Phoebe always felt like a weird add-on to me. I read somewhere that there is a close connection between Chandler, Ross, Monica and Rachel but Joey and Phoebe didn’t have the same bond with the four so could easily have been written out if the characters didn’t work.
Ditto, there were no real older adults to offer friendly advice - apart from the Gellers who were mainly there for laughs. The writers were going to have a friendly NY cop who would chat to them at the coffee house, but decided against it.
So we are told all about how Phoebe didn’t finish high school, was homeless living behind a dumpster, even lived in Prague for a time. But she goes from living with Monica to living with her Grandma in a nice apartment, why was she a homeless teenager then?
The storyline with her birth mother was even more bizarre. The woman at the beach house was in a ménage a trois as a teenager with Frank and Lily as they were all weirdos at High School together. She got pregnant by Frank but gave the twins - Phoebe and Ursula - to Frank and Lily to raise. Frank then disappeared leaving Lily to raise two children she was not biologically related to along with some random stepfather who later went to prison.
Plus Phoebe who was all about peace and love - but as a teenager she mugged people on the streets for money. One of which was a teenage Ross - and she actually remembers this due to the comic he was holding at the time. Even though Ross doesn’t remember her.
Oh and at one point, lived with a flatmate called Denise, who was never seen or heard of again. In fact, none of them had any real friends outside of the group.