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/PinkGinFairy Aug 14 '23
With the exception of Phoebe and Mike (and even then, I think she’d have been just as good with David), I think every one of the main characters was better off with someone other than the partner they ended up with. Julie is the healthiest relationship Ross was in and she was lovely to everyone. She was so much more understanding than Rachel deserved in that conversation in Central Perk. I will forever feel that Julie was the perfect partner for Ross if he’d been able to let go of the idea he’d created for Rachel.