Are we still cheering FRIENDS in 2019 for endorsing Ross and Rachel’s “Emotionally Abusive” relationship?
So no one told you life was gonna be this way… (clap, clap, clap, clap).
If you’re a true Friends fan, you’re probably humming I’ll Be There For You by The Rembrandts after me. I don’t blame you. The popular sitcom, which later went on to become one of the most successful TV sitcoms to exist globally, arrived as a defining addition to media consumption and became an all-American delineation of urban life. The Ross-Rachel-Chandler-Monica-Joey-Phoebe-Monkey-Smelly Cat starring show was sexier than Near Beer popularizing sitcom Cheers and less sardonic than Seinfeld. Friends remained at the sweet spot of prescient pop escapism and populist mass entertainment for sentient and alive TV-loving folks through the ’90s until now. The show still feels, in its own way, as embodiment a relic of the era of ’94 as do the original tear-jerking death moment of Mufasa in the ‘The Lion King’, Kurt Cobain’s shocking death, Nelson Mandela’s inaugural speech as South Africa’s first black president, and of course, Pulp Fiction.
Friends pushed situation comedies to become mainstream in the era dominated by cable TV with an aim to cater to living room audiences. The extensive popularity Friends amongst the millennials made it even more so easy for the show to resonate with the burgeoning market and continue seeking momentum in its exposure. We waved farewell to the decade of Central Perk coffee, How You Doin’, We Were On A Break, and harmless background laughs followed by Chandler’s every quip back in 2004, yet the characterization and humor of the show continue to prosper in numerous other cultural contexts. The prosperity of the show persists unabated in scaling milestone, regardless of it being deep-rooted to American culture & references, and the open showcasing of toxicity of ‘90s-esque mindset, which thankfully has now arrived under fire in the #MeToo era.
Before we talk about the main issue and someone institutes a debate calling me an amateur who has been freshly introduced to the series and can’t keep the judgemental feminism aside for a moment of harmless laughter, let me introduce you to my relationship with the show, to begin with. Similar to the preponderance of millennials having grown up in the Friends-era, I hold an unfathomable connection with the show. My relationship with the show is a no-normal one because it has taken me a serious dedication of repeated binging to achieve it. Not only do I own all the first edition DVDs of the show, but my phone also houses the HD version of every episode of Friends smuggled from a colleague in China so that I can watch it over and over regardless of the place I am at. My dedication to Friends is so profound that having it on in the background has been a norm in my house. It’s the time when it isn’t while I’m talking to my parents on the phone, that it becomes a debatable question whether I’m alright. In short, watching Friends is an ideal measure of my good mental and physical well being according to my family and friends.
The show has been my go-to source of laughter and entertainment for the past decade, i.e. almost high school, grad school, post-grad, and beyond. It still manages to cheer me up after the most grueling and exhausting days and helps me release my tension, filling me with a sense of tranquility and peace without fail. I pull up a Chandler bing with the selective bunch of people at work I don’t like to such a degree that it almost starts bordering on banal, I embrace my inner Rachel when I’m penning down a column on Haute Couture, I let my inner Monica keep me on time when it comes to paying the bills, I become Ross when it comes to healthy and educational discussions with friends, I hero-worship Phoebe while strumming all the wrong chords on my guitar as I sing Beyonce’s Haunted, and last but certainly not the least, when I sit and eat my pizza without any worry in the world like Joey.
I have honestly lost the count of times I’ve watched the re-runs every day, however, to this day, a sense of extreme culmination and pang of sadness engulfs me every time I watch the last episode of the show. The measure of melancholy can be compared to the feeling that consumes us on the last day of vacation, summer camps, end of bachelorhood, and something similar. You get the vibe. In a similar context, the rush of the same new excitement immediately follows every time “The Pilot” episode comes up. I get immediately relaxed as soon as New York Skyline appears on the screen followed by Monica who marks the beginning of this iconic series with her dialogue “There’s nothing to tell. It’s just some guy I work with” while casually perching on that orange couch at Central Perk talking to Phoebe, Joey, and Chandler. This ensures the hope in me that the world hasn’t ended and there are still many episodes full of laugher and insanity ahead. Until now, you could’ve argued with me that the show is outdated and I’d make you lose the debate with my strong arguments, but things have started looking pretty different to me now.
In the wake of me growing mature at 25, although, a bit too late, my perception of Ross and Rachel’s relationship falters from the old one, every time I watch Friends these days. For almost twenty-five years, Friends has managed to elucidate a generation of young people, nonetheless, it has gloriously defined the level of toxicity a relationship can possibly get entangled into. We kept cheering Ross, a toxic boyfriend and a pathetic egoist, who single-handedly destroyed his relationship with his girlfriend and childhood love Rachel because of his extreme jealousy and lack of trust. He failed to engage in real communication with her over his concerns and continued behaving in a banefully possessive and territorial manner until she gave up on him. Many argue in his defense saying he had been betrayed earlier by Carol and that led him to become what he did, but guess what? It doesn’t matter. Just because his wife chose to be a lesbian doesn’t give him a right to become the standard definition of toxic masculinity.
I’m not making Ross take the entire share of the blame because we’re all aware that Rachel nicely carved herself into that share of the “blame” pie. The 15-year-old me rooted for Ross and Rachel, but the 25-year-old Feminist in me feels disgusted to have rooted for their pathetic relationship. We often side with Ross on that whole “we were on a break” fiasco, howbeit, it doesn’t make him any less of a cheater. Cheating has been quite casual for him though if you ask me. He made out with Rachel during his relationship with Julie. He even uttered Rachel’s name while exchanging his vows with Emily, which made it quite evident that despite him moving on, his mind was stuck on Rachel. And wasn’t it the same case with Rachel who selfishly enough chose to leave a heavily pregnant Phoebe behind and flew to London to stop Ross’s wedding? If they really wanted a mature relationship, they could’ve communicated instead of resorting to being untrustworthy and cheating.
Whenever Ross tried to make a forward move with his life with someone, Rachel was always there, ready to sabotage it instead of moving on and being happy for him. There were times she pushed him in miserable situations just like he did. Remember how she wrecked his relationship with Julie right when he was ready to make a leap in their relationship by adopting cats together? She didn’t stop here. She went ahead vandalizing his romantic weekend with Bonnie, which eventually ended up as a breakup when she manipulated her to shave the hair off her head? And what was even wrong with Ross? He felt icky even kissing Bonnie’s shaved head.
Was he trying to prove that women with no hair are ugly and that the loss of hair makes them less worthy of love? Is he aware of the staggering number of women who undergo hair loss on a yearly basis due to cancer treatment? Do their partners leave them as soon as they lose their hair? Bullshit! Be it fictional, but my love for Sex and The City bloomed a million time more when the scene reminded of the time when Samantha had to go bald while dealing with breast cancer and Smith Jerrod, despite being a rising star figure who was famous for his blonde locks, shaved his own in solidarity? Anyway, this was just one segment of it. Ross was worse on so many levels. Ross and Rachel continued making each other miserable and the show continued defining a generation with this sort of negative legacy.
Even years after the whole “we were on a break” catastrophe, the pair couldn’t help bringing it up, and they continued doing so in abundance. They should’ve resolved it once and for all, kept the matter in the past where it belonged rather than using it as a lethal weapon in every future argument, and moved on. You can’t expect to step forward in your life if you continue to hold unresolved issues from the past. Yet they did. Ross and Rachel were never happy in the timeline of their affair. They kept bickering in an unusual amount throughout theirs. The pair continued to remain in a relationship that was romantically ambiguous for longer than anyone can tolerate, especially the New Yorkers whom they portrayed. As far as my knowledge with the New Yorkers goes, they’re too busy finding ways to succeed in their career and seek power than stay in a stupid relationship and waste their time.
Everything about Ross and Rachel was confusing, it doesn’t matter if we considered them an ideal couple then. I believe communication is important in every relationship, especially one that’s like theirs so that both parties are aware of what to expect from each other. The same should’ve been the case with these two, instead, they were determined to keep beating a dead horse and we continued cheering for them. Is that what we would be possibly doing in 2019? I don’t think so. If this were to be the case today, the show would be called out on social media for promoting toxic relationships, and producers, including the actors Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer, would be forced to make a public statement, apologizing on the same front. The script would possibly be twisted and instead of the rest of the gang rooting for them, they would be the ones convincing the pair to end it.
What do you think about their relationship? Let me know in the comments or DM me on Twitter.
