Friends: Exploring Character Dynamics in the Popular Sitcom

One of the main points of appeal about the situation comedy "Friends" is the characters. The show is largely character driven so the characters are all interesting people whom the audience will wants to see over and over again. An example of this is Chandler, played by Matt Perry. His mother is a glamorous novelist, yet his father is a gay drag artist working in Las Vegas. Chandler hates Thanksgiving, as it was the time when his parents announced that they were going to divorce.

He works as a financial analyst, yet much humour has been created from the other friends not understanding what his job is. For instance, in one episode where the friends have a quiz, men against women, and one of the questions asked of the women is "What is Chandlers job? " the women are not able to answer the question correctly. Another character trait that can be taken from this quiz is Monica's fierce competitiveness especially with her brother, Ross, played by David Schwimmer.

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This is again shown in Series 3, Episode 9 "The One With The Football", when Monica, played by Courtney Cox-Arquette, an Ross revive old rivalries ands get very physical during a touch football match, cheating just to win "A troll nailed to a two by four," as Chandler describes the Geller Bowl Trophy. This is an example of his sarcastic nature, which is a very prominent feature of Chandler's character. Inevitably the other characters are the butt of his sarcasm. Because we know that Chandler is sarcastic we expect him to make jokes when something is there to make a joke about.

The other recognise his sarcastic tendencies. We see this in one episode where Chandler is forced to not say anything nasty or sarcastic for a day. Ross walks in to Monica's apartment wearing a new pair of leather trousers and the shot switches to a close-up of Chandler almost bursting to make a joke about Ross, but not being allowed to. The audience know this, so it is humorous for them. Chandler lived with Joey until everyone knew about his relationship with Monica, he then moved in with her. Monica is Ross' younger sister, and points arise from this connection.

She is very competitive especially with Ross. Perhaps even more competitive than any usual sibling rivalry. It extends to almost anything they do, whether it be getting the last word in an argument or winning a football game, originally intended to be a friendly activity. She also thinks that her parents do not love her as much as Ross. Monica strives to impress her parents yet her mother is very critical of her. An example of this is when Monica is catering for her parents. Her mother prepares back-up meals for the guests because she thinks that Monica will make a mistake, which in fact she does.

Monica is currently making a living as a chef in a restaurant. She is also obsessive about control and neatness, to the extent that she cannot have her different types of socks for example sports socks and smart socks, mixed together in one drawer and her bed has to be made in a particular way, otherwise she cannot sleep in it. Monica also seemed doomed to bad relationships including Pete, who went off to become an Ultimate Fighting Champion, and Richard, played by Tom Selleck. This is until she started a relationship with Chandler, with whom she appears to be very happy.

Monica also used to be quite overweight, which is an important factor when it comes to considering events from her childhood and such like. Monica's older brother, Ross, is quite different from Monica. He is a palaeontologist so has worked in several places in that field. These places include the Natural History Museum in New York and currently NYU. Ross actually has a PhD in palaeontology so can be known as Dr. Geller. He was a college roommate with Chandler so they have much history with each other.

Ross enjoys being married and to illustrate this he has been married three times. But all of the marriages have failed. His first marriage was to Carol, realised she was a lesbian soon after. His second was to Emily who left him because she thought he still loved Rachel and his final marriage was to Rachel. However, both were extremely drunk, so neither really wanted to get married. When it comes to their getting divorced soon afterwards Ross is reluctant, because even though he does not really love Rachel, he cannot face the humiliation of three divorces.

He did have a long relationship with Rachel earlier on in the series and when he was younger used to yearn for her. Ross has a son by Carol named Ben. He does not see Ben as much as he would like but is a model father and shares child-care. To compensate for this, even though it is never said, Ross gets a Capuchin monkey who he named Marcel and with whom had a very close bond. This shows Ross kind hearted and sensitive side, which we sometimes do not see behind his serious.

Rachel Green, played by Jennifer Aniston, is one of Monica's school friends. In earlier series they used to live together. But currently Rachel lives with Joey. She has a career in fashion having worked at Bloomingdales and Ralph Lauren, but also having had to work as a waitress at Central Perk. At the beginning of the "Friends" series working was a real shock to Rachel who had lived off her fathers credit cards for all of her adult life until that time. As a child, Rachel had been spoiled to the point that her parents even paid for her to have plastic surgery on her nose.

Rachel's parents are now separated. Her father is a doctor, which could explain her attraction towards doctors and other men in the medical profession. In the "One Hundredth" episode she arranges dates for her and Monica with two male nurses, which illustrates my point. Rachel's sister, Jill, is played by Reese Witherspoon and has appeared in several episodes. Gunther now yearns for Rachel as Ross once did, but Ross and Rachel had their relationship and Ross does not feel the same way about her anymore.

Joey Tribianni is Rachel's current flat-mate. Joey is Italian-American and has a very large family. He has seven sisters who all look very similar, which led to confusion in one episode where Chandler kissed one of them but could not remember who. This leads to a black eye because Joey is very protective of his family, even though Chandler is his good friend. Another example of this is when he finds out that his father has a mistress. Joey is disgusted by this and tells his father that he is going to tell his mother.

However, his mother already knows about the mistress and life is going well for her while his father is seeing the mistress. She berates Joey because now his father has to break up with his mistress and things will change for her. Joey is also not noted for having sustained relationships although he sees many women and has sex with most of them, presumably having used his famous pick up line "How you doin'? " Beneath this seemingly womanising personality there is a kind hearted and easily hurt personality as well.

An important point is that Joey is not as intelligent as the other "friends". Chandler often takes advantage of this to make fun of Joey or to make him look stupid. For example in Series 3 Episode 9 Chandler exploits Joey's lack of geographical knowledge by asking where the Netherlands is. Joey thinks this is a trick question thinking Chandler is referring to Never Never Land, home of Peter Pan. This makes Joey look ignorant in front of the girl he and Chandler are trying to impress, therefore causing her to choose Chandler.