Lobsters
There are certain fictional couples that transcend the TV shows in which they originate to become staples of popular culture, and one such couple is Ross and Rachel from Friends. Even people who’ve never seen a single episode of Friends will likely have some awareness of the show’s flagship romance. Friends ended fifteen years ago, and yet Ross and Rachel are still regularly referenced when iconic fictional couples are discussed, and their relationship is still one that people hold up as an example of great love. And I have no idea why this is case because I have always passionately believed that Ross and Rachel are a terrible couple, and I’m going to tell you why.
For the record, I love Friends. If pushed I would say it’s my favourite TV show of all time. I don’t watch it as regularly as I once did, but I can still recite episodes from memory, and when I do watch it, I still laugh every single time. It’s not cool to like Friends these days. Now that us millennials are largely in or pushing our thirties, there’s a new more influential generation on the scene, and when Friends dropped on Netflix in 2017, they made their feelings about the show abundantly clear.
Many a think piece appeared online discussing Friends apparent lack of woke-ness. Accusations of racism, homophobia and even transphobia were levelled at the show, causing super fans like myself to question our undying love for the sitcom. Our only defense being that the show began in 1994 and is a product of its time, the problematic aspects of the show wouldn’t exist if it were made today. We can’t change the past; we can only learn from it. I did agree with one of their complaints though, and that was their largely negative opinion regarding the show’s most significant romantic pairing.
Friends has had such a large impact on my life that I remember exactly where I was the first time I ever saw an episode. I was eight years old and my Mum was watching it in the living room. I wasn’t paying attention to her ‘boring grown up show’ until suddenly my attention was drawn to what was happening on screen. It was the season 4 finale in which Ross accidently says Rachel’s name during his wedding vows to Emily. I was instantly hooked and couldn’t wait to find out what would happen next. From then on, I watched the following five seasons as and when they aired on channel 4 and recorded them on VHS so I could watch them whenever I wanted. I was constantly gifted Friends merchandise as birthday and Christmas gifts, and my greatest aim in life was to meet the cast.
Whilst I loved the show with all my heart, I was never on board with Ross and Rachel as a couple, although it was clear I was supposed to be. Any will they/won’t they relationship set up in the first season of a show, is likely to be endgame by the finale. The problem with this of course is show-runners don’t usually know how many seasons of a show they are likely to make. Particularly in America, where networks cancel shows left right and centre, it’s difficult for the producers to execute whatever long-term narrative plans they have effectively. And so, we had ten years of Ross and Rachel dancing around one another, the writers clearly feeling that them getting together early on and staying together for the duration wouldn’t be interesting enough. But rooting for a couple for ten years only works if you believe they should end up together, and I didn’t.
For starters, they have absolutely nothing in common. Ross is uptight and, let’s face it, a bit of a bore. Rachel loves fashion, soap operas, and throwing spaghetti on the floor with Joey. When Ross is torn between Rachel and his girlfriend Julie, Chandler and Joey encourage him to write a list of pros and cons for each woman. Rachel’s cons are quite extensive, and wildly offensive. Ross believes she is spoiled, ditsy, vain, and most cuttingly, ‘just’ a waitress. Julie only has one con – she’s not Rachel. Presumably as viewers we were supposedly to find this romantic, and simply ignore the fact that Ross is able to list several things he dislikes about Rachel at the drop of the hat, despite supposedly being in love with her.
In spite of her supposed flaws, Ross chooses Rachel over Julie (lucky her), but in a shocking turn of events Rachel discovers the list and ends things with Ross before they’ve even begun, only forgiving him when she finds out that Ross was going to offer to take Rachel to her high school prom when it appeared she had been stood up. Before this discovery Ross had been doing his best to get Rachel to forgive him, but nothing had worked. Phoebe tells a defeated Ross not to worry because he and Rachel are meant to be together, they are each other’s “Lobsters”. Supposedly Lobsters mate for life and walk around the tank ‘holding claws’ into old age. The writers of Friends do THE MOST trying to convince us that Ross and Rachel should be together, but the lobster analogy probably had the most enduring impact on popular culture – I still see valentines paraphernalia with lobsters on in shops to this day.
Despite reconciling over the list, Ross and Rachel later break up again after Ross struggles with Rachel’s newfound career. Despite Ross considering Rachel just being a waitress as one of her flaws, he also doesn’t like it when she finds success in a career she genuinely loves. He doesn’t like that he doesn’t get to see her as often, he doesn’t like that she has a male colleague, he shows up at her work and embarrasses her, he gets angry at her when she has to cancel plans. And when Rachel decides they need a break, he has sex with the first woman he sees. Whilst ‘we were on a break’ became a catch phrase that was printed on the mugs and t-shirts and ultimately lost all meaning, it’s quite clear, to me anyway, that Ross was in the wrong.
And so, the show goes on like this, Ross and Rachel dancing around one another. Ross is given several significant relationships whilst Rachel flounders. When the show took the interesting route of having Joey fall in love with Rachel in season 8 it was the closest I ever came to actively shipping a couple in Friends, but the audience didn’t like it and so it wasn’t pursued further than a couple of kisses between the pair. Despite the writers making Joey a bit of a caricature towards the end, one thing that was consistent about him was his loyalty and kindness. He and Rachel always got on well and crucially they had fun together and made each other laugh. In ten seasons of Friends do we ever see Rachel laugh at a single thing Ross says?
The true nadir of their narrative comes right at the very end of the series when Rachel is offered a job in Paris and Ross decides he doesn’t want her to go. Initially, instead of being honest with Rachel about how he feels, he attempts to manipulate the situation to benefit him. When this doesn’t work, he chases her through the airport, the romantic cliché to end all romantic clichés, and ultimately (after a few hiccups and a left phalange) gets the girl. It was the happy ending seemingly everyone but me wanted. I just couldn’t understand why Rachel would pick Ross over a new life in Paris. Ross who spent years pursuing other women, who married Rachel when drunk and then refused to divorce her, who got her pregnant and then got angry when she dated other men (despite having a girlfriend himself the whole time). Ross the supposed ‘romantic lead’ of Friends.
I know it may seem like I’m getting rather deep over a sitcom that ended in 2004, but when romantic relationships like this are held up as some of the ‘greatest love stories of our time’, I get mildly concerned about what this may cause us to overlook in our own romantic relationships. So, if you’re ever offered a life changing opportunity in Paris, only for your ex-boyfriend to suddenly decide he’s in love with you and beg you to stay (not once offering to come with you), please don’t get off the plane. Oh, and lobsters actually don’t mate for life, so our whole lives have been a lie.