In Defense of Ross Geller

I swear that I’m not trying to Skip Bayless or Colin Cowherd anybody here. This isn’t a controversial take just for the sake of making you so angry that your eyes bleed and steam comes out of your ears. I mean, those things might happen, because people hate Ross Geller, but they would just be, like, unfortunate side effects and not the actual point of writing this. My wife and I have a few “background shows.” These are often sitcoms that we know so intimately, we can just keep them running on a loop in the background of our lives, dipping into and out of them at will without needing to focus on their plots or jokes the way we would a show we’re watching for the first time. The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Friends are the three that we cycle through most frequently, and though the former two are superior shows (by far, in my eyes), Friends (its first 4 or 5 seasons, especially) holds its own as a pleasant, occasionally still hilarious nostalgia trip. And just about everybody of my generation who watched the show (and almost everyone watched it to some degree, so pervasive was its presence in syndication) has their favorite Friend and at least a few of the show’s more zeitgeist-y lines. And a huge number of these people agree on one thing above all else: Ross Geller is the absolute worst. I agree. He’s terrible, which, as I’ve revisited the show several times over the last few years, makes him my favorite part of the show. Let me explain. When Friends started, Ross was just a bummed out guy coming off of an awkward divorce. Almost all the humor around him in the first season stems from his tense relationship with his ex-wife and the woman she left him for and from the unreciprocated nature of his love for Rachel. He’s the straight man (no pun intended) to whom everything happens. He’s just a dork, tossed about helplessly by his own bad luck. To make this portrayal more sympathetic, he’s also painted as a Good Guy, unfairly overlooked by Rachel, who can’t seem to see just how perfect he is for her. As the show continued, though, and “Ross and Rachel” became the biggest draw on television, Ross went from being a good-hearted dork to a jealous, possessive, self-centered jerk, seemingly willing to sabotage every relationship and career opportunity in the name of his pettiness. This transformation is why just about everybody hates the dude. In a lot of ways, that makes sense. The basic premise of Friends is that the characters are supposed to be, at a base level, likable. It’s not that they never do anything selfish, it’s just that, when they do, that selfishness is temporary, a tool used by the writers to generate conflicts that are usually resolved neatly by episode’s end. But with Ross, both the writers and David Schwimmer (who, aside from Lisa Kudrow, is the cast’s best performer) started to lean into Ross’ nastier character traits in a way that made him harder to like as the series went on. This, it turns out, was exactly the right choice, because over the show’s last four or so seasons, Ross is the only consistently funny part of the show. Monica and Chandler suffer relationship dramas, get married, and then fall into the sitcom’s familiar and earnest marriage- and children-centric storylines. Phoebe’s quirkiness starts to feel tacked on. Rachel has a baby. Joey even suffers through a lazy storyline where he feuds with Ross over sudden feelings he develops for Rachel. None of these developments gives the characters more space to be interesting or funny. But Ross morphing into a petty, childish caricature of himself absolutely does. There’s probably no better illustration of this than the following clip: [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUpgmGiW8pE[/embed] I’ve probably seen that a hundred times and it still makes me laugh out loud. And there are a dozen of Ross’ scenes over Friends’ last few seasons that do the same thing. I can’t say the same for any of the other characters. So am I just a person with bizarre comedic tastes? Why does everyone think Ross is the worst if he’s actually the funniest part of the show for a big chunk of its run? Well, part of it is that the show, built as it is on the premise that we’re rooting for these people, makes Ross’ character into a fish out of water. Ross is funny precisely because he’s so terrible, but as an audience member used to the rhythms of the early seasons (where, to be fair, other characters were routinely much funnier), it would be easy to find yourself irritated by an entirely different comedic approach. Although it was really only different for Friends. Seinfeld (which struggled earlier in its run precisely because audiences had never seen a show entirely populated by hard-to-like characters) made selfish, petty behavior the lynchpin of its humor, and changed how TV comedies worked in the process. Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Eastbound and Down, Veep, and a whole generation of other comedies work from the premise that terrible people doing terrible things is really, really funny. Friends isn’t that kind of show. There’s hugging. There’s learning. But Ross? Ross Geller would be right at home on Selena Meyer’s staff or hanging out with the Bluths. He’s a character with one foot in the world of standard sitcoms and one foot in the modern era. Sometimes, this straddling act works against the show (Ross and Rachel ending up together pretty much had to happen, but it makes no sense given his behavior over the course of the show), but as the seasons drag on (and my wife and I finish our background rewatch), it mostly carries a show that was suffering under the weight of its own success. Oh, and they were totally on a break.