‘Friends’: A Great but Problematic Classic
It’s No Secret That Our Beloved ‘Friends’ Hasn’t Aged Well
When you think of classic American sitcoms, I imagine many people would think of Friends being among, if not, the top one that comes to mind. Airing first in 1994, the series was one of the most-watched shows on TV in its ten-year run before finally ending in 2004.
While I was not among the many watchers during its height since I was only a baby when it first aired, I grew up always hearing about people debating if Ross and Rachel or Monica and Chandler were the best couple and hearing people singing Phoebe’s infamous song, Smelly Cat. Actually, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure that my aunt even had ‘the Rachel’ haircut. Kind of funny to think of how much how, despite its popularity with viewers, Jennifer Aniston, who played Rachel on Friends, hated the hairstyle because she thought it was ugly.
Admittedly, I was late joining the fandom. When I first started watching in 2019 (really late, I know); I was ready to be let down after all the hype I’ve heard over the years. Boy, I was wrong. I ended up loving it so much that when they took Friends off Netflix; I bought the entire series for about nearly $200 and haven’t looked back since!
However, after binging the series the first couple of times, I noticed certain themes and plotlines that were problematic. Let’s get into some of the bigger ones:
Fat Monica
One big theme that I saw throughout the series that didn’t sit right with me was the constant fatphobia. As somebody who has been overweight my entire life, fatphobia isn’t something that is new to me. Every day I am constantly reminded that I’m not society’s ideal body type and told how my existence is essentially wrong. It doesn’t matter what the reasons behind my weight is, people always just see it as a lack of self-control and excessive eating. Spoiler alert: That’s not always the case.
With this constant reminder, you can just imagine how annoying it was having this also be a running gag in the show to fat shame. One tremendous example of this is Fat Monica.
For those of you who aren’t familiar, one of the main characters of the show is Monica Geller, the younger sister of Ross Geller. In the present day, she’s a slender, beautiful young woman who works as a chef and is a bit of a neat freak. However, as shown in various flashbacks, Monica used to be overweight from when she was in high school. In these flashbacks, we see Monica as this stereotypically jovial people pleaser who is desperate for love and attention. She’s also, stereotypically, obsessed with food and sweets. What a shocker.
Every time they show Monica in flashbacks, she’s constantly pushed around by others and desperately trying to make others happy, like when she made macaroni and cheese for Chandler for Thanksgiving dinner. Even then, he mostly ignored her and later on tells Ross that he doesn’t want to hang out with his “fat sister”. In the present day, while Monica is now slender and seen as desirable, her supposed “friends” continue to make fun of her younger days when she is bigger. We see this when Phoebe is going through a box of Monica’s old things and pulls out her old swimsuit. Obviously, the suit is much bigger than her current size and Monica is embarrassed as she explains how it was from before she lost weight. While this could’ve ended there, of course, the writers had Chandler crack an insensitive joke about how the bathing suit was used to cover all of Connecticut. Rude.
Honestly, I’m quite happy that I didn’t first watch this series when I was younger because it’s things like this that would have destroyed what little self-confidence I had left. Since I grew up being constantly bombarded with my fatphobia, seeing this whole bullying as a joke would have reinforced the negativity I was getting everywhere else. I’m glad that the body positivity movement happening around that time allowed me to work through some of my issues before seeing this because it was only then that I could see it objectively as being a problematic theme rather than taking it to heart. I can only imagine how this had affected young girls and women first watching it at the high of its popularity and feeling that resentment and self-hatred that went along with having society shoving its ideals down your throat constantly in all forms of media.
Romanticizing Toxic Relationships/Behaviors
Another huge pattern I noticed while re-watching the show was the dangerous romanticizing of toxic relationships and behaviors. We see this shown a lot, but the two biggest people who are forefront are Ross Geller and his mother, Judy Geller.
It is with Monica that we mostly see Judy’s toxic behavior, both in the present and past. In the present, we see constantly see Judy picking on Monica by making backhanded compliments or making snide comments about Monica’s cooking, life choices, and appearance. Each time Judy makes an insensitive or rude comment, there’s immediately a laugh track or people laughing in the background to make it seem like it’s funny and that this behavior is acceptable. It’s a long-running gag in sitcoms to have the mother be overprotective and picky about their children, but Judy takes it way further than just an innocently picky comment. She’s flat-out gaslighting poor Monica, all the while praising Ross.
Interestingly enough, this behavior is a complete 180 from how Judy acted when Monica was younger. In the same flashbacks where Monica is overweight, Judy seems to ignore Monica completely. This is apparent in the flashback episode of the friends talking about their worst Thanksgiving. Monica brings up Chandler’s first Thanksgiving with the Gellers and it’s beyond heartbreaking. After Monica overhears Chandler’s insensitive comment calling her Ross’s fat sister, she’s met by her mother who tries to hand off the leftovers of the pies to her to eat because “here’s no room in the fridge”. It’s clear that Judy doesn’t care about her daughter or her wellbeing since she’s enabling Monica’s self-destructive behaviors with her excessive eating. Why not just wrap the pies up and give them to family and friends? Or give them to people in need! There were plenty of other options, but she enables Monica instead and contributes to her unhealthy habits. This is pretty surprising, given how concerned Judy seems to be with her reputation, but I digress.
Ross was the stereotypical “nice guy” who always seemed to be down his luck with love but when looking back through the show, his behavior was pretty toxic. While his toxicity was clear in all aspects of his life, his love life is where we see it rear its ugly head the most.
After years of borderline stalking and pining after Rachel for years, Ross finally gets the woman of his dreams and he becomes a bit of a nightmare. Listen, jealousy happens, but Ross took it to whole other levels that were likely rooted in his own deep-seated insecurities because of how his marriage ended.
We see his toxic behavior at different stages of their relationship. Before they officially started dating, Ross attempted to try breaking up Rachel and whomever she was dating at the time and then immediately moving in when she was most vulnerable (no thanks to terrible advice from Chandler). When they eventually start dating and Rachel is building her career, he lets his jealousy of Rachel’s coworker, Mark, get the better of him and goes full possessive and clingy instead of talking it out with her. He even goes as far as sending an excessive amount of gifts, including giant cards with his face, and hiring a barbershop quartet to sing about how much of a loving boyfriend he is. Creepy. Then, if that’s not enough, he then shows up at her work while she’s busy to have a “romantic dinner” with her and then blames it on her when she’s frustrated and stressed out. They then go on their infamous “break” and the toxic behavior continues on with him sleeping with somebody else shortly after, disregarding her feelings about it and then later trying to keep her from going to Paris to pursue her dreams. It truly never ends.
Now, with that being said, Rachel was no angel either. She constantly ruined any relationship tried to have with somebody else by sabotaging the woman in most cases. She did this when she convinced Bonnie to shave her head, knowing Ross wouldn’t like it. With Julie, she acted like her friend while intentionally telling Phoebe misinformation to mess up her hair while also convincing Ross to postpone getting physical with her. With Mona, Rachel tells her dad that Ross knocked her up and refuses to marry her. Of course, her dad is mad and goes over to Ross’ apartment when Mona is there and puts Ross in a difficult position because, no matter what he says, somebody was going to be angry. Yet while all these things were pretty bad, the worst is probably when she goes to Ross’ wedding with Emily to tell him how she feels. Talk about terrible timing.
Casual Homophobia
Similar to fatphobia, there’s constant homophobia that takes place with the three guys in the show, despite there being a lesbian couple on the show. The first scene that comes to mind is when Chandler is helping Joey rehearse for an audition for an inmate in prison. As they’re doing their readings, Joey tries lighting up a cigarette for his character to which Chandler, a former smoker, offers to help him look more natural when he does it. When showing how to hold a cigarette properly, Chandler tells Joey to let his hand hang somewhat limply before warning not to have it hang too limp, implying that it would make him look gay. Joey’s hand dips “too low” and they both have a defensive moment about it, assuring each other that neither of them is gay. I mean, really guys?
Monica and Ross’ relationship
With the Geller siblings’ relationship, things get a little weird. In my first watch-through, I was a little confused that Monica and Ross were siblings because of the way they acted around each other. I mean, while I get that groups of siblings act differently based on their upbringing and all that, these two acted almost like they were dating with their intimate touching all the time, their borderline obsessive interest in each other’s lives, and the overall way they interacted with each other.
Personally, I have an older brother who I was practically best friends with when we were younger and even we were never as touchy-feely as Ross and Monica were, despite our family dynamic being like theirs with my parents seeing him as the golden child who could do no wrong (something I’m sure he’d deny).
In the show, we always see Ross kissing Monica on the head, sitting uncomfortably close, and sometimes even having her sitting on his lap! Perhaps this is a normal thing to some, but I have never seen a single sibling group who have ever done this, no matter how close they were. It always makes me wonder if the writers know what a realistic sibling relationship looks like or if they made them so close to signify an ideal one instead? Either way, in the words of Monica, it’s icky.
Now, while I can honestly find plenty more reasons for how the show is problematic, I would also like to take time to point out some aspects that I loved seeing and saw as being fairly progressive given the time it aired.
Strong, independent women
One thing they consistently impressed me with was the strong, independent attitude of many women from the show. Focusing on the main three women of the group, we see that while they all spend a lot of their time talking about their relationships, we also see that they all have their own hobbies and interests that they’re all good at and enjoy doing. For Monica, you can see how passionate she is about being a chef and see her joy as she makes Thanksgiving dinners for the group or comes up with menus for Carol and Susan’s wedding. With Rachel, she loves fashion and will go see a lecture about it to learn more because she loves it so much. Phoebe is passionate about her music and helping others. We see how happy she is performing at Central Perk simply for the fun of it. She even gives a homeless woman food and even gives her one thousand dollars after a banking mistake.
Aside from their passions, you constantly see them sticking up for themselves and taking up space in the world. This may not seem like a huge deal but I remember back in the 90s always seeing shows about the tired and frustrated stay-at-home parents who worked full-time jobs and took care of their kids while the man was out living his life or was at home miserable because of his life and family. It was refreshing to see that none of the women will settle for less. Monica gave up Richard because she wanted children and he didn’t. Rachel left Barry, despite her father wanting her to stay with him because she didn’t love him and she (eventually) saw how much of a sleazeball he was. Last, Phoebe gave up David because, while they both loved each other, she knew that his work was important to him while he offered to turn down going to Minsk to continue his work, he’d probably end up resenting her and she knew that.
Strong female characters aren’t rare to find these days but back in the 1990s and early 2000s, we definitely saw an insurgence of these characters popping up more than before and I like to think that Friends helped contribute to this.
Close male relationships (Joey/Chandler)
One of my favorite platonic relationships in the show is by far the friendship between Chandler and Joey. When they are not casually being homophobic, their dynamic is actually kind of sweet to watch. Of all individual friendships, it was one that I felt seemed the most realistic.
As many people may know, best friends are typically people you feel closest to and can tell anything to, no matter how embarrassing or stupid you think it is. Joey and Chandler open up to each other about a lot of issues. One of the funniest moments was when they were in a cab with Ross and a car nearby backfired and it sounded like they were being shot at. Joey threw himself across Ross and Chandler was upset because he didn’t understand why Joey would have risked his life for Ross instead of him. When confronting Joey later about it, they had a hilarious exchange where Joey confessed he was trying to reach for his sandwich on the other side of Ross and wasn’t actually trying to him. Rightfully so, Joey felt embarrassed about the misunderstanding and Chandler being insulted and then happy that Joey was more likely to risk his life over a sandwich than choosing Ross over him. The situation is just so on-brand for them and so ridiculous that it makes it a sweet moment between the two of them.
While it’s been getting better, most of the shows from around that time showed a lot more toxic masculinity between guy friends were even just hugging each other would be weird or “too sensitive”. In Friends, we see Joey and Chandler hug each other and say how much they appreciate each other without it being made out to seem awkward, which is really nice to see.
LGBT Representation (Somewhat)
As stated before, homophobia is huge in the show, regardless of it being between two men or two women. However, while most of the jokes about Carol and Susan being together was more directed at Ross to mock him (which still isn’t okay), the actual representation of Carol and Susan’s relationship was shown in a more positive and realistic light. They didn’t make neither Susan nor Carol to be a stereotypically masculine-presenting lesbian or fetishizing their relationship like so many writers do. It was nice to see them viewed as a normal couple who occasionally fight (like when Susan is called out to work in the middle of their date). It was also sweet to see how doting and supportive both women were toward each other and to Ben.
This representation was obviously very minimal since it seemed to only be the case for lesbians since many of the homophobic comments were usually more aimed toward male homosexuals. As I was researching references for this article, I also uncovered that there were also transphobic jokes being made, specifically with Chandler’s father. Given the context, I thought that Chandler’s father was homosexual and working as a drag queen, since that’s how it was referenced. I recently found out that they actually wrote the character as a transgender woman (played by the amazing Kathleen Turner) named Amanda Bing. With this new information, it makes the scenes where Chandler’s mother makes a comment regarding Amanda’s genitalia and all the other jokes of her still being a man wildly inappropriate and offensive. When asked about it, even one of the show’s creators said it was all done in poor taste.
Healthy Adult Relationship Example
Last, while there are very toxic and questionable relationships are shown throughout the ten seasons of the show, they gave us at least two healthy adult relationships; Mike and Phoebe and Chandler and Monica.
Starting with Phoebe and Mike, they are a near perfect couple because they always are open and up front with each other, no matter how difficult things are. We see this when Phoebe opens up about not having a relationship long enough to celebrate an anniversary or move in with somebody, and she eventually ends up moving in with Mike. While packing, Mike asks her if she’s hoping for a proposal to follow moving in together because it won’t happen since he doesn’t want to get married again. She says she doesn’t expect it yet is understandably not okay with having to settle for this and eventually ends up breaking things off with him because she realizes that they clearly want different things. Even when they, later on, get back together and he changes his mind and proposes to her (at a bit of an awkward time as she’s on a date with David), she still says no because she knows she’s not ready but wanted to know that they were headed somewhere. This whole time, they’re upfront with their feelings and fears (even if it takes a bit of coaxing) and it clearly makes a world of a difference compared to Ross and Rachel, who act out in desperation and lie about how they truly feel. Add in that Mike is insanely supportive of Phoebe and even stands up for her against his parents, and he’s basically perfect. Also, he’s played by Paul Rudd, so what’s not to love?
Another relationship that is so sweet to watch is between Monica and Chander. As many know, Monica and Chandler have a bit of a rough past because of his raging fatphobia and other issues early on, but by the time he (unintentionally) gets with Monica, they’re both a bit more grown-up and it shows. When they have their first fight as a couple after a weekend away gone awry, Chandler assumes that their relationship is over because they fought, but Monica points out that fights happen and that “you deal with it and you move on”. It’s a huge turning point for them as a couple and also shows growth for Chandler as he figures out what a healthy adult relationship is actually like.
Friends, like many other sitcoms from earlier times, is an amazing show with loveable and memorable characters and moments despite the problematic themes and components. It’s okay to still enjoy something that is problematic, but it’s important to acknowledge these issues as things progress as a society. With the themes like homophobia, transphobia, and fatphobia, despite the show airing when it was a different time, it’s also important to acknowledge that these types of things weren’t funny or right regardless of how many people got away with it.
Keeping that in mind, what were some of your favorite moments from the show? Who were your favorite characters/couples?
