In All 10 Seasons of Friends, This Was the Most Unnecessary Character Arc
Even the actors thought it was a mistake.
Summary
- Over the course of ten seasons, Friends featured many storylines involving the six main characters.
- Ross and Rachel's romance was one of the main plots of the show.
- Rachel dating another main character was a terrible idea on the part of the writers.
Like many other sitcoms, Friends did not follow a set plot, but instead spun the story as it went along. This approach proved to be quite successful, since Friends ran for a whopping ten seasons and almost immediately went into worldwide syndication, making stars of its cast.
Over the course of ten seasons, Friends saw the characters fall in love, break up, fight, and make up. And generally, the storylines were fascinating to follow – Ross and Rachel's relationship is still one of the most exciting, if trivial, arcs on television. But there was one plotline that just didn't need to be there.
Ross and Rachel's relationship was a cornerstone of the overall plot of Friends. We saw the two characters try to win each other over, fall in love, fight, break up, get back together, have a child together, get mistakenly married, and so on.
Even if it was tiring, their overly dramatic character arc had many viewers rooting for them. And on top of all that drama, the writers somehow felt the need to make Ross and Rachel's story even more complicated by including a romance between her and his best friend Joey.
A Rival Romance Storyline
For most of Friends, Rachel and Joey flirted with each other, which was fun to watch-perhaps because it was natural for Joey to act that way. But in Season 8, things started to get weird as the characters began to explore their feelings for each other.
First, Rachel made an uncharacteristic move on Joey, which he thwarted. Then he took her out on a fake date, only to realize that he had feelings for her. At the end of the eighth season, Joey declared his love for Rachel, which she rejected.
In Season 9, the awkward romance was revisited when Rachel moved back in with Joey and started dreaming about kissing him, which led to them getting together at the end of the episode. But the secret romance was short-lived, as the characters broke up at the beginning of Season 10 without ever consummating their relationship when they suddenly realized it was weird and they couldn't do it.
Aside from being fruitless, the storyline was completely unnecessary, as no one was asking for more drama between the main characters of Friends. Reportedly, Jennifer Aniston and Matt LeBlanc, who played Rachel and Joey and felt the storyline was wrong for their characters, were both against it, but were ignored by the writers. The good news is that the storyline was scrapped before it ruined the entire show, which would've been better without it.