[ SECRET POST #3883 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3883 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 44 secrets from Secret Submission Post #555.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Huh. I watched this show in the 90s, and it didn't occur to me to judge these characters based on whether they were ~good people~ or not.

[(Anonymous)]

Not OP, but at least for me, it's not really that I'm judging them based on whether they're bad people.

The problem is that they're bad people in a way that makes their storylines really annoying to watch, and also that the show often wants you to sympathize with them more than you do.

Don't know whether that makes me some kind of evil millennial or not.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sure there are evil gen xers who feel the same. :P

I thought their flaws made them fun.

[(Anonymous)]

Some of their flaws definitely did. Some of them definitely did not (for me at least). Monica being a control freak, or Phoebe being a space cadet, things like that are funny in the show even if they wouldn't be in real life. Ross being entitled and awful about relationships reallllllly is not.

[(Anonymous)]

And you felt like the writers wanted us to sympathize with his entitlement? This is a really interesting perspective.

[(Anonymous)]

It's always tricky to talk about intent. That said, I think the writers viewed him as a flawed but basically sympathetic and likable romantic protagonist, and I can't really come around to the "basically sympathetic" part. And I think, if they understood some of his characteristics as flaws, it wasn't necessarily in the same way in which I understand them as flaws.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, I did not get that from Ross at all! If he was sympathetic, it was because he was pathetic, and all the other characters on the show thought he was a loser, which rendered him rather innocuous.

[(Anonymous)]

It kind of feels to me like the other characters thought he was a loser, not because he was doing anything "wrong", but because he just happened to be unsuccessful and unlucky. And I think that's a meaningful distinction.

However disclaimer, I haven't watched through the show recently enough to be completely au fait with episode-to-episode close readings or anything, and that's probably what would be necessary to make this point in a useful and consistent way.

[(Anonymous)]

They made Ross/Rachel endgame. That certainly implies that they didn't think of his flaws as being all that bad.

That being said, I didn't watch more than the occasional episode of friends because they all annoyed me to one degree or another.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like a lot of the seasons plots boil down to one of the friends doing a wrong thing that is an obviously wrong and jerkish thing to do, but you are still supposed to root for them because they're the main characters, so they're always right

[(Anonymous)]

I'm just shocked by the serious tone of this entire thread. Are we supposed to judge sitcom characters through these dramatic lenses? I don't remember any moment on this show that was treated as heavy, even the serious ones.