huge "Adam's apple" (quote).

When I turned 30 my mother threw me a party at her house. A lot of people were there, many of our friends were present, it was pretty cool. Unfortunatly my best friend was in Florida visting his brother so he wasn't there. He called me to wish me a good one at least. And then he turned 30 and we took him out to dinner.

Anyway, I sure do wonder why they felt they felt the need to show the gang as being really sad and upset that they were now this certain age. Life's what you make of it, after all, so perhaps they could have been happy that they had their health and their friends close by.

Speaking of which, this one in particular really seem to imply that this group of six really did not have ANY other friends outside their own social circle. Although Phoebe once said that she did, and I already mentioned elsewhere that she knew people that we never saw and that were really weird and strange. Maybe it's just as well they never showed up on the show, huh?

Because turning 30 is a cliche and they were making fun of the whole "becoming middle aged" thing