Friends is one of those inescapable shows that basically defined the '90s for an entire generation...except me. Yes, that's right, before Monday, January 5, 2015, I had never watched an episode of Friends . I can't even name the main cast except Ross and Rachel. I didn't understand the jokes, I could barely understand the references, and I had no idea what a Central Perk was until the first thing that came on screen in the pilot episode was "Monica has a new roommate." Because, you see, Friends came to Netflix in January 2015, and I finally had the chance to watch the entire series from scratch, on my own time and at my own pace. Let me answer the real question on everyone's mind. How long did it take me to start "shipping Ross and Rachel"? Less than five minutes.
Please note that these five minutes are not in chronological order. Chronologically, Ross and Rachel didn't really appeal to me until the end of the pilot. You see, I'm the kind of person who gets tired of things constantly being shoved in my face. I stopped listening to the radio because it kept playing the same top ten songs over and over again. I went to see the movie before all the hype for Frozen and narrowly avoided hating it . Even after Friends went into syndication, I refused to watch it because everyone wouldn't shut up about it. I don't care if that makes me a hater; that's who I am. And the subtlety of "Monica Gets a New Roommate" was like a punch in the face to the couple you're supposed to be rooting for on this show.
Ross and Rachel took two parallel journeys. When his wife leaves him for another woman, Ross comes back into the life of his sister Monica and all her friends. When he announces that he wants to get married again, Rachel appears in a wedding dress, dragging a runaway bride into her fiancé Barry. Just in case you didn't get it at the time, although I don't know how you didn't, later Ross is talking to Chandler and Joey about how he doesn't know which girl he could find in him to ask the scene cuts to an equally frustrated Reacher I stared out the window. I can't tell you how hard my eyes were rolling at this point. I don’t need to be told “what to ship.” I can come to this conclusion myself, thank you.
However, the pilot episode ends with a poignant scene that puts all of the above into perspective. Rachel and Ross have a real conversation . In it he admits that he had a crush on her at school (she knew), but he thought she just saw him as Monica's weirdo brother (which she did). In it he said he might ask her out, and Rachel smiled and said she agreed. Two of them look adorably in love with each other, smiling away during the exchange, which feels more real and authentic than the rough-and-ready "meet-cute" and more like Anvil's "cue" than the show. More special and sweeter than I imagined.
That's when Friends finally won me over. I'd giggled at the sitcom jokes, laughed at the '90s hair, and yawned at Monica's sitcom romantic troubles - but there was an emotional authenticity that was missing from the rest of the pilot. Yes, it's fun, but it's not charming , convincing, or addictive, until Ross and Rachel decide to split the last Oreo. Because at that moment— that moment— Friends stopped being just a regular sitcom that everyone wouldn’t shut up about. That's the moment friends become real. At that moment, I sat up and screamed, "I'M SHIPPED!"
At this point, I do a favor to every fan who religiously watched Friends every week when it premiered. The show is over. All ten seasons have premiered, been rerun, and are now streaming on Netflix. I could slow down, speed up, skip, and then jump on the internet to find an entire pre-existing community of Ross and Rachel fans who were ready to relive those feelings for starters. So, in a weird way, I'm excited now because I waited until I was 24 to watch Friends for the first time. I know how this story ends, I know how painful it will be to get there, and I know it won't let me down. This story, their story, was just the beginning of what Friends had in store for me.
