English 100
15 Feb 2001
Every weeknight, KHON Channel 3 airs reruns of the hit TV show Friends which currently airs new episodes weekly on KHNL Channel 8. This situation comedy follows the lives of six friends, Chandler, Phoebe, Monica, Ross, Rachel, & Joey through their trials and tribulations of being a single twenty-something living in New York. Each 'friend' had his or her own unique personality commonly found in sitcoms: The Brain, The Jock, The Airhead, The Dork, The Princess, and The Neurotic One. These traits are often found in other TV shows and movies, such as the classic The Breakfast Club. Each character states at the end of the movie that they each fall into a category: Andrew the jock, Brian the brain, John the criminal, Allison the basket case, Claire the princess, and Mr. Vernon the clueless one.
However each character on Friends also posses numerous traits outside of the cookie cutter mold which individualizes them from the traditional two-dimensional character of a sitcom or movie, where each character has limited depth outside the range of their generic persona. Now in its seventh year of production, the Friends series consists of over 150 half-hour episodes, with a prospective 33 more episodes in the next year and a half. Over the course of these numerous episodes, all of which are filled with laughs, practical jokes, and unpredictable situations, the characters of Friends have revealed odd and perhaps very unusual quirks, pet peeves, and flaws individualize the characters of Friends from other sitcoms.
The perfect example of this is the character played by Jennifer Aniston. Rachel Green fills the slot of The Popular One in the group on Friends. While the others begin the series struggling with their current monetary standing, Rachel's biggest problem at the age of 24 was her rich fianc�e and her fantasy wedding come true. Rachel had never held a job before September 1994, when she finally took a position at Central Perk. Though she was a horrible waitress, Rachel was able to keep her job only because one of her co-workers, Gunther (James Michael-Tyler), who held higher rank, had a secret love for her. While Rachel seems like the traditional spoiled princess who is bought all her heart desires, Rachel sheds the clich� of The Perfect Prom Queen to show a true person with real faults, weaknesses, and oddities.
In the beginning the show, Rachel is engaged to Barry Farber (Mitchell Whitfield), a wealthy and successful orthodontist. Upon realizing she doesn't love her betrothed, Rachel runs out on her wedding to find Monica her best friend from high school sitting and chatting with Ross, Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe in Central Perk. Rachel recounts the whole ordeal to the gang at the Java hut. Then, back at Monica's apartment Rachel has a fight with her father where she realizes she's "not a shoe," she needs to burst out into the world as "a hat," on her own without help from her family. With the assistance of her new found friends, Rachel strikes out against her parents and sets out on her own, in perhaps the most traumatic moment of her life, she cuts her credit cards to pieces.
When Rachel is first introduced to the audience, she is the
traditional spoiled princess. Her biggest fear of loosing daddy's
financial support looms in the distance as she walks out on her
wedding. Her father, determined to see his daughter financially
sound, argues with her, saying she MUST marry Barry or she won't
have access to her father's money. Rachel retorts to her father,
"Well, maybe I don't need your moneywait! Wait! I said
maybe!" The scene directly following this with Rachel hyperventilating
into a paper bag as she freaks out about the possibility of losing
her father's money.
Later in the series, we learn Rachel has two younger sisters,
Jill, and an unnamed sister who is said to have "a very masculine
energy." We meet Jill in the middle of the fifth season;
she comes running into Rachel and Monica's apartment near tears
to which Phoebe tries to determine which sister of Rachel's this
is:
Phoebe: (To Ross) "Which-which sister is this? Is
this the spoiled one or that's bitter?"
Jill: (To Rachel) "Daddy cut me off."
Phoebe: "Never mind, I got it."
We then find out that Jill and Rachel's father cut her off
because Jill has bought a boat "for a friend." After
her father told Jill she was being cut off, Jill tells her father,
in a very princess like way, "I'm gonna hire a lawyer and
I'm gonna sue you and take all your money. Then I'm gonna cut
you off!" To which her father informs her that he wouldn't
pay for her lawyer and she should learn a thing or two from Rachel-the
one daughter he's proud of.
With the new information of Rachel's other sister the viewer begins
to wonder just how spoiled the third sister is. While all traits
of the unknown sister has been about her 'energy' and her bitter
feelings toward the world, one still doesn't know if this sister
is as spoiled as the other two. Being the daughters of a rich
and successful cardiovascular surgeon, Rachel, and Jill both begin
life with silver spoons in their mouths, with everything they
wanted handed to them on a velvet pillow. We learn in the sixth
season that Rachel was given her own boat at age fifteen, her
father bought it for her to cheer her up when her pony had fallen
ill. By bringing Jill into the fourth season, we see the Rachel
of now: independent, confident, and employed, versus her sister
Jill who still lives under the covered wing of her father's bank
account. The contrast of the two sisters shows the depth and
range of how far Rachel has come emotionally and mentally since
the beginning of the show.
Throughout the seasons of Friends, we see a different
side of Rachel that is no where near the princess she first appears
to be: she used to have a pet tarantula as a child, fish freak
her out, turtles scare her, she's never done a load of laundry
(until October 1994), and keeps an erotic book under her pillow.
In addition, Rachel has a 'thing' about her eyes, as she tells
the gang when her left eye begins to bother her and they tell
her to go to the doctor. "--Okay, I have a weird thing about
my eye. Can we not talk about it please?" After some jokes
about eyes, Monica forces Rachel to go to the doctor, where she
is told she needs to put eye drops in her eye, to which the following
conversation follows:
Rachel: "Yeah, no, I don't-I don't put things in my
eye."
Eye Dr.: "Okay then, I guess we'll see you
back here in three months."
Rachel: "Great!"
Eye Dr.: "And I'll fit you for a glass eye."
Rachel: "Okay, just give me the damn drops!"
Rachel refuses to use the eye drops well into the episode and it's only after Monica wrestles her to the ground and fight with her as if she was a child do the drops actually get into Rachel's eye. While there are no details as to why Rachel has a 'thing' about her eyes nor are details revealed about why she doesn't like fish and why turtles scare her, it is obvious these things seriously bother her.
While Rachel has a serious side, and a weird side, like a regular
person, she also has a silly side. A good example would be when
Chandler walked into her apartment and saw her naked.
Ross: "Alright, alright. We're all adults here, there's
only one way to resolve this. Since you saw her boobies, I think,
uh, you're gonna have to show her your pee-pee."
Chandler: "Y'know, I don't see that happening?"
Rachel: "C'mon, he's right. Tit for tat."
Chandler: "Well I'm not showing you my 'tat'."
[Later in the day, Rachel walks from her apartment to Chandler's
which is across the hall. She then heads straight to the bathroom.]
Rachel: Chandler Bing...It's time to see your thing."
[She opens the door and whips back the curtain. It's Joey.
They both scream-Rachel runs out of the bathroom into the living
room.]
Joey: [Runs out in a towel] "What's the
matter with you?!"
Rachel: "I thought it was Chandler!"
Chandler: [Comes out of his room] "What? What?"
Rachel: "You were supposed to be in there so I could
see your thing!"
Chandler: "Sorry, my- my thing was in there with me."
Rachel inadvertently started the domino effect with her immature action when Joey then tries to sneak up on Rachel, but catches Monica in the shower. "Sorry, wrong boobies," he tells Monica as he runs out of the bathroom. Monica then attempts to even the score when she sneaks into Joey's to catch Joey in the shower, but catches Joey's father instead.
Another example of Rachel's juvenile side would have to be
during Christmas when the search begins to find the presents Monica
has bought for everyone. No one ever succeeds in finding the
presents, and Monica's jokes and gloating only further aggravate
the others. Finally in the sixth season while searching with
Phoebe and Chandler, Rachel stumbled upon the boxed gifts. As
the three are about to open them, Chandler tries to get the girls
to stop:
Chandler: "I don't wanna know what Monica got me.
Y'know? I mean,
look, I'm sure she worked really hard at getting you a present,
and wanting to surprise me, and you guys are gonna ruin that,
and I, look we have to put these back, this is not what Christmas
is about."
Rachel: "Whatever Linus, I'm opening mine."
Even with Chandler's heartfelt plee to help his girlfriend's
presents stay a surprise, Rachel's inner child shines through
as she begins to open the box, only to be interrupted by Monica,
who's astonished to find they found the presents.
While the characters of Friends do not stay to the cookiecutter
mold of traditional two-dimensional sitcom characters, the character
of Rachel shows not only the prom queen, but a regular girl with
weird likes and dislikes. The writers of Friends go to
the next level with Rachel and delve deep into private tidbits,
which would not be shown on other TV shows and movies. The friends
on Friends show how different they are from other sitcoms,
the week to week interactions of the characters always reveal
new information about the pasts and personalities. The characters
of Friends truly aren't the hollow characters with limited
range of emotion and personality traits they may appear to be.
Author's Note: Friends is my favorite tv show (along with Angel, Buffy, Dawson's Creek, Charmed, Survivor, Will & Grace, and CSI)
Mentioned Episodes
Dialogue, character information, character interaction and other
information for this paper was taken from the following episodes
of Friends:
(In order of original air date)
Ep # Title
101 The One Where Monica Gets A New Roommate
105 The One With The East German Laundry Detergent
113 The One With The Boobies
312 The One With All The Jealousy
510 The One With The Inappropriate Sister
522 The One With Joey's Big Break
610 The One With The Routine
613 The One With Rachel's Sister
702 The One With Rachel's Book
703 The One With Phoebe's Cookies
708 The One Where Chandler Doesn't Like Dogs