Drish
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Post by Drish on Jun 22, 2018 3:34:56 GMT
We had this useless discussion yesterday about who was the best friend in Friends, in a literal sense. Who was the most helpful, caring and nicest of them all? I still have hard time deciding between Joey and Monica but Rachel is definitely the most selfish and bitchiest of them all imo. What about you guys?
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Post by stephen on Jun 22, 2018 3:42:23 GMT
Real talk: they were all terrible people in their own way. Rachel was self-absorbed and rarely seemed to give a shit about anyone else in the group's issues, Monica had pretty weird sexual power-plays over Chandler (like manipulating him just so she could get pregnant), Phoebe was unhinged and violent and who was immensely hypocritical, Ross was a shitty dad, Chandler had a nasty homophobic streak (though to be fair, the '90s weren't the best at handling LGBTQ-related comedy), and Joey's sexual peccadillos would totally not fly today (within seconds of meeting Monica, he strips naked!).
If I had to pick one, though, it'd be Monica. She was neurotic as all hell but at least she baked for her friends and put up with a lot of their bullshit over the years.
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Post by stabcaesar on Jun 22, 2018 5:48:28 GMT
Chandler, easily.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 22, 2018 6:40:05 GMT
while leblanc was the worst of cast in friends (still great tho) and his character was the least dimensional of all of them, he def is the best 'friend'.
chandler is the best person of them all though.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Jun 22, 2018 7:43:31 GMT
Definitely Monica although as stephen said, none of them were ideal folks. Monica was just the least of it I guess. Also, I see prior to my vote that Phoebe was winning. Phoebe & Ross were my favourite characters on Friends overall, but later Friends Phoebe or early Friends Ross are easily the least nice Friends.
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Post by stabcaesar on Jun 22, 2018 7:50:28 GMT
I've always found it pretty laughable that anyone would consider Joey the best friend when he's always been leeching of his friends. He doesn't even pay his fucking rent.
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Jun 22, 2018 15:04:29 GMT
People voting Pheobe obviously never watched the show.
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Post by harlequinade on Jun 22, 2018 15:54:30 GMT
Chandler imho
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Post by Deleted on Jun 22, 2018 15:54:58 GMT
Tag.
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Post by stabcaesar on Jun 22, 2018 16:22:01 GMT
People voting Pheobe obviously never watched the show. She's nicer than at least half of the other friends.
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Post by stephen on Jun 22, 2018 16:47:15 GMT
People voting Pheobe obviously never watched the show. She's nicer than at least half of the other friends. Not really. Pre-London Phoebe, maybe, but post-London Phoebe is easily the worst: chaining guys to water pipes, delighting in planning on calling the cops to plant PCP in Monica/Chandler's apartment, saying that she judges how much she likes the other Friends in correlation to how much money they make, never once mentions her roommate Denise to the other Friends, the entire "this girl's cat is my reincarnated dead mom" episode (which has her wanting to steal a little girl's cat), drops a truth bomb that Monica was looking for Joey the night she first hooked up with Chandler for no reason other than to stir up shit, being an utterly horrible guitar teacher to Joey (even when he puts in the work to learn chord names), getting royally pissed off at Ross because of something he did in a dream, completely strings along David from Minsk when he returns, stabbed a cop, fucks with Ross's head in regards to evolution simply for the lulz, and reneged on a children's charity donation. Regardless of what one might think of Kudrow's performance, Phoebe is the worst and her presence on the show never felt right. It lent balance at having a third woman on the series and brought it to an even six, but her storylines rarely coincided with the others' in terms of importance and usually she was given pretty lackluster material (the aforementioned "dead mom is a cat" episode; the subplot where she had her brother's triplets, etc.).
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Post by stabcaesar on Jun 22, 2018 17:01:53 GMT
Not really. Pre-London Phoebe, maybe, but post-London Phoebe is easily the worst: chaining guys to water pipes, delighting in planning on calling the cops to plant PCP in Monica/Chandler's apartment, saying that she judges how much she likes the other Friends in correlation to how much money they make, never once mentions her roommate Denise to the other Friends, the entire "this girl's cat is my reincarnated dead mom" episode (which has her wanting to steal a little girl's cat), drops a truth bomb that Monica was looking for Joey the night she first hooked up with Chandler for no reason other than to stir up shit, being an utterly horrible guitar teacher to Joey (even when he puts in the work to learn chord names), getting royally pissed off at Ross because of something he did in a dream, completely strings along David from Minsk when he returns, stabbed a cop, fucks with Ross's head in regards to evolution simply for the lulz, and reneged on a children's charity donation. Some of these happened pre-London and most of them are pretty insubstantial, they don't compare to things like leaving the rent to your roommate in New York for 5+ years (Joey), constantly borrowing your friend's stuff without ever returning them (Rachel) or being unbelievably possessive and jealous (Ross, though this is more of a case of a terrible boyfriend). The only actually shitty thing out of these is outing Monica. I also believe that Denise is made up and the money talk is simply a joke. Stabbed a cop also has nothing to do with her being a terrible friend. And Ross is the annoying one in the evolution debate. Her premise is the super flaky friend so I don't see how that's a problem. The dead mom is a cat episode was mostly bad writing and the triplet storyline is widely regarded as a high point of the show. I vastly prefer these over the likes of the awful love rectangle between Rachel and Ross and Joey and Charlie.
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Zeb31
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Post by Zeb31 on Jun 22, 2018 17:05:16 GMT
I love this show and basically everyone in the cast, but if we're being honest--
Joey was a misogynistic freeloader; the whole arc about Chandler in the box for example was infuriating.
Phoebe was nasty for no reason, especially in later seasons when the writers leaned way too much on her bluntness to get laughs; the way she treated Chandler in particular was appalling.
Ross was an obnoxious know-it-all, and that's saying nothing of his parenting. If Schwimmer wasn't so damn good in the role it'd be a lot more evident that he was actually creepy as fuck towards all the women he dated; season 3 is basically Abusive Relationships 101.
Chandler had profound issues with masculinity and ingrained homophobia and Monica was nitpicky and controlling, but overall they were pretty solid friends most of the time. Same with Rachel, who started out as incredibly spoiled but evolved tremendously as the show went on.
I'll go with Chandler.
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Post by stephen on Jun 22, 2018 17:13:32 GMT
Some of these happened pre-London and most of them are pretty insubstantial, they don't compare to things like leaving the rent to your roommate in New York for 5+ years (Joey), constantly borrowing your friend's stuff without ever returning them (Rachel) or being unbelievably possessive and jealous (Ross, though this is more of a case of a terrible boyfriend). The only actually shitty thing out of these is outing Monica. I also believe that Denise is made up and the money talk is simply a joke. Stabbed a cop also has nothing to do with her being a terrible friend. And Ross is the annoying one in the evolution debate. Most of this was on memory, so if I picked some pre-London stuff, that's on me, but that also serves my point that the Friends were terrible the whole way through. Don't get me wrong: the other Friends suck pretty hard (as I stated above) and none of them are truly good people. Joey's a leech and a sleaze (and I'd argue that he'd be a close second behind Phoebe), but I think what separates him and Phoebe is that his storylines make sense within the confines of their dynamic. He becomes a fixture in the others' lives and drives a lot of the action, whereas Phoebe never really does (they generally use her as a gag to either make an extremely bizarre comment on a mundane thing). It just makes her actions, which are flat-out malicious a lot of the time, stick out a lot more. Also, didn't she out Monica again by bringing up Richard that one time in front of Chandler? I just never understood why Monica (the OG friend of Phoebe's) would be friends with her in the first place. They are wildly different in personality, and the thing with the show is that they all grow closer together and become more tolerable . . . but Phoebe never seemed to really develop in a positive way, nor did she seem to bond closer to any of them in particular (Joey, by contrast, at least had a tight bond with Chandler the whole way through, whereas most people would forget Phoebe came into the group via Monica). They did the Rachel/Phoebe roommate storyline for a while, but it didn't really go anywhere. Her character just felt so superfluous and needed to pad out time, rather than to develop her in any real fashion the way they did Monica/Chandler (who I'd argue were the only two characters to improve as the show went on, even if they still had terrible qualities by the end of the run). That said, the storylines you mentioned were atrocious, no doubt, and done to further the Ross/Rachel storyline (which, quite honestly, I'd rather they never revisited). I liked Charlie, though.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Jun 22, 2018 17:18:23 GMT
The Chandler homophobia things is interesting to me. I think a lot of it is down to the lame ass way comedy writers used to write gay related story-lines and characters, especially in US TV, and particularly in 80s and 90s comedies. These writers were rarely laughing with gay people and typically were laughing at them, in the sense that something was wrong with them, and therefore something was wrong with Chandler in all the jokes about him being gay.
From my perspective, in the early years of Friends when a lot of this went down, I would have been a young teen, and I never saw Chandlers gay issues as a huge deal, and they rarely annoyed or offended me. As the show went on and you learned that Chandlers first experience of a gay man was his Dad who broke his family apart...you can kind of give him some leeway as a character in terms of having gay issues.
The more you watch Friends now, the more you realise how very dated the early years are and Chandler is the character who suffers most.
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Post by stephen on Jun 22, 2018 17:26:15 GMT
The Chandler homophobia things is interesting to me. I think a lot of it is down to the lame ass way comedy writers used to write gay related story-lines and characters, especially in US TV, and particularly in 80s and 90s comedies. These writers were rarely laughing with gay people and typically were laughing at them, in the sense that something was wrong with them, and therefore something was wrong with Chandler in all the jokes about him being gay. From my perspective, in the early years of Friends when a lot of this went down, I would have been a young teen, and I never saw Chandlers gay issues as a huge deal, and they rarely annoyed or offended me. As the show went on and you learned that Chandlers first experience of a gay man was his Dad who broke his family apart...you can kind of give him some leeway as a character in terms of having gay issues. The more you watch Friends now, the more you realise how very dated the early years are and Chandler is the character who suffers most. Yeah, I can understand the psychology that they tried to give Chandler (and in some ways, appreciate it), but it still ties into that incredibly dated mentality that shows of that era had in regards to homosexuality and masculinity. Remember the episode when Ross was weirded out by Freddie Prinze, Jr. being a male nanny? That was near the end of the show's run.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Jun 22, 2018 17:38:31 GMT
The Chandler homophobia things is interesting to me. I think a lot of it is down to the lame ass way comedy writers used to write gay related story-lines and characters, especially in US TV, and particularly in 80s and 90s comedies. These writers were rarely laughing with gay people and typically were laughing at them, in the sense that something was wrong with them, and therefore something was wrong with Chandler in all the jokes about him being gay. From my perspective, in the early years of Friends when a lot of this went down, I would have been a young teen, and I never saw Chandlers gay issues as a huge deal, and they rarely annoyed or offended me. As the show went on and you learned that Chandlers first experience of a gay man was his Dad who broke his family apart...you can kind of give him some leeway as a character in terms of having gay issues. The more you watch Friends now, the more you realise how very dated the early years are and Chandler is the character who suffers most. Yeah, I can understand the psychology that they tried to give Chandler (and in some ways, appreciate it), but it still ties into that incredibly dated mentality that shows of that era had in regards to homosexuality and masculinity. Remember the episode when Ross was weirded out by Freddie Prinze, Jr. being a male nanny? That was near the end of the show's run. Oh yeah, the Ross reaction in that Nanny episode was so out of nowhere, and made little or no sense with the characters history. It would have seemed an extreme reaction for early Chandler. It was particularly galling too, as over the previous 8 years or so, Ross had gone from a fairly unfunny and pompous windbag, and developed to become a pretty easy going, fun and even at times rather silly (in the positive sense) guy. Of all the Friends, the Ross character of the final 2/3 years is the one I could see myself actually being friends with, so it was a real moment of awful character development.
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Post by stabcaesar on Jun 22, 2018 17:41:55 GMT
Most of this was on memory, so if I picked some pre-London stuff, that's on me, but that also serves my point that the Friends were terrible the whole way through. Don't get me wrong: the other Friends suck pretty hard (as I stated above) and none of them are truly good people. Joey's a leech and a sleaze (and I'd argue that he'd be a close second behind Phoebe), but I think what separates him and Phoebe is that his storylines make sense within the confines of their dynamic. He becomes a fixture in the others' lives and drives a lot of the action, whereas Phoebe never really does (they generally use her as a gag to either make an extremely bizarre comment on a mundane thing). It just makes her actions, which are flat-out malicious a lot of the time, stick out a lot more. Also, didn't she out Monica again by bringing up Richard that one time in front of Chandler? Phoebe was actually the no.1 shipper of Rachel and Ross (though probably most of time unintentional), which was one of the central plotlines of the show. Namely the lobster theory, telling Rachel that she's still in love with Ross (Ross and Emily's wedding), and after Rachel gave birth to Emma. And the time she outed Monica by bringing up Richard was an honest mistake, in the end she helped mend things up between them. 3:40 I definitely wish they had revisited the beginning of Monica and Phoebe to rationalise it a bit but as far as being a roommate goes, I don't remember Phoebe being particularly awful. As for her closest bond, I'd argue that she's got one with Joey.
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Post by stabcaesar on Jun 22, 2018 17:46:34 GMT
The Chandler homophobia things is interesting to me. I think a lot of it is down to the lame ass way comedy writers used to write gay related story-lines and characters, especially in US TV, and particularly in 80s and 90s comedies. These writers were rarely laughing with gay people and typically were laughing at them, in the sense that something was wrong with them, and therefore something was wrong with Chandler in all the jokes about him being gay. From my perspective, in the early years of Friends when a lot of this went down, I would have been a young teen, and I never saw Chandlers gay issues as a huge deal, and they rarely annoyed or offended me. As the show went on and you learned that Chandlers first experience of a gay man was his Dad who broke his family apart...you can kind of give him some leeway as a character in terms of having gay issues. The more you watch Friends now, the more you realise how very dated the early years are and Chandler is the character who suffers most. I find Ross by far the most homophobic one.
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Post by stephen on Jun 22, 2018 17:47:42 GMT
Yeah, I can understand the psychology that they tried to give Chandler (and in some ways, appreciate it), but it still ties into that incredibly dated mentality that shows of that era had in regards to homosexuality and masculinity. Remember the episode when Ross was weirded out by Freddie Prinze, Jr. being a male nanny? That was near the end of the show's run. Oh yeah, the Ross reaction in that Nanny episode was so out of nowhere, and made little or no sense with the characters history. It would have seemed an extreme reaction for early Chandler. It was particularly galling too, as over the previous 8 years or so, Ross had gone from a fairly unfunny and pompous windbag, and developed to become a pretty easy going, fun and even at times rather silly (in the positive sense) guy. Of all the Friends, the Ross character of the final 2/3 years is the one I could see myself actually being friends with, so it was a real moment of awful character development. To be fair, that isn't Ross's first time dealing with a question of masculinity. In one episode he finds Ben playing with a Barbie doll, panics, and swaps it out with a G.I. Joe. I have a love/hate relationship with Ross. He is pompous, pretentious and generally winds up in either toxic relationships or shows a huge immaturity that makes him unsuited for a long-term one. But he's also immensely sympathetic when it comes to the Carol/Susan situation (regardless of how you feel about Ross, he didn't deserve the loathing that Susan directed at him, and her co-opting control over Ben and trying to oust Ross as a parental figure is fucked up), and when the show tries to make Ross the butt of the joke (as it often did in the latter seasons, when they realized Schwimmer's mastery at physical comedy was a potential goldmine), he winds up being more sympathetic because, well, he's being picked on by assholes. And I do generally side with him on the "they were on a break" debate (although to be fair to Rachel, it's still sleazy that he rebounded so quickly), and I low-key think that his boss who ate his sandwich is one of the foulest characters in sitcom history.
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Jun 22, 2018 17:50:48 GMT
Oh yeah, the Ross reaction in that Nanny episode was so out of nowhere, and made little or no sense with the characters history. It would have seemed an extreme reaction for early Chandler. It was particularly galling too, as over the previous 8 years or so, Ross had gone from a fairly unfunny and pompous windbag, and developed to become a pretty easy going, fun and even at times rather silly (in the positive sense) guy. Of all the Friends, the Ross character of the final 2/3 years is the one I could see myself actually being friends with, so it was a real moment of awful character development. To be fair, that isn't Ross's first time dealing with a question of masculinity. In one episode he finds Ben playing with a Barbie doll, panics, and swaps it out with a G.I. Joe. I have a love/hate relationship with Ross. He is pompous, pretentious and generally winds up in either toxic relationships or shows a huge immaturity that makes him unsuited for a long-term one. But he's also immensely sympathetic when it comes to the Carol/Susan situation (regardless of how you feel about Ross, he didn't deserve the loathing that Susan directed at him, and her co-opting control over Ben and trying to oust Ross as a parental figure is fucked up), and when the show tries to make Ross the butt of the joke (as it often did in the latter seasons, when they realized Schwimmer's mastery at physical comedy was a potential goldmine), he winds up being more sympathetic because, well, he's being picked on by assholes. And I do generally side with him on the "they were on a break" debate (although to be fair to Rachel, it's still sleazy that he rebounded so quickly), and I low-key think that his boss who ate his sandwich is one of the foulest characters in sitcom history.AND HE DIDN'T EVEN FINISH IT! It had the moist maker! But even he is second only to Lily from How I Met Your Mother (easily the worst "friend" in the history of television, bar none).
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Post by stephen on Jun 22, 2018 17:53:35 GMT
I definitely wish they had revisited the beginning of Monica and Phoebe to rationalise it a bit but as far as being a roommate goes, I don't remember Phoebe being particularly awful. As for her closest bond, I'd argue that she's got one with Joey. Yeah, that's where I feel the show let her down. She did have some semblance of a relationship with Joey (not necessarily a romantic one), but they never really developed it, and the times that they did (her trying to teach Joey French or the aforementioned guitar lessons) just didn't work. I'm not saying they needed to pair her and Joey off, but I do think they needed much more time together than what they got, so that it felt like Phoebe had more cross-connections within the group, because all she was really written to do with her male counterparts was shit on Ross and Chandler and sometimes flirt with Joey.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Jun 22, 2018 17:54:47 GMT
Oh yeah, the Ross reaction in that Nanny episode was so out of nowhere, and made little or no sense with the characters history. It would have seemed an extreme reaction for early Chandler. It was particularly galling too, as over the previous 8 years or so, Ross had gone from a fairly unfunny and pompous windbag, and developed to become a pretty easy going, fun and even at times rather silly (in the positive sense) guy. Of all the Friends, the Ross character of the final 2/3 years is the one I could see myself actually being friends with, so it was a real moment of awful character development. To be fair, that isn't Ross's first time dealing with a question of masculinity. In one episode he finds Ben playing with a Barbie doll, panics, and swaps it out with a G.I. Joe. I have a love/hate relationship with Ross. He is pompous, pretentious and generally winds up in either toxic relationships or shows a huge immaturity that makes him unsuited for a long-term one. But he's also immensely sympathetic when it comes to the Carol/Susan situation (regardless of how you feel about Ross, he didn't deserve the loathing that Susan directed at him, and her co-opting control over Ben and trying to oust Ross as a parental figure is fucked up), and when the show tries to make Ross the butt of the joke (as it often did in the latter seasons, when they realized Schwimmer's mastery at physical comedy was a potential goldmine), he winds up being more sympathetic because, well, he's being picked on by assholes. And I do generally side with him on the "they were on a break" debate (although to be fair to Rachel, it's still sleazy that he rebounded so quickly), and I low-key think that his boss who ate his sandwich is one of the foulest characters in sitcom history. I forgot the doll thing. 200+ episodes will do that to you. I always 100% felt for Ross in the Carol & Susan situation too. Susan is one of the all time TV assholes. The sandwich thing happened to me in work, and it is genuinely infuriating. I didn't yell so loud pigeons took off, but I was majorly pissed off for the rest of the day. I never found out who ate mine, so I worked on the basis of hating everyone for a while.
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Jun 22, 2018 17:57:18 GMT
To be fair, that isn't Ross's first time dealing with a question of masculinity. In one episode he finds Ben playing with a Barbie doll, panics, and swaps it out with a G.I. Joe. I have a love/hate relationship with Ross. He is pompous, pretentious and generally winds up in either toxic relationships or shows a huge immaturity that makes him unsuited for a long-term one. But he's also immensely sympathetic when it comes to the Carol/Susan situation (regardless of how you feel about Ross, he didn't deserve the loathing that Susan directed at him, and her co-opting control over Ben and trying to oust Ross as a parental figure is fucked up), and when the show tries to make Ross the butt of the joke (as it often did in the latter seasons, when they realized Schwimmer's mastery at physical comedy was a potential goldmine), he winds up being more sympathetic because, well, he's being picked on by assholes. And I do generally side with him on the "they were on a break" debate (although to be fair to Rachel, it's still sleazy that he rebounded so quickly), and I low-key think that his boss who ate his sandwich is one of the foulest characters in sitcom history. I forgot the doll thing. 200+ episodes will do that to you. I always 100% felt for Ross in the Carol & Susan situation too. Susan is one of the all time TV assholes.
The sandwich thing happened to me in work, and it is genuinely infuriating. I didn't yell so loud pigeons took off, but I was majorly pissed off for the rest of the day. I never found out who ate mine, so I worked on the basis of hating everyone for a while. Yeah Susan got away with way too much shit on the show. There were so many times where I wanted Ross to just completely shut her down, but he rarely ever did.
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Post by stephen on Jun 22, 2018 18:00:29 GMT
To be fair, that isn't Ross's first time dealing with a question of masculinity. In one episode he finds Ben playing with a Barbie doll, panics, and swaps it out with a G.I. Joe. I have a love/hate relationship with Ross. He is pompous, pretentious and generally winds up in either toxic relationships or shows a huge immaturity that makes him unsuited for a long-term one. But he's also immensely sympathetic when it comes to the Carol/Susan situation (regardless of how you feel about Ross, he didn't deserve the loathing that Susan directed at him, and her co-opting control over Ben and trying to oust Ross as a parental figure is fucked up), and when the show tries to make Ross the butt of the joke (as it often did in the latter seasons, when they realized Schwimmer's mastery at physical comedy was a potential goldmine), he winds up being more sympathetic because, well, he's being picked on by assholes. And I do generally side with him on the "they were on a break" debate (although to be fair to Rachel, it's still sleazy that he rebounded so quickly), and I low-key think that his boss who ate his sandwich is one of the foulest characters in sitcom history. I forgot the doll thing. 200+ episodes will do that to you. I always 100% felt for Ross in the Carol & Susan situation too. Susan is one of the all time TV assholes. The sandwich thing happened to me in work, and it is genuinely infuriating. I didn't yell so loud pigeons took off, but I was majorly pissed off for the rest of the day. I never found out who ate mine, so I worked on the basis of hating everyone for a while. I'd argue that the writers unintentionally added a psychological explanation for Ross's homophobic attitude towards childhood upbringing by establishing the Carol/Susan connection, but that subtext was almost assuredly accidental, because I doubt that they were actively trying to make Ross have that viewpoint because of that but rather because that was how LGBTQ-related comedy tended to be viewed. I will never understand how people could eat others' food at work. That's a gross (in more ways than one) violation of so many things. And that guy had the gall to throw most of the sandwich away!
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