The sitcom is a classic of American television culture, and there’s really no more modern classic than the television show Friends. While the show had many iconic aspects, from Chandler Bing, played by the late Matthew Perry, to Central Perk, perhaps the most lasting effect that Friends has had on American television is the relationship between Ross and Rachel. This romance is over the top in a way that many sitcom relationships before it never were. For better or for worse, the now classic relationship reshaped television in some lasting ways.
From the 1940s to the 1960s, most couples in television sitcoms were married couples or, at most, chaste romantic interests. As the 1940s was the first decade of American broadcast television, very few shows from this decade can be classified as sitcoms. Most were variety shows or Westerns. The situation comedy didn’t really come about until the next decade. In the 1950s, shows like I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, and Leave It To Beaver focused on the everyday lives of white American families. But shows like Friends have usher in something different for audiences decades later.
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The drama and conflict that drove the shows of the golden age of television was generated by situations, but those situations were rarely of a sexual nature. Continuing the trend into the 1960s, shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, and Green Acres were centered around the dynamics of family and married couples. Even shows that pushed the envelope when it came to television romance like I Dream of Jeanie or Gilligan’s Island, were never explicit when it came to sexual romance. The 1970s saw a slow shift in the portrayal of romance on television, largely due to the women’s rights and the free love movements. American audiences were tired of television shows omitting the reality of sexual relationships and wanted to see more realistic aspects portrayed in the media.
Shows like All in the Family, The Brady Bunch and Happy Days continued to revolve around families and married relationships while simultaneously ignoring the relationships that lead to marriages and families, but other series like The Mary Tyler Moore Shows and Three’s Company delved into single life, dating, and relationships outside of marriage. By the 1980s, American audiences were ready for ongoing relationship adventures as a given in sitcoms, leading to the success of shows like Cheers, Full House, and Seinfeld. By the time the 1990s rolled around, it was a given that the sexual exploits and relationship issues of single adults were a part of American sitcoms.
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Television, by its very nature as a part of the media industry, is always looking to up the stakes in order to gain more viewers and, thus, more funding. Friends takes the stakes of relationships in television to new heights with the relationship between Ross and Rachel, and the show uses this to keep viewers on the hook. While there have been romance and angst in many television series before Friends, the on-again, off-again nature of Ross and Rachel’s relationship adds even more elements. Not only were Ross Geller and Rachel Green attracted to each other, but Ross had also had a crush on Rachel long before she thought of him as a prospective partner, back when he was in early college and she was in late high school. The years of pining after Rachel is intended to make Ross utterly romantic, while Rachel finally seeing Ross as a romantic partner is the fulfillment of every person’s dream of finally being noticed by an unattainable crush.
As a couple, Ross and Rachel pass every relationship milestone but completely out of the expected order. Ross and Rachel date, they break up, they date other people, they get back together, they have sex, they get married, and they have a baby, but not exactly in that order. This keeps the relationship perpetually incomplete. Viewers are always waiting for the final confession of true love. While other television couples have a “will-they-won’t-they” aspect to keep viewers on the hook, few other shows manage to keep up the tension for ten seasons straight. This is a level of emotional turmoil that is much more common in soap operas and dramas than in sitcoms. Friends proves that such a high level of romantic tension can serve to keep viewers coming back for more, even in a lower stake setting like a sitcom.
The Lasting Impact of Ross and Rachel on Sitcoms
When Friends originally aired, the relationship between Ross and Rachel in Friends was so popular and managed to keep the show’s viewership so high that a similar level of romantic tension became a requirement in modern American television sitcoms. These days, just about every television show has some kind of relationship that parallels Ross and Rachel, relying on a single on-again, off-again romance to fuel the viewership for an entire show. Unfortunately, this isn’t necessarily for the better. Studios seem to assume that the level of angst that Ross and Rachel popularized is a necessity for a successful sitcom, but the reality is that this formula doesn’t work for every single show. Allowing for more creativity, characters, and varied story structures is what makes for interesting television, not disguising the exact same relationship in different settings. In many cases, viewers tire of the formulaic nature of the modern sitcom romance. If studios really want to keep viewership, they should look for new, compelling approaches since that’s what made Ross and Rachel so popular in the early 1990s.
The good news is that while the relationship between Ross and Rachel has forever affected the template for sitcoms and the expectations of television studios, it has also affected the awareness of the viewers. Since Ross and Rachel are such a popular television couple, this means that there’s a lot of discussion about their relationship. This discourse has brought to light how unhealthy and often creepy their relationship is. Even though in Friends, the relationship is always portrayed as incredibly romantic within the show, most viewers understand how obsessive and damaging a real-life romance like the one between Ross and Rachel would be. While viewers still love romance and angst, they are much more aware of what a relationship to be imitated looks like. So even though Ross and Rachel changed the landscape of television sitcom romances in terms of studio expectations, their relationship also changed the attitude of television sitcom viewers, hopefully, for the better.
