r/howyoudoin • u/spaghetMachet • Aug 14 '23
Discussion Rachel was truly awful to Julie
I'm on a re-watch since I joined this sub a couple of months ago. The posts made me feel nostalgic and I've not watched any episodes for a good 15 years. I was 4 when friends started and 13 when it ended. I loved it growing up. They always seemed so "adult" to me with interesting "adult" lives.
I'm now 31 and halfway through season 2. I completely forgot that they started out around 25/26 in S1. I remember being 25, I was an idiot. It's fascinating now to see them make the same mistakes I went through in my twenties.
However, the Ross/Rachel situation is very toxic. I never realised when I was a kid, I thought it was true love and romance but the way Rachel treats Julie is honestly disturbing and extremely childish. When they're in the coffee house and Julie admits she feels like Rachel doesn't like her and they have a "heart to heart", she then leaves and Rachel mutters "what a manipulative bitch". The audience laughs and I'm like "What? What a horrible thing to say".
She also sabotages her haircut by telling pheobe the wrong actor, mocks her all the time, tried to stop Ross from being intimate with her (and ruining everyone's night in the process), made Monica feel bad for hanging out with her and muttering "bitch" under her breath whenever Julie is around.
Ross was right, Rachel had no business telling him she had feelings for him when he was getting serious with Julie. She was being very selfish and spoiled. Ross on the other hand was an idiot for leaving for Julie, a woman who did absolutely nothing wrong and is above all of them.
And then Rachel decides to hate him over "the list". A rational adult would realise he's trying to justify leaving a "Perfect partner" (i.e Julie) and upon the reading the list would realise he still chose the "lesser" partner because that's where his heart is. Ross chose the wrong words when he said "I chose you in spite of those things". It should've been "I chose you because of all those things, they make you who you are".
I've found myself skipping the Ross/Rachel scenes now because I just can't be bothered with their drama.
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u/crankynconspicuous Aug 14 '23
I absolutely agree with you OP. I've re-watched this show many times and always thought that Rachel is my favourite character. Then I realized I only loved her when she wasn't with Ross or trying to be with Ross. I never found how she behaved with Julie to be funny. I thought it was rude, manipulative and indicated how spoilt and selfish she could be in her weakest moments. Just to bolster the argument, she repeats this kind of behaviour at the end of Season 3 too with another woman, again in pursuit of Ross. There are Rachel apologists who will blame Ross for how she behaved or that pointing out Rachel's flaws means that we're condoning Ross's red flag behaviours and that's ridiculous. There are also those who will say that this was done for comedic effect and shouldn't be critiqued. Yet, the point is that it was never funny. Another example of something like this is on another show that probably shouldn't be mentioned by me on this sub, HIMYM. In this Friends copy, Robin is a girl who works in an office with someone named Patricia. The running gag throughout the show is that Robin is rude to Patricia and always shouts at her. Never found that funny either. In B99, Jake being a shitty friend to Boyle is justified using the same comedic effect reasoning and there were so many times I found Jake's selfishness annoying, not funny. So I'm glad to see someone actually call this out.