Also, Friends didn’t invent ‘The one with…’, they named their episodes like that as a joke because it is common for fans of a show to refer to their favourite episodes along such lines regardless of what the episodes are actually titled.
So use of ‘The one with the whales’ very likely predates Friends.
Please don’t refer to it like an episode of Friends.
It’s widely referred to as that.
Also, Friends didn’t invent ‘The one with…’, they named their episodes like that as a joke because it is common for fans of a show to refer to their favourite episodes along such lines regardless of what the episodes are actually titled.
So use of ‘The one with the whales’ very likely predates Friends.