Joey and Rachel and Ross, oh my. Get ready for a love triangle that's hotter than a freshly throtted latte. After a two-season arc in which Joey woefully pined for Rachel and Rachel yearned for Joey, the two finally consummated their feelings with a kiss in last spring's finale, set in Barbados. Now, though co creator-executive producer Marta Kaufman claims, "You can't kiss and tell," she will say, "Joey and Rachel definitely go further than they've gone before." Matt Le Blanc, who plays Joey confirms it: "There are some scenes that get fairly steamy."

  As TV's highest-rated comedy enters its 10th and final season, Monica and Chandler explore adoption as an answer to their infertility; Ross is digging fellow paleontologist Charlie (Aisha Tyler), who'll appear in at least the first two episodes; and Phoebe gets serious-again!-with Mike (Paul Rudd).

  But it's the Joey-Rachel-Ross story that has fans excited. Yet LeBlanc approached the story with some trepidation. Rachel had always been like a sister to Joey, and as an actor, LeBlanc says, "My instinct was to feel inappropriate." In fact, he says, he and the rest of the cast-Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox Arquette, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer-were initially uncomfortable with the idea of Rachel and Joey making a go of it. "It's one of those story lines where everyone was going leery." But the writers, he says, have managed to "craft it in a way that is really very clever."

  When it comes to finding out about Rachel and Joey, expect Ross to be the last to know. "The walls (in that Barbados hotel) are very thin, "Kauffman says, and the rest of the friends will hear things first.

  Obviously, when Ross finds out about Joey and Rachel, it'll probably be traumatic but handled in a funny way." Says Schwimmer, who plays Ross. "It's not going to be high drama." With whom does he hope Rachel ends up? "Oh, Ross!" he says (of course). They're destined to be together. To quote Phoebe Buffay, they're each other's lobster, whether they know it or not."

  HOW FRIENDS SHOULD END

  We always want what's best for our friends. That's why, when the lights go out for the last time at Central Perk, Friends needs to end on more than just a rating high, it needs to deliver a sweet, funny, touching, happy ending for all.

  This means Ross will end up with Rachel. No buts about it. We all love Joey, but he'll be heading to spin-off life. While we look forward to seeing Joey and Rachel play out their long-simmering romance, by season's end it will be time for baby Emma's parents to get serious for real.

  Speaking of babies, it's only right that Monica and Chandler's painstaking efforts to have a family should finally pay off through adoption.

  And Phoebe will, at last, land her man. We're hoping it's nice guy mike, but if it's not, there's nothing we'd like to see more than TV's funkiest folksinger walking down the aisle to the strains of "Smelly Cat" -Matt Roush

  Even LeBlanc wants Rachel and Ross to be together. "If you focus on how sad Joey might be, you might root for Joey and Rachel," he says, "But Friends is Ross and Rachel. That's where it started. For the show to come full circle, they should end up together. Or maybe she can end up with a movie star like Brad Pitt."

  Kauffman isn't able to choose so easily. "I go back and forth," she says. "I love Joey so much. He's the sweetest, most wonderful guy in the world. But Rachel and Ross have a child together. It's tough." Fans are even tougher. "People come up to me all the time with very strong opinions-even my rabbi," she says. "Although it doesn't influence our decisions, it is constantly surprising to me how much people care about these character."

  In the meantime, Schwimmer says the cast has no idea how it will all end: "The writers only know about six episodes in advance what's going to happen. The awkward thing is we just never know and people don't believe us." What the cast and creators do know, however, is that the season is likely to focus on the Friends doing stuff together like the one where they spent Thanksgiving playing touch football or the one where they all went to Vegas.

  Stunt casting will be kept to a minimum, says co creator-executive producer David Crane, but that doesn't mean we won't see a few major names. Christina Applegate, who received an Emmy nomination for her performance as Rachel's annoying sister Amy, and Giovanni Ribisi, who played Phoebe's strangely lovable brother Frank Jr., will make return appearances.

  "We've had some fantastic guests over the years," LeBlanc says. "But for the die-hard Friends fans, the best episodes are where you have the six friends in one room with no outside characters, not even a waiter, to interfere." That, of course, makes LeBlanc's next challenge-his own series, flying solo-even more daunting.

  The announcement earlier this year that Joey would be spun off into his own show for the fall 2004 season seemed to tip the hand of what is to come; if the character is moving to Los Angeles, that would he isn't ending up with Rachel, right? Not necessarily, says Crane, who won't work on the new show. "That's not going to tell you anything about what's going to happen on Friends," he maintains. "We're going to do whatever we want to, and then they'll have to adjust. If we wanted to end this thing with Joey and Rachel moving to Paris, we would do that and they'd have the job of bringing them back." The spin-off will inherit the Friends time slot and be produced by Friends executive producers Kevin S. Bright, Scott Silveri and Shana Goldberg-Meehan.

  Before anyone gets to the new show, the final cast and crew still must complete the final season of one of the most loved sitcoms ever, and that won't be easy. First of all, "We've been on the verge of tears a lot," LeBlanc says. "This is a gig that changed all of our lives. There will be life after Friends, but it's very sad." Adds Schwimmer, "We're trying not to talk about it." If someone does get upset, "the other five try to cheer them up."

  And then there's the task of making the 10th season a memorable one, worthy of sending our friends off into the sunset. "We try not to be sad and just keep doing the work," Kauffman says. "But it puts a kind of pressure on us to make it the best ever-like you need more pressure!"