'Friends' fans: did the series ever jump the shark?

[orangeyeahthatsright]

And if so, at what point in the series?

For me I think the episode with Emma's birthday party was where it all started to feel really laboured. Although it had been getting there since the episode where Phoebe blagged her way into Sting's house, for me anyway.

(Side note: I know Friends hasn't aged well in some regards, but that's not really where I'm going with this thread.)

But his parents were married and presumably not yet divorced.

Looking back they were very brave to do a lesbian storyline, now that was still controversial in the 90’s - but it’s a shame they did fetishise Susan and Carol’s relationship a bit

Whenever DH and I are lugging furniture up and down the stairs I can't resist shouting "PIVOT!"

It got silly from the Joey and Rachel relationship onwards for me. I can't watch those seasons.

Mr Zelna - a Friends ‘high point’…..?

How? why….?! 😂

Only if you were Amish?!?

Otherwise, no. You were NOT ‘shunned’ and/or ‘shamed’ if you had children out of wedlock in the 90s!!?

I was born to a single mum in 84 and she wasn't shunned, she held down a professional full time job in banking in London at the time. She had it tough for sure, but shunned? Nonsense.

A lot of the storylines were silly, but it was a comedy. And to be fair to Emily, if my new husband had said the name of his ex girlfriend at our wedding, I probably would have punched him too. I felt so sorry for her.

Emily was so utterly reasonable in her request that Ross cut off the ex GF whose name he not only said at the altar, but who he nearly went on their honeymoon with and they made her out to be evil.

When Joey and Rachel got it on it was over for me.

I had a baby as a single mum in the 90s. Half my antenatal group were unmarried. It was not a big deal. At all.

The Brad Pitt episode has not aged well. Awkward 🫣

Ireland was a bit more rigid with stuff like that. The Magdalene laundries were still going in the 90's

Friends wasn't set in or written in Ireland. Completely irrelevant comparison.

Gay characters yes, but also, the robots 😉

Agree! That was the worst

Yes I never understood why it's ok for a woman to hit a man.

it was actually ahead of its time by including gay characters in jokes

Not sure I agree with that, there's a lot of "errrrr gays" type undertones in some of the stuff (typical of that time) and a lot of sexualisation of the lesbian relationships. Lesbians are objectified and gay men or "gayness" feared by the main characters (in some episodes at least).

Emily was so utterly reasonable in her request that Ross cut off the ex GF whose name he not only said at the altar, but who he nearly went on their honeymoon with and they made her out to be evil.

Agree. Emily had got a bit controlling and petulant in the run-up to the wedding tbf, but the demonising of her for wanting Ross to cut Rachel out after what had happened didn't feel very plausible. Especially after he took Rachel on the honeymoon FFS!

That to me was where I think the series started to go significantly downhill. The idea that Emily was controlling and unreasonable to only consider moving to the US to be with the man who said his ex's name at their wedding and was willing to head off on honeymoon with her, was awful.

And then, worse than that for my enjoyment of the show. Was the fact that after Ross chose his friendship with Rachel over his marriage with Emily. And Rachel had made it clear, only a few episodes before, that she was in love with Ross. At no point whatsoever did Ross and Rachel sit down and talk through what that meant for them. Maybe work slowly through the possibility of a reconciliation or consider going to relationship counselling to work through the whole 'on a break' thing. For the rest of the show's run, right up until the finale, they have no actual reason to not be together, periodically get together, often in significant ways like getting married and creating and co-parenting a child. And even still at no point do they discuss their feelings for each other and what that could mean. It was stupid. They were kept apart for no reason other than the writers not wanting to have two couples in the group.

That said, I kept watching for Monica and Chandler as I liked their relationship. I think everyone apart from Chandler and Rachel slid way too hard into exaggerated stereotypes from S5 onwards. Early Monica and the ridiculous Monica who wanted to fight Elle McPherson had nothing in common. But at least her relationship with Chandler kept her more grounded. Phoebe went from quirky to plain nasty. Joey and Ross were too often, just stupid in the later seasons. Contemporary comedy, Frasier often gets criticised heavily for it's drop in quality once Niles and Daphne get together. And it's true, it wasn't as good, especially with the focus on Daphne's ridiculous family. But Friends had a much more significant drop in quality starting with the demonisation of Emily.

Ross should've ended up with Emily. Rachel with Gavin. Phoebe with Scientist Guy. Chandler with Kathy. Monica with Richard.
Joey god knows, they never gave him a girlfriend he seemed to have a connection with.

Couldn't stand Joey and Rachel together, or Monica and Chandler.

Meant to say, I agree with everyone who's said Joey and Rachel were just Wrong Wrong Wrong. And the actors seemed to know it too, which doubled the awkwardness...

I'm glad the writers nipped it in the bud fairly quickly and didn't have them get into a full-on relationship. It would have been the least plausible screen relationship since Tony and Deborah in Men Behaving Badly.

In the early 90s they were. I’m not talking forced adoption, being shunned by the community or growing up think your mum was your sister, but it was certainly seen as shameful by a large amount of the community still.

As a child born out of wedlock in 1983, where the hell were you living? Neither me or my parents ever got any grief from it, it was seen as normal even back then

Blimey yeah. She was absolutely vile to Ross even though he was the injured party, I could never work that out.

Perhaps you didn’t see it. But there were comments made.

And the bit where she gets a positive pregnancy test the same day she had the embryos transferred!