All the times ‘Friends’ got it wrong and the one time they almost got it right
Back in the 1990s, Friends was wildly popular. Whether you liked it or hated it, the reality is, the New York City based sitcom has stood the test of time. It still runs regularly in syndication on cable channels, and it’s still doing the rounds on various streaming platforms around the world. Despite its longevity and popularity, the show has been criticized in recent times for its lack of diversity and its mockery of marginalized communities such as the LGBTQ family.
And the critics aren’t wrong. The show aired for ten years and featured 236 episodes which featured predominantly white, heterosexual characters. Ross (David Schwimmer) and Joey (Matt le Blanc) both dated a coworker of Ross’ who was African American, but she was only in the show for 9 episodes. Gabrielle Union also made an appearance in one episode and Lauren Tom (who starred in The Joyluck Club) showed up briefly and dated Ross for a couple of episodes too, but that’s about where the diversity stops with this show.
Regarding queerness in Friends, the LGBTQ community was mostly only brought up as something to be made fun of, or something that wasn’t socially acceptable. On Friends, queer people served primarily as comedic plot points for canned laughter. No real queer characters that audiences could invest in or relate to were included in the storylines at all.
Despite its frequently enacted casual homophobia, Friends does feature a lesbian couple, which for its time, was relatively groundbreaking. They even got married, although the wedding has since been criticized for the way in which it was highly censored to please heterosexual studio executives.
From a queer perspective, the popularity of Friends was, and still is, controversial. So let’s take a look at all the things that Friends got wrong and the one thing they at least tried to do right.
Chandler and his parent
Chandler’s (Matthew Perry) relationship with his father is wildly controversial from an LGBTQ perspective. Chandler has an estranged kind of relationship with the person that he calls his father. When he and Monica (Courtney Cox) are preparing for marriage, Monica pushes the idea that Chandler should contact them and invite them to the wedding. It’s around this time that we learn that Chandler’s father no longer adheres to the typical conventions of male identity.
The word trans is never used, but when Chandler and Monica actually locate them, they are working in some kind of lounge in Las Vegas assuming the identity of a woman. Over time, the audience learns that Chandler is extremely uncomfortable with the fact that his father now assumes the identity of a woman and uses this very issue for many examples of mockery throughout various episodes.
Chandler never makes an effort to ask about his parent’s feelings, or how they would like to be referred to. He continues to refer to the individual as ‘father’ or ‘daddy’ even when they are presented quite clearly as a female. Additionally, he makes no secret of the fact that Chandler was aware of this aspect of his parent as a child and blames this issue on some of the childhood trauma that he has carried into adulthood. Problematic, to say the least.
Ross’s issues with the male nanny
When Ross and Rachel (Jennifer Anniston) have their baby, Rachel goes back to work and the pair need to hire someone to help care for the child while they’re working. They find it difficult to find someone suitable until Sandy (Freddie Prince Jr.) comes along.
Sandy is a male nanny, and Ross has an aversion to this from the very beginning. Sandy is a soft, gentle human who is in touch with his feelings. He is excellent with kids, and Rachel finds him an excellent candidate to care for their child.
Ross makes assumptions that Sandy is gay based on his chosen career path (childcare) and the fact that he doesn’t seem to be as emotionally stunted as the other men around him. Ross also jokes with Chandler and Joey about the fact that they have a male nanny and mockingly labels him a ‘manny’.
In the end, it’s far too preposterous to Ross that a man could excel at a job like childcare and also be straight and they end up firing Sandy and hiring a female. The unspoken criticisms of gender and sexuality leave a lot to be desired. Ross is definitely the worst in many ways, but this is definitely a harmful stereotype that Friends quite happily perpetuates.
Queer Fear
Littered all throughout the show in almost all of the seasons, is what we like to call the Friends queer fear. Joey, Chandler, and Ross all exhibit attitudes that are rooted in homophobia. Chandler is affronted when his coworker tries to set him up with a male friend of hers at work. She assumes Chandler is gay, and he is, to say the least, exceptionally unhappy about said assumption.
In one episode Joey and Ross fall asleep together on the couch. During their nap, they end up shifting and snuggling. When they wake up, they are profoundly annoyed that they seemed to enjoy such an intimate position between the two of them and it continues to be a comedic point of mocking and contention for the rest of the episode.
They make fun of queer people constantly, and all of them are completely freaked out when passersby incorrectly assume they could be gay. All three men experience this throughout the course of the show and the negative rebuffal of such a notion is toxic and discriminatory. It sends a clear message that Joey, Ross, and Chandler couldn’t think of anything worse than being gay. This notion is prevalent throughout the entire show.
The lesbian wedding
This is the one thing that Friends actually got right, even if their delivery of it wasn’t completely on point. Lesbians, especially out-and-loving lesbians, just weren’t present on television screens in the 1990s.
Carol (Jane Sibbet) divorces Ross because she falls in love with a woman. Ross then finds himself co-parenting his son with Carol and her lover Susan (Jessica Hecht). They have a stable, loving relationship and their son primarily lives with the two women. Ben is well-adjusted, and he is a decent kid.
In season 2, the women get married. Again, this was relatively groundbreaking for its time, but it was littered with a few problematic tropes that watered down the wow factor.
Carol’s parents completely reject her sexuality and refuse to come to the wedding. Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) believes she has been possessed by the spirit of an old, dead lady in this episode and makes a point of exclaiming very loudly “well now I’ve seen everything” as the wedding becomes official, like two women getting married was such an anomaly. Chandler inappropriately tries hitting on known lesbians, disrespecting boundaries and LGBTQ factors yet again.
Furthermore, Ross just never seems to get on board with Carol and Susan’s relationship. He feels hard done by the fact that Carol chose a woman over him, and his persistent annoyance with this issue throughout the entirety of the show certainly implies that their relationship shouldn’t be taken seriously.
But they existed on screen at a time when lesbian representation just wasn’t a thing, and the writers took their relationship to the point of marriage. Viewers were never afforded a wedding kiss between the two women though, as network executives feared backlash from the industry and the audience as well.
Despite all its shortcomings though, Friends still seems to be everywhere we turn. It’s on Netflix in some countries, on Max in the United States, on cable syndication on most major cable providers. Friends it seems is still going strong. We are interested to hear your thoughts… did you watch it back in the day? How does it make you feel now? Drop a line on one of our social media accounts and let us know how Friends makes you feel.
