What Friends storyline wouldn’t work today?

[KyraLittle]

• Ross not wanting Ben to play with a Barbie
• Monica sleeping with an underage boy
• Monica being slut shamed
• Joey and Chandler finding breast feeding gross

Sure there are loads more.

I do love the show though

Wait, do they really cut parts out when it's aired now?? Like what?

Yep, channel 5 do for the teatime ones anyway!
The One with the Male Nanny - quite a few lines cut out of that one the other week.
Ross - to the male nanny - "you've got to be at least bi!"
Gone.

Phoebes telling the truth songs have been butchered or disappeared too (can't remember the title of this one)

I clearly watch far too much Friends

I can see both sides but I'm not convinced that's a good thing, even though I'd probably cringe if some of those jokes were made in a current series.

I do think Friends is excellent.

I always think it's strange in the episodes when Carole is pregnant with Ben that it's just accepted by everyone that Susan will be Ben's 'other mom'. And Ross is seen as the unreasonable one for not being completely fine with that! I would be furious if my DH cheated on me, asked for a divorce, then assumed his new girlfriend would be an equal parent to our child. I think that's a very dated attitude and possibly related to the fact that its 2 women rather than if Carole had left Ross for a man.

Chandler's dad wasn't transgender. He was a gay man who performed in a drag show in Las Vegas.

• The constant lesbian and gay jokes wouldn't be acceptable now.
• Joey's treatment of women (I couldn't be friends with a man like him).
• Making jokes because Monica was a bit overweight.
• Ross dating a student, and his treatment of Rachel when she got a new job and he became possessive and jealous.
• Lack of any characters that weren't white in NYC.

It ran from 1994-2004. The world has changed, but it's a good show to watch if you have nothing else to do.

Trinpy yes, completely agree!

The one with the free porn.
Where Joey and Chandler get all excited because the TV gets stuck on a porn channel and they won’t let anyone change it.

Well firstly, Ross barely gave a toss about Ben-he only seemed to see him at Christmas, so I would believe that

Everything we've been told suggests Ross was a good, involved and loving parent. If he was supposed to be a deadbeat dad it would have been spoken about on the show. It's a show about six young adults in New York, not a family sitcom, so I think the writers were correct to limit Ben's role. Kids on sitcoms generally aren't very funny. Look at 'Not Going Out'.

I always think it's strange in the episodes when Carole is pregnant with Ben that it's just accepted by everyone that Susan will be Ben's 'other mom'. And Ross is seen as the unreasonable one for not being completely fine with that.

And they wanted the baby to have Susan's surname and be 'Willick-Bunch', which was quite cruel to Ross.

@TooMuch87 yes, always thought the way they were to Ross was awful, especially Susan.
He was the one cheated on after all.
Like when Susan said "we just refer to you as Bobo the sperm donor."

toomuch I agree. Imagine if Carol had left Ross for a man and the man assuming that the baby would take his name!! I think Ross was poorly treated by Carol and Susan.

The Carol and Susan being awful to Ross is something that’s definitely dated and hopefully not as acceptable today.
It’s supposed to be super funny that Ross’s Ex is a lesbian and hur hur hur the girls sass him and cut him out because he’s such a loser and pathetic man and let’s point at weak men and laugh at them( wait ... what was I ranting about ???)
But I think there was a similar plot in Two and a half men where Alan’s ex said she was a lesbian and it was “Oh Alan you’re such a useless man your ex has turned to women hur hur hur hur perve perve perve “ but that show is a whole other thing that hopefully wouldn’t be made today

Ross marrying the first woman he slept with.
Rachel’s meringue wedding dress.
Monica not knowing that Rachel was getting married from social media.
The we were on a break night couldn’t have happened because they could t contact each other because they didn’t have mobiles- Ross called Rachel from a payphone in the bar and mistakenly thought she was with Mark- now she could have text him right away to correct his false belief. And Ross would have got the message that Rachel was coming round in the morning right away and not on the answering machine so would have got Chloë out earlier.

The ‘when were you under me?’ Realisation could t have happened without home phone answering machines.

They wouldnt have a VCR to show the prom video on.

Phoebe could have googled her dad/ brother/ stalked them on FB rather than going to the house.

The tollhouse cookie recipe they could have googled.

Joey having sex with the director to get the days of our lives part wouldn’t be shown now, and is quite dark in light of Harvey Weinstein.

Chandler could know which sister via social media.

Phoebe would know her birthday from her sister’s FB.

They wouldnt make a ‘hermaphrodite cheerleader from Long Island joke’ now.

They wouldn’t put Rachel in a school cheerleader costume as a way of pulling Joshua.

@DaisyDreaming
Mobile phones would remove so much of the drama! Plus social media- we would all know that Ross had met Julie and probably seen all the selfies!

So true, I often think this on watching old comedies!
(Eg Only Fools and Horses, several episodes where if they could have just phoned would have been solved. Satellite dish/plane diversion, Miami with gangsters etc...)
Then again there'd have been no plot in 80s and 90s comedies with phones ruining the fun lol
sorry for slight derail

Actually I’m not sure the male nanny one wouldn’t work today,

Ross is a jerk for the most part of this episode, but it does get properly confronted and established it's because of HIS fathers attitude towards him not being a "real boy" playing with dinosaurs etc. in the end we realise Ross was victimised too and sandy obviously made him uncomfortable with that memory.