I haven’t watched since Season 1 but regarding the trilogyIt's not just her best friend. It's literally all her friends. Even her adopted mother (or whatever that lady is). "If you don't remember me, I may as well act like you don't exist." It's just terrible writing.
Amnesia was more like collective memory loss or memory wipe, used to control the population by not letting them build up a big historical foundation or attachment. If I remember it was very much a destroy cultural identity type of thing to keep populations docile and controlled. They did some selective individual stuff in the main Silo to those workers so they wouldn’t remember how they got there / the event, and also so they wouldn’t remember killing whole populations and could keep pushing buttons.
Been a while since I read them though.