Values Dissonance / Friends

Values Dissonance in Friends.

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• For a sitcom from the mid-90s, you can expect a lot of derogatory gay jokes, mostly directed at Chandler. (Note that series co-creator and writer David Crane is gay.)
  • Especially in the episode where Ross, Chandler and Monica were telling each other embarrassing stories. One of the first was Chandler drunkenly making out with a man dressed like a woman at a party. As the episode progresses, the stories get more and more humiliating (Chandler winning a Vanilla Ice look-a-like contest, Ross coming in fourth and crying and sleeping with the college maid, Monica being unable to tell time until she was 13 and eating the macaroni from a homemade jewelry box after being sent to bed without dinner.) However, none of these simply compare to "Whatever, dude, you kissed a guy." That alone undercut everything else.
  • When Joey is helping Treeger with his dancing, Monica asks Joey how it's going: "Gay yet?" Also crosses over to behind the scenes.
  • Funnily enough, there actually was serious consideration early on to have Chandler be gay (note his now quite out of character line from the pilot "Sometimes I wish I was a lesbian. Did I say that out loud?"), before they decided audiences weren't ready for it yet.
• "The One With The Rumor" had Brad Pitt's character and Ross started a rumor in high school about Rachel being a "hermaphrodite," ending with Monica telling her she needs to get over it because it didn't hurt her long-term popularity. With greater awareness of both anti-intersex prejudice (including the recognition of "hermaphrodite" as a slur when used to describe humans) and the effects of childhood bullying in the two decades since the episode's airing in 2001, these antics would be far more scrutinized nowadays.
  • Alternatively, the effects of childhood bullying are a lot more recognized nowadays. With the effects on his mental health very apparent throughout the episode, Will comes off as a case of Jerkass Woobie.
• In the same episode, the gang make fun of Ross for making out with a high school librarian. The joke is because she was incredibly old. But if you think about it, although she wasn't a teacher, she was still in an authority position and took advantage of a teenage boy. With awareness of the double standard now more widespread, this gag would probably not fly today. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia seems to have pinpointed this one specifically, having Dennis Reynolds (Serial Rapist with the worst ideas of consent) revealed to have been raped by his much older high school librarian: he refuses to believe he's been raped, but it - as well as heavily implied grooming from his mother - has clearly affected him terribly, and his jerkass friends keep trying to tell him he was taken advantage of.
• Joey regularly mentions picking up girls (in the college age bracket) when he was way under the age of consent (he knew how to unhook a bra at age fourteen), something that never even gets mentioned by the other characters as, well, icky. He even once said that he slept with a teacher in seventh grade for an A, to Monica, and she didn't even react to it.
• When Rachel takes Ross out to dinner with her father, Dr. Green pays for the entire meal but only puts out a 4% tip. He's portrayed as a jerk for both this, and for getting mad at Ross for leaving extra money on the table to pad out the tip. In the US, where waitstaff are often paid lower than minimum wage, Ross's outrage at the small tip makes sense (a common tip ranges from 15-20%, which can be a great payout for waitstaff on an expensive meal). In other countries where restaurant wages are better regulated, this is not common knowledge, and so Ross ends up looking more unreasonable for expecting a man who just paid for a very expensive meal to pay even more for the tip.
• Chandler making fun of Ross or Joey for taking part in any 'unmanly' activities. One episode had Chandler accuse Joey of turning into a woman all because Joey was trying to bond with his temporary female roommate by knitting pot cozies with her and learning floral arrangements. Ross likewise gets worried when Ben is found playing with a Barbie doll, and he tries to get him to play with a GI Joe instead. Ross also wants to get rid of Sandy the nanny just because he's a slightly effeminate male (though this Double Standard is repeatedly lampshaded in the episode itself).
  • This exchange, from "The Last One", about Chandler and Monica's incoming baby. Keep in mind that this comes from Phoebe, who's otherwise the more forward-thinking of the group:
    Phoebe: I have a definite feeling it's gonna be a girl.
    Ross: Phoebe, you were sure Ben was going to be a girl.
    Phoebe: Have you seen him throw a ball?
• Given the increasing epidemic of teenage eating disorders, a lot of the jokes at Monica's expense at being an overweight teenager come off as cruel.
  • In general, the show's negative portrayals of fat people (for another example, see the character of Girth^note It's actually Gert, as in Gertrude, but the mondegreen is just too perfect to remove. in "The One After I Do") would today come across as both cruel and insensitive, now that we've become more aware of the psychological/emotional dangers of "fat shaming."
• When Paolo crudely comes on to Phoebe at her job as a masseuse, the show treats Rachel as the one who is primarily wronged because Paolo tried to cheat on her with her friend, while glossing over the fact that Phoebe was sexually harassed by him. In the post Me Too era, this would be treated much more seriously.
• Ross's actions - particularly in the early seasons - are looked on far more critically than they would have been at the time. He claims to be a 'Nice Guy' but here's a rough list: accuses Rachel of cheating just because he's jealous of Mark; acts incredibly smothering and possessively and later lies about getting their marriage annulled. Any of these actions would be used to portray him as a Jerkass today rather than the Dogged Nice Guy he was presented as in the 90s.
• Chandler's boss playfully slapping his butt is played for laughs, with the other employees mentioning this demonstrates that Chandler is his favourite, and Chandler convincing his boss to slap other employees' butts to stop them feeling jealous. In today's society, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, it's less likely this sort of behaviour would be played for laughs, especially as Chandler is clearly uncomfortable with this.
• Chandler's father being played by a cis woman was actually considered an admirably daring piece of casting at the time, but is now looked on much more critically as awareness has grown about the plight of trans actors losing even roles fitting their identity to cis actors.^note It's actually not quite clear if the character is supposed to be trans or a male drag queen, but it's still uncomfortable either way. Co-creator Marta Kauffman later admitted that she regrets the character being written that way, as well as the ambiguity with which their identity was handled.
• With increased understanding of the terrors of stalking, it’s now quite off-putting to watch "The One With The Jam", where Phoebe is flattered when it appears she has one, and when it turns out the man is actually stalking her twin sister Ursula and followed her by mistake, she tries to convince him to switch to her. During the show’s 25th anniversary in 2019, this was named as the episode the crew most regretted.
• In 3x10: an elementary school-age girl being alone with Ross in her bedroom, and visiting the apartment of two adult men for a playdate without anyone accompanying her, would absolutely never fly today regardless of how innocent his intentions were.
• Monica pretending to forgive Chandler for smoking to get them to have sex can be quite uncomfortable and feel like a double standard.
• In season 2, Joey auditions for Days Of Our Lives and is told by the casting lady that if he wants the part, he needs to sleep with her. The show treats the issue more like it's a question of Joey's integrity if he earned the role or if he has to sleep his way to the top to get it. However, in today's Me Too era, it's the casting lady who is seen as exploiting Joey, especially with the revelation that real life producers like Harvey Weinstein used similar tactics of holding roles over actresses heads in order to force them to sleep with them. The fact that the genders are reversed in this situation doesn't make it any less repugnant.
• Many of the show's workplace-related humor/incidents would not fly in this day and age:
  • Joanna' s treatment of Sophie and to a lesser extent Rachel would now be considered workplace bullying.
  • Rachel's behavior towards her assistant Tag - in particular, her telling people that he's gay so that no one else will date him (aside from being untrue, it is not her business to disclose regardless), could have gotten her reprimanded or even fired for sexual harassment—and the others even tease/warn her about this.
  • A little after Rachel begins working at Ralph Lauren, she finds out that one of her coworkers, Kenny The Copy Boy, regularly pretends to be Ralph Lauren in order to sleep with female coworkers. Such behavior would now be seen not only as sexual harassment but possible rape.
• Ross's Girl of the Week with the filthy apartment is as usual played for laughs. Nowadays—and even then—an apartment that messy wouldn't indicate that someone was merely a slob, it'd be suggestive of a hoarding disorder, a serious mental illness that can be a symptom of other mental illnesses such as anxiety or depression.
  • Conversely, so would Monica's Neat Freak and Control Freak tendencies.
• "TOW The Fake Monica": Identity theft has become a serious danger for most people, now that the internet has made it ridiculously easy for hackers/phishers/etc. to steal sensitive personal information. Thus, the idea of Monica being a victim of it (let alone embracing it) is no longer as harmless or funny as it might've been in 1995.
• In "TOW the East German Laundry Detergent", Rachel casually asks Ross if she's acting like a spaz, which is nowadays recognized as an incredibly offensive and ableist slur.
• Ross' erratic behavior after dealing with several traumatic events is treated with derision, and he's told he just needs to get over it even though it's clear he needs mental health treatment. Nowadays, he would probably have sought treatment well before his behavior got out of hand.
• Chandler was originally written to be gay, but the writers backed out of that decision because they thought the audiences weren't ready. Nowadays, no one would bad an eye at this. In fact, most sitcoms have at least one LGBT major character nowadays. Most fans don't mind this however, because of the payoff of Monica & Chandler ending up together.
• Monica sleeping with a 18-year-old boy when she was 24 would be made much more problematic nowadays, and not just an embarrassing encounter she needs to overcome. Not helping is that while both sides lied about their ages, as Monica pointed out, she never lied about something illegal.
• In "TOW Rachel's Sister Babysits," Rachel's sister Amy... well, babysits... and while doing so she secretly has baby Emma's ears pierced, leading Ross and Rachel to go absolutely ballistic. While Amy undoubtedly crossed a line by doing it without Ross and Rachel's permission, it highlights a long-standing debate regarding ear-piercing among infants. Many people are horrified at the idea of subjecting a baby to unnecessary pain for something that is pure vanity, many others feel as though since nearly all young girls will want their ears pierced at some point anyway, it's better to get it over with while they're too young to remember any pain or be traumatized by it and when the parent will be constantly hovering over them to watch out for possible infection or complications. For some, getting their ears pierced is so routine it can be akin to a right of passage similar to the baby's first haircut.

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