The One Where It Ended, Twice
When a series has been on the air for nearly a decade, two things generally happen. With so much story already told, the show is forced to push past its own boundaries and find new elements to keep things interesting. Sometimes this yields innovative twists that feel organic and energizing. Other times, you’re just jumping the shark. In its ninth year, both things happened on Friends.
Let’s start with the latter, because I can already hear the sound of a thousand fists banging together, giving me the Geller Finger. There remains a heated debate over if and when this time-honored television tradition75 actually happened on Friends. Some say it jumped the shark when Ross said “Rachel” at the altar, instead of “Emily.” Others cite the Vegas episode, when the two of them got drunk and married. But those were fairly standard plot twists in the soap opera of Ross and Rachel. The truth is, when compared with other shows, Friends never really jumped the shark—but it came pretty close. It put on the water skis and got in the ocean. It had nothing to do with Rachel and Ross, though. The Friends shark was Rachel and Joey.
When Kauffman and Crane first approached the cast in Season Eight with the idea of Joey falling in love with Rachel, everybody balked. LeBlanc said it felt incestuous (especially uncomfortable after so many years of cultivating a brotherly bond with the female characters). Plus, LeBlanc later explained, “everyone knows that Ross and Rachel are supposed to be together, and we’ve spent ten years keeping them apart.” The cast felt it would come off as a desperate move, and one that would disturb the audience. Crane insisted that no, it was “like playing with fire.” It was a risky move that would pay off in story dividends, like Rachel’s pregnancy.
In one way, the twist did succeed, giving the show’s most juvenile character a much greater sense of depth and maturity. Now Joey had feelings beyond horny and hungry, and LeBlanc had the considerable challenge of playing those things without losing the dim-witted comedy that was the very basis of his character. He’d pulled it off beautifully in Season Eight (earning his first Emmy nomination), and the performance was so wrenching that it almost distracted from the ickiness of the story itself.
Not so much in Season Nine. The tables turned and now Rachel liked Joey, and it was all just too much. Once again, the actors hesitated, and the producers assured them it would be fine—and it would be brief. “We knew that we weren’t going to take Joey and Rachel the distance,” Crane later explained. Aniston wanted it to be made clear that Rachel was not in love with Joey, but was just attracted to him. It had to be a crush, and it had to be more funny than emotional; otherwise, this arc would go from risky to unwatchable.
Kauffman and Crane got it. They knew that, nine years in, they were in prime shark-jumping territory. They’d given an obvious wink to the audience acknowledging as much in the fourth episode: “The One with the Sharks,” in which Monica mistakenly believes that Chandler has a fetish for marine life. Friends was nothing if not mindful of its viewership. With the end of the series approaching, they had to be vigilant. But they needed something to keep Ross and Rachel apart just a bit longer, and at this point it would take a big something. Kauffman and Crane understood that the Joey-Rachel relationship would end before it really began. They would never have sex or say the L-word; that would be too much to recover from. Once they actually hooked up, the characters (like the audience) would be too weirded out, and preoccupied with Ross.
In the meantime, they kept Ross preoccupied with Charlie. Charlie was the antishark; she was one of those successful twists that can bring new energy into an older series. Played by comic and actress Aisha Tyler, Charlie became one of Friends’ most popular guest characters, and the only black woman to appear in multiple episodes. “I don’t think anyone is trying to redress issues of diversity here,” Tyler said at the time. “There wasn’t a sense of ‘We’re bringing on a black character to change something.’ Hopefully, I was cast on the merits.” It’s hard to imagine she wasn’t, given how seamlessly she fit into the series. Unlike many other guest performers, Tyler’s comedic prowess and style meshed perfectly with the main cast’s. It was clear that Charlie was a temporary character, but she didn’t seem like an interloper, throwing off the chemistry, like so many outside love interests did.76 She fit right in.
But it’s also pretty hard to imagine that nobody even realized Charlie was the first and only significant black character on Friends. Her appearance was given unusual advance publicity, and NBC put out a series of promotional images featuring Tyler posed with Schwimmer and LeBlanc. That didn’t change the fact that she was the right actress for the role. Tyler—who was herself a vocal advocate for diversifying television—pointed out that there was nothing in the script or character description about Charlie’s race. But the heavy-handed promotion did seem—well, heavy-handed. In the beginning, Friends’ uniform whiteness was merely raised as pointed comment (i.e., Oprah’s “I’d like for y’all to get a black friend. Maybe I could stop by.”). But after nine years, more than two hundred episodes, and dozens of guest stars, critics were beginning to wonder how they’d managed to avoid virtually all people of color for so long. Really, hadn’t they run out of Caucasians yet?
The viewers were a different story. While television content had changed a great deal since the mid-’90s, it remained a largely segregated landscape. There were black shows targeted toward black audiences, though some of them became popular across many demographics (like Family Matters, Moesha, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). And then there were the so-called mainstream series, like Friends, which were almost entirely white and yet were supposed to appeal to everyone. For the most part, they did.
I spoke with writer, producer, and comedian Akilah Hughes, who grew up watching the show with her whole family. Hughes, who is black, sometimes comments on issues like racism and intersectionality in her work, often to hilarious effect (many people know her from her 2014 video short, Meet Your First Black Girlfriend). But growing up, she told me, she wasn’t bothered by Friends’ whiteness. No one in her household was. “It wasn’t like a hate-watch. That didn’t even exist back then,” she said. “It was like this is the best show on television, and we’re watching it. We don’t need to have a cultural conversation. This is it.”
If TV hadn’t been so resolutely segregated, then yes, she probably would have noticed and it probably would have bothered her. But, like hate-watching, diverse casting didn’t really exist back then, either. “Any popular show that wasn’t specifically marketed to black people, or on UPN or BET, was a white show77...black people have always watched shows and movies about white people, because that’s what was getting made,” Hughes said. “And,” she was quick to remind me, “it wasn’t that deep back then.” Even as a child, she knew better than to have high expectations for TV. The fact that Friends was funny, and something she could enjoy with her whole family—that’s what made it a good show. If it had been funny, family-friendly, and diverse, it would have been groundbreaking. And until recently, TV was not in the business of breaking ground.
I heard the same argument from several other people of color (as well as white people78). When I sent an email to author and journalist Keah Brown requesting an interview, she politely declined, because she hated Friends. I assumed (classic white-lady move on my part!) that she took issue with the show’s representation issues, and I wrote back to Brown saying I’d welcome her thoughts on that, if she’d like to offer any. Brown replied again, saying no, that had nothing to do with it. “I just never found it funny. It’s glaringly white, yes, but so is Will & Grace, which I happen to love, because it’s funny.”
Hughes, on the other hand, does find Friends funny, even now. Like most people, she enjoys watching the soothing reruns. It’s still not a hate-watch, but it is a different viewing experience than it was when she was a kid. “This may be harsh, but it’s the way that I watch Gone with the Wind. I can enjoy these things even though I know that they could have done a lot better by people of color, and women. There’s so many problematic things about it. But also, that’s just what it was back then. We can’t just delete the media that came before, because it does inform why we like shows now.” Hughes also enjoys the thoughtful critique happening around Friends these days. “It’s not to its detriment. I think it’s given it a lot more value,” she told me. “I think, maybe even because of the hindsight watching now, people are more aware of the fact that there was no diversity. And so they’re course-correcting. So, I think that it does serve a historical purpose, in the grand scheme of things.” It’s become a reference point to hold up against today’s programming, much of which is still lagging far behind. “You’ll look at [a show] and say, ‘Well, at least it’s got more diversity than Friends!’”
But when the Charlie episodes first aired, Hughes recognized her for what she was: temporary. “It wasn’t even in the realm of possibility that they would have a new black friend that would have as much agency and weight in the story,” she said. Back then, a sitcom might sometimes feature “one really beautiful black girl, for one story arc, where maybe she’s dateable—but then we’ll go back to just the six white friends.” Friends had done that in Season Seven, when Gabrielle Union did a one-story guest spot, as a woman who, like Charlie, dated both Joey and Ross.79 The fact that Tyler appeared in nine whole episodes was unheard of, but still—nobody thought this was the beginning of a new era on Friends. How could it be? This was the show’s last year.
Right?
* * *
Not six months after the ninth season was announced, with great ceremony, as the final, farewell, definitively last season of Friends, the rumors began to surface. Maybe it wasn’t the end, after all. Despite the fact that every party involved—NBC, Warner Bros., Bright/Kauffman/Crane, and the cast—had publicly declared this year the last, it seemed that someone had changed their mind. In the spring and summer of 2002, trade publications speculated on whether or not it would even be possible to renew a series as expensive as Friends. At the time, Warner Bros. was producing the show at a deficit, knowing that syndication fees would more than make up for the expense in the long run. But the current syndication contracts maxed out at nine seasons. (This was a typical cap applied in syndication deals, simply because nine seasons worth of episodes was more than enough for the stations to run throughout the year.) If they did a tenth season, no one would be obligated to buy those reruns, and there was no guarantee they’d be able to sell them. Friends’ enormous popularity was matched only by its enormous price tag, and while the show was back on top for now, the TV tide was still turning toward reality. If there was even a chance they wouldn’t sell the remaining episodes (at a very high price), then a tenth season would be too great a financial risk. As crazy as it sounds, Warner Bros. had little incentive to keep making Friends.
Everyone knew that the cast didn’t, either. They’d gotten those million-dollar deals—plus their not-inconsiderable salaries from the eight other seasons they’d shot. And they would always have those hard-won cuts of back-end profits. Money was no longer the reason to take a job. At least for a while, they could go off and do plays or indie films or absolutely nothing—as many of them seemed eager to do. Schwimmer had always kept one foot in his Chicago theater community, and was trying to develop his career as a director. Cox was open about wanting to focus on having children, and just as open about the fact that she and her husband were struggling with conception (a struggle that was not made any easier by playing a character who was also dealing with infertility). Kudrow had all kinds of irons in the fire, as an actress and a producer (including a comedy she’d soon pitch with Aisha Tyler). Above all, they’d all come on board for the ninth season knowing it would be the last. They’d already made plans and signed other contracts for the following year. The whole point of Season Nine was to give the show a big, beautiful ending. They had said so, in print.
Bright, Kauffman, and Crane were ready, too. In their position, they always had to be ready for the show to end, either in cancellation or in a contract dispute. With every cast negotiation, they had to consider the possibility that Season Two, or Six, or Eight, might be it. At a certain point, they had to know. “You can’t keep writing the last season,” Crane later put it. They, too, were planning to start their post-Friends lives. After the finale, they decided, Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions would end, as well. Kauffman and Crane had gone from a barn at Brandeis to off-off-Broadway cabarets, to writing pitches on airplanes, to Dream On, to that Norman Lear fiasco, and, finally, to this: the show that had changed their lives and so many others. They’d been writing partners for more than twenty-five years. Now, they could just be friends.
They had the show right on track, heading toward its end, when Jeff Zucker screamed, “PIVOT!”
What he actually said was, “I don’t want to ever believe that it’s absolutely going to be the end.” This was July 2002, during a Television Critics Association press tour. Zucker conceded that it probably was the end, regardless, as no one could imagine a deal that would override the one they’d just made. But, he added, “I wouldn’t 100% put nails in the coffin yet.” This was a pivot indeed, given the declarative final-season announcement just a few months prior. The next day, the executive producers made their own statements to the press (and, by proxy, to Zucker), reaffirming that they were 100% sure this was it. Fine, maybe 99%. “We have the feeling that creatively we’re there,” said Kauffman. “Not that we couldn’t come up with another season if that were in front of us. But it does feel a bit like things are coming full circle... We don’t want to overstay our welcome.” Crane added: “If this was not going to be the last season, we’d have to know that right now.” The signal-sending had begun.
A few weeks later, Kudrow dropped some telling comments indicating the cast, too, was 99%—well, more like 75%—ready to go. “You know, we all get along, and we still have fun, and the writers are still working really hard and they do good stories,” she said in an interview. Okay, but hadn’t they just told the world that Season Nine was goodbye? Yes, but: “Now, I hope not.”
Zucker was well beyond hopeful. He was desperate. He still didn’t have a Survivor—nor did he have a new Friends. For years, he’d been hunting for something to tighten NBC’s slippery hold on Thursday nights, and fill the gap that Friends would leave. Will & Grace was strong at 9:00 p.m., holding steady in the top 20, but surely it would take a hit without its powerful lead-in. Scrubs was popular with critics, but audiences remained unsure about it. If anything, Scrubs seemed to be growing into a cult hit, à la My So-Called Life, and that was not the kind of hit he needed. He needed another Friends, and until he found it, he would shell out record-breaking sums to keep the old one. Again.
At this point NBC was paying Warner Bros. $7 million per episode for the ninth and final season of Friends. While negotiating that deal, Zucker had asked the studio what it would take for him to get just one more—theoretically. Ten million dollars an episode, they told him. $240 million in total. That’s what it would cost to pay for production, and to keep the cast and showrunners’ lucrative contracts in place without Warner Bros. losing money on the show. And that was assuming the creators were up for it, and that all six cast members could be convinced to stay. All of that seemed extremely unlikely, but it didn’t matter, anyway, because this was all a ridiculous hypothetical, and no way would NBC agree to pay the unheard of sum of $10 million for thirty minutes of television. At that rate, it would be the network losing money on the (hypothetical, never-gonna-happen) tenth season of Friends, and Warner Bros. had no plans to ask them for it. Then, out of the blue, Jeff Zucker showed up and offered it.
I asked media executive Lauren Zalaznick about this decision. What might drive a network that already had the most expensive half hour in television history to throw additional millions on the pile and make it even more expensive? Her answer: “Nothing’s as cheap as a hit. Nothing.” Again, Zalaznick was well aware that the sitcom genre was dying, and that the shift toward reality TV was unstoppable. Indeed, she was one of the people leading and shaping this new genre (she would soon become the chairman of entertainment networks & digital at Bravo). Still, she said, the old adage applies. Even a fading hit in a dying genre was worth it from a business perspective. In 2002, Friends still commanded enormous ad rates, and drew in tens of millions of reliable viewers. It had slipped just a bit from its Season Eight rebound, going from number one to number two. Slippage or not, you didn’t let go of a number-two show. You held on for dear life.
As for Warner Bros. and their nine-season syndication cap, Zalaznick said, “Look at it the other way. With such an enormous hit, it actually sucks to be in a prenegotiated deal. You want to be able to take it out and leverage it to the highest bidder, literally, for any amount of money.” In fact, she added, if their current syndication partners didn’t buy the new episodes, it would’ve been even better for Warner. “People would have been desperate to get those late seasons of Friends on their air—especially if they didn’t have the first nine.” It was a show of incalculable value to the network and the studio, no matter what the up-front costs. In situations like this, Zalaznick said, the business decision is a no-brainer. The creative decision is the hard part.
Even with the reality-TV takeover progressing by the day, a show like Friends would always have fans. Reality programs were new and mean and modern, and viewers flocked to them, enthralled. But Friends was the old, loyal love they kept returning to—despite the fact that it was past its peak. “It’s like any relationship,” Zalaznick explained to me. “If you really look back on it, and you force yourself to think about the apex of the relationship—and this can be for work, for personal, etc.—it was usually excellent to good to fair for the exact same amount of time as it was fair to poor to over. But because you have so much invested in that relationship, and because it was so good for so long, you kinda don’t realize it, at that midpoint. At that peak.”
That, I think, explains the other decision—the creative one. There were several factors, surely, including the unexpected pile of cash Zucker had just dumped on the table. But again, that kind of money becomes less enticing when you already have that kind of money. (Just ask Jerry Seinfeld, the man who turned down $110 million for his own hypothetical tenth season.) Rather, I think, when you’re forced to confront the end of something—be it a job, a relationship, or a phase of your life—you simply appreciate it more. You look around and notice everything and everyone you’re going to miss. Any bad memories give way to a flood of nostalgia, and suddenly you realize how good you’ve had it.
“And this is the last season for sure?” Jay Leno asked Jennifer Aniston. “Or you think there’s a chance?” It was August 2002, just before the start of the ninth season, and once again Leno had one of the cast members on his couch, answering the same question he’d asked a year ago. As an NBC star himself, he seemed to have been delegated the role of network inquisitor; actors weren’t the only ones who could negotiate via the media. A week prior, he’d had LeBlanc on again, given him a puppy on the air (a chihuahua, like LeBlanc’s childhood dog), and then leaned in to ask if he and his castmates might stick around and help the network out: “We got nothin’.” LeBlanc—again, holding a puppy against his chest—mumbled something about conversations, and then hurriedly suggested they change the subject.
Aniston was only slightly less vague in her answer. Was it really the end? “Well, look, y’know. I say that today. It seems like it’s our last season, and it’s in our minds that it’s our last season.” At this, the audience moaned and Aniston made a sad face in agreement. “I know.” Leno, undaunted, chimed in again: “Well, you got an Emmy nomination.80 Congratulations on that.” Except it didn’t sound like congratulatory salute so much as a gentle scolding to remember the show and the network on which she got that very nice nomination. And that it was, in fact, the only work for which she’d ever been nominated—for an Emmy or anything else.
By this point, Aniston had appeared in more than a dozen feature films, many of them well received (though none of them box-office successes). In addition to traditional rom-coms like Picture Perfect, she’d played the female lead in the cult-hit comedy Office Space, and voiced a character in the animated sci-fi film The Iron Giant. While her film work was often praised by critics, she’d yet to find a role big or distinct enough to make audiences forget about Rachel. The night she appeared on Leno in 2002, she was promoting the one that might just do it.
The Good Girl was one of the year’s most acclaimed independent films, starring Aniston as a depressed Texan woman stuck in a lousy marriage and a meaningless job. Justine, the titular good girl, has a messy affair with a younger guy (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), gets blackmailed into sleeping with another man, gets pregnant, lies to her abusive husband, and in the end winds up in the exact same place she started: stuck and unhappy, but now, with a baby. Aside from the baby, this character was the polar opposite of Rachel, and Aniston nailed it. As with her other film roles, the critics pointed out, she was clearly trying to diversify and avoid a lifetime of typecasting. But this time, she’d actually done it. Justine was so remarkably not Rachel, that it was all anyone could talk about. “Jennifer Aniston has, at last, decisively broken with her Friends image in an independent film of satiric fire and emotional turmoil,” raved Roger Ebert. “It will no longer be possible to consider her in the same way.” New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell noted the flat, sodden voice and “morose physicality” with which she embodied the role, so different from the high-energy, hand-waving comedy she did on television. It was impossible to avoid comparing and contrasting Justine, Rachel, and Aniston herself. Mitchell wrote: “It’s Ms. Aniston who surprises in The Good Girl. In some ways she may feel as trapped as Justine by playing Rachel Green, the poor little rich daddy’s girl of television’s Friends.”
It was an apt choice of words. That poor little rich girl she’d played for so long had made Aniston a poor little (extremely) rich star. Had she played any other character on any other show, then The Good Girl might have been Aniston’s breakout film role and the start of a new career for her. She had the range, and she was certainly willing to make the effort. But that’s the trap of television stardom: the bigger you are on the small screen, the harder it is to get out of it.
“A lot of movie stars have a defining role,” Anne Helen Petersen told me. Petersen is a culture writer and reporter, with a PhD in media studies, who specializes in the history of celebrity. She argued there are many major film actors who are forever linked to certain parts. Anne Bancroft had Mrs. Robinson, Anthony Hopkins has Hannibal Lecter. “But that’s still only two hours on the screen.” With television, its hundreds of hours. “Jennifer Aniston was Rachel Green for so many nights, for so long...and didn’t have a developed screen persona or a star image before that point. So, of course it’s going to be the foundation of her star image.” Movie actors can have iconic roles, but with television actors it’s the other way around. The roles own them.
There are exceptions, naturally. Petersen cited George Clooney, who was able to transition to film and build an enormous career there, but only because he left ER early, in its fifth season. “He got out of Doug Ross as soon as he saw the writing on the wall,” she said. ER ran for fifteen years, and was the number-one show for many of them. Clooney could have stayed there for as long as he liked, and earned a fortune as well as a comfortable career in the television industry. But had he stayed a minute longer, he would have been Doug Ross forever.
In part, it’s just simple math. People spend so much more time with TV characters, and they do so in the comfort of their own homes. Even today, as TV has grown prestigious and virtually all media is consumed via the internet, there’s a different sense of occasion in watching a movie—if only because it has a definitive end. With TV, there’s always the promise of more—one more episode, another season, or maybe a reunion special. Even when characters die on-screen, we’re never fully convinced they’re dead.
Then there’s the issue of star image that Petersen referred to. In the public eye, all celebrities get somewhat conflated with the parts they play, including movie actors. It’s not always a bad thing. Director Cameron Crowe once told a story about going to a bar with John Cusack, star of his film Say Anything... Cusack had played many other roles in popular films, though Say Anything... was a fan-favorite. Someone at the bar approached Cusack, asking, “Are you Lloyd Dobler?” Cusack replied: “On my better days, yes, I am Lloyd Dobler.” It became a legendary anecdote about Cusack—one that showed how silly we are to think of actors as their characters, and gave us reason to believe that maybe we’re a little bit right. Maybe John Cusack is Lloyd Dobler, sometimes.
Dobler was an indelible part of Cusack’s star image, but for the actors on Friends, character was the image, full stop. There weren’t just one or two anecdotes floating around, but scores of detailed stories about what great pals they were, what they ate for lunch (together!), and rumors about Aniston getting pregnant (just like Rachel!). The cast never pushed back against the public’s desire to think of them as the parts they played, and often seemed to welcome it. Why not? They were real-life friends, and they did each lunch together, and people liked knowing that when they watched the show. But after nine years, the narrative of Friends had taken on a life of its own and swallowed them whole.
Aniston in particular was subsumed by Rachel. On-screen and in the media, her image was still that of a sweet, relatable, uncomplicated gal who just wanted to be a mommy. “She really tried to counter that with The Good Girl,” Petersen told me. “That was this role that was like, ‘Oh, what if she’s kind of a dirtbag?’” In the years that followed, Aniston would choose many unlikable, unglamorous, or otherwise anti-Rachel roles: a low-income housekeeper who steals from her employers; a traumatized, disabled pill addict; a horrible boss. “I’ve been fascinated by the way that she has chosen a bunch of these dirtbag roles, but people still insist that actually she’s America’s Sweetheart—and keep trying to map this desire to have a baby onto her,” said Petersen. “I think the ideological forces that have coalesced around ‘Jennifer Aniston’ are much larger than whatever Jennifer Aniston actually is.”
She and her castmates would always have careers, and some of them would even have more iconic roles. Kudrow already had Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (her character was a spacey blonde, but somehow nothing like Phoebe). In 2005, she would cocreate and star in The Comeback, as Valerie Cherish (here, her character was a former sitcom star, but somehow nothing like Kudrow).
LeBlanc’s trajectory was perhaps the most fascinating. He leaned into the legacy rather than fighting it. First, there was Joey, the infamous and brief Friends spin-off, in which he continued playing the character until the series was canceled in 2006. After that, he took a four-year sabbatical, turning down all work and vanishing from public. In 2011, he reappeared with Episodes, a series cocreated by David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik, in which he starred as “Matt LeBlanc.” It was a satirical version of himself that deliberately played on the star image of a washed-up, womanizing, drunken has-been—and it was great. A pitch-black comedy that delightfully skewered LeBlanc and Joey, allowing the actor to embody a whole new role. “Matt LeBlanc” became Matt LeBlanc’s most critically acclaimed role, earning him his first Emmy Award and a second chapter in his career. Still, there was no escaping Friends. It loomed too large in public consciousness. LeBlanc had stopped trying to break out of the legacy, and just built a life inside it. And why the hell not? It was a pretty comfortable life in there. Yes, he’d have to put up with people asking him how he was doin’ every time he left the house. But there were worse fates than having had a hit sitcom, working with people you loved, getting rich, and getting typecast forever as a Friend.
That was one of the factors the cast discussed when they met to vote on Season Ten in the fall of 2002. Kauffman and Crane had already decided that, yes, they could extend the show for another year—but no further. It was time to start aiming for the definitive ending, either this year or next. Now it was up to the cast to decide which. LeBlanc recalled weighing the pros and cons with the group: Should they do more, or was it time to get out before they all got pigeonholed? He replied, laughing, “I think the damage is done there.” This time it was Aniston who raised concerns. The show had just won an Emmy (as had she). The numbers were good but probably not going to get any better. Didn’t they want to go out on a high? In an interview a year later, shortly before the series finale, Aniston would acknowledge it was true, she was the holdout: “I was also feeling like, ‘How much more of Rachel do I have in me? How many more stories are there to tell, for all of us, before we’re just pathetic, still living across from each other?’”
Aniston reportedly suggested a compromise. She would return, but only for twelve episodes, instead of the usual twenty-four. As ever, it was all for one and one for all. The other cast members (many of whom were vocal about wanting to return for a full season) stuck by her. There would be no Rachel-free episodes. If Aniston did only twelve, so would the rest of them. That wouldn’t work for Jeff Zucker. Half a season of Friends would only save half of his bacon. Zucker pressed, getting on the phone with the cast himself to try to persuade them. He made a counteroffer of eighteen episodes. Still, they hedged and the stalemate continued.
* * *
It was Friday, December 20—the last shoot night of the calendar year, and the last chance to make a deal. No one could come to terms on the scheduling issues, and the agencies were about to shut down for the holidays. On the business end, nothing could get done between now and the new year—and by then, it would be too late in the season for a change this big. (For the writers, it was already going to be an extremely tight squeeze. In July, Crane had said they’d need to know “now” if Season Ten was happening. They were five months past that deadline and none the wiser.) By Friday, the likelihood of a tenth season was rapidly dwindling, and still the phones kept ringing. Even for a Friends negotiation, this one was getting ridiculous.
Kevin Bright, who was directing that week, had stepped in as a de facto negotiator between the cast and the network. “So what was happening was we’d go out and shoot a scene, and then I’d get on the phone with NBC, and then I’d meet with the cast.” All day and into the night, Bright ran back and forth between the phone and the dressing room where the cast waited together. He’d relay a new number or proposition, wait for an answer, run back to the phone, and then get everyone back onstage for the next scene. It was a long day and everyone was tense. At one point, the network threatened to walk away. The negotiations weren’t going anywhere, so maybe it was time to let Friends die, after all. For the first time, no one knew for sure if they were bluffing.
Of course they were bluffing. Shortly before midnight, the cast came back with one last offer, and NBC grabbed it. The actors agreed to eighteen episodes, provided that one of them be a clip show.81 Done. Bright and the cast finished taping and went home. Zucker had his tenth season, and a little more time to find his next Thursday night hit.
A few months later, he did. In May 2003, NBC announced a new reality competition program starring Donald Trump. Many would cite The Apprentice as the true end of the Must-See TV years, when NBC gave up on comedy and joined the other side. It was winning, after all.
As for the Friends team, they now had another year to reconcile their mixed feelings about leaving the show behind and going off into the unknown. (And when they did, the cast would have another $18 million to take with them, which sure didn’t hurt.) “I think, as far as everybody was concerned, it was yet one more way to procrastinate the end coming,” Bright recalled. “I think that was a little bit of a relief for all of us.”
That’s what Season Ten feels like: an elongated version of Season Nine. It’s a bit like watching the extended cut of a great movie, and realizing that maybe those extra scenes and bits of dialogue were edited out for a reason. But still, it’s a really great movie.
Season Ten demonstrates just how strong Friends really was. It stumbles into some of the pitfalls of a long-running show, and a lot of its stories just seem like ways to keep the characters occupied before the end (which, of course, they were). Exhibit A: Phoebe changes her name to Princess Consuela Banana-Hammock. I somehow doubt that pitch would have flown in Season Four, but ridiculous though it may be, it’s so well executed that it still makes you laugh. Season Ten soundly disproves the critics who for years claimed the show relied on its good looks and youthful marketability, rather than creative fortitude. Step-by-step, the characters’ storylines are wrapped up, and while everyone gets their own perfect ending, they don’t then vanish off into the sunset. The pacing slows, giving the show a sense of realism that wasn’t there before. Monica and Chandler buy a house, but it still takes months of paperwork and packing before they can actually move in. Phoebe gets her fairy-tale wedding, but once she’s home from the honeymoon, she still goes to work and gets coffee with her friends. The writing does an excellent of reminding us that stories end, but life goes on, without hitting us over the head with goodbyes. Even with the obvious foot-dragging toward the finale, there are still a number of classic Friends moments, and jokes so simple and solid you can’t believe they haven’t made them already. Phoebe tries to teach Joey French. Ross gets a spray tan. “JOEY DOESN’T SHARE FOOD.” For my money, that line alone makes Season Ten worth watching.
Ultimately, these moments are mere distractions from the overall tension building in the background. The tenth season, like the first, has an anxious energy to it. This time, it’s not the fear of a fledgling pilot, but the deep desire of an iconic hit that does not want to let its audience down.
It was a very real possibility. Series finales are notoriously messy or polarizing. You can’t please everyone, and finales that try to do so inevitably turn out too sweet and way too self-aggrandizing. On the other hand, if you go too simple or, God forbid, ambiguous, then audiences rage. There are people in this world who are still mad about The Sopranos finale. Friends was in a unique predicament, because it had built such a close bond with its audience. It had succeeded for this long by paying close attention to what viewers wanted, and never betraying their trust. In one way, that gave them a leg up, because the creators knew exactly what needed to happen in the finale. In another way, they were screwed, because everyone could see what was coming from a mile away.
The what and when were obvious: Ross and Rachel would wind up together in the end. The only surprise would be how. And after ten years, a brief marriage, and a baby, it was hard to imagine what could unite this couple in a permanent way. “[The series finale] was probably the toughest episode that David and I ever wrote,” recalled Kauffman. It had to create a sense of closure, and allow for plenty of tears, but it still had to be funny. “It was very important to us that it not feel like some strange anomaly. It should feel like the show,” said Crane. They didn’t want to do “The One That Takes Place in the Future,” or attempt some gigantic twist and reveal it was all Phoebe’s drug-induced hallucination or Rachel’s dream.82 They’d seen what happened with Seinfeld’s finale, which—in the grand tradition of Seinfeld—was neither sweet nor emotional. That was in keeping with the show’s tone, but it was still deemed a huge disappointment. Kauffman and Crane were determined not to let that happen. This was not the time to go rogue. Their finale had to meet everyone’s expectations without being predictable. It had to feel special, but not different. “So there was just a little bit of pressure on us,” said Kauffman.
After months in the writers’ room breaking the story, Kauffman and Crane wound up writing the script over the holiday break. She was in Hawaii with her family, and he in Vermont. Via long-distance phone calls, the two of them wrote. Crane took long walks in the snow, mulling jokes and dialogue, then headed back inside to get on the phone with Kauffman. It was strange and difficult, to finish the show they’d been writing together for a decade, and even harder to do it over the phone, five thousand miles apart from one another. But writing the last one, said Crane, “was not as difficult as shooting the last one.”
* * *
LeBlanc was the one who started it. On January 16, 2004, he and the others were clustered around the orange couch on the Central Perk set between takes. It was the first day of filming “The Last One” (because it was an hour long, the second half would be filmed the following week, on January 23). Everyone had been weepy and struggling all day—all season, really. But again, it was just another show night and they had to keep it together if only to stay on schedule. Already the makeup touch-ups were taking forever, what with all the welling eyes and nose-blowing. That’s when LeBlanc realized something. He turned to his castmates and said: “Do you realize this is the last coffee shop scene?” And everyone just lost it.
Bright, who was directing the episode, gave up and stepped off the set. “It’s a total breakdown,” he told other producers, explaining what LeBlanc had done. “Now they’re all just gone.” The actors sat there, crying it out and taking turns comforting each other. (Imagine the last day of high school, if high school had lasted for ten years.) On set were dozens of friends and family members who’d been invited to watch or be extras, including Crane’s life partner, Kudrow’s husband, and Nancy Josephson—the agent who’d first met Kauffman and Crane back at that off-Broadway theater in 1985, and suggested they give TV a shot. The background of Central Perk was filled with so many lawyers and agents that Kauffman joked it had suddenly become the world’s oldest coffee-shop crowd. Her own children, who’d been coming to the set since infancy, would later appear as extras in the airport scene, as would Bright’s. Cousins, nieces, assistants, spouses, Pilates instructors—“everybody found their way into this last episode somehow,” said Bright. In part, they were there for moral support. “But also, it made it feel like the extended family was there with us. Everybody who had been a part of the show for ten years was there for the ending.”
David Wild was there, too. Over the years, he’d become part of that extended family, having written that first iconic Rolling Stone feature, and then a companion book for Season One. He’d interviewed them so frequently that he’d once joked about being “the seventh ugly Friend,” he told me. “But I knew that was never true.” He’d seen how they’d huddled together in those crazy early days, and grown into one of the most powerful teams in the television industry. Now, when he saw them at an industry party or in the Warner Bros. dining room, he might say hello but would never ask to join them. “I didn’t overstep... I don’t even know if they liked me. But they trusted me as someone who knew who they were, got their sensibility, and probably knew when to give them space.” No, there were only six members of that club, but Wild had become a trustworthy outsider.
As the finale approached, Warner Bros. approached him to write another authorized book about the series—offering the same fee he’d gotten for the first. Wild turned it down. The studio quickly came back to him, saying the cast would only agree to the book if he was the author. Wild said okay, then he would write it if they did this deal Friends-style. Whatever the actors got paid for the book, he’d be paid equally. They agreed. Ten years prior, it would have been an absurd request, but with their own contracts, the cast had set a precedent. It wasn’t just the raises they got, but the hands-on way they handled their business. “They audited everything, to make sure they got paid. And I was a beneficiary of that, very, very much,” said Wild. “There was a check, in the middle of the writers’ strike, that was the nicest check I ever got. And I think it’s only because I, for a brief, shining moment in time, was like a seventh Friend. And paid as such.”
Wild was on set for the finale shoot, taking notes for the book and grabbing interviews whenever he could. It was no easy task, what with the entire cast and crew trying to stop crying long enough to finish the final Central Perk scene. “We almost didn’t get through,” said Kauffman. Around 10:30 that night, they finally wrapped. Once the stage was clear, the crew began tearing down Central Perk, for good. In the delirium of the day, it hadn’t occurred to anyone that this was coming. Realizing what was happening, the cast came down from their dressing rooms. The producers, the office staff—everyone drifted to the stage. “And we just watched it go down,” said Kauffman. “And it was like losing a little piece of yourself.” Afterward, they sat on the bare floor where Central Perk had been and had a little impromptu party. They signed the walls with sentimental notes and called dibs on souvenirs. Someone passed around shots from a bottle of Patrón and set decorator Greg Grande made a toast: “The memories we made on Stage 24 are better than any dreams we ever had.”
* * *
When they came back to shoot the rest on January 23, everyone was a mess before the cameras even started rolling. From the beginning, Aniston had been designated Most Likely to Cry, and this season she’d been in tears since the first table-read. Cox was the stalwart professional—the one who rarely flubbed a line and almost never broke when the rest of them got the giggles. But on that day, even she knew it was just a matter of time. Her husband, David Arquette, came to the set with a video camera to document the big event. Aniston’s dad and Schwimmer’s parents were in the audience, too. One of the producers had put together a Friends “yearbook” and now it was even more like high school. A handful of guest stars returned to watch the final taping, including Hank Azaria, Aisha Tyler, Paul Rudd, and Maggie Wheeler. Wheeler was coaxed into doing a little Janice (“Oh. My. God.”) to help warm up the crowd. “Lots of people ask me if I worried about playing a character that distinct—especially that distinct in voice—and whether or not I’d get typecast,” Wheeler reflected later. “I wasn’t concerned about that at all, and I never worried about the aftermath. I just wanted to enjoy myself and bring that character to life. I am so proud and so happy to have participated in something that has given people so much joy.” Years later, people would still approach her at the grocery store, and ask for a Janice laugh. And she’d oblige, unbothered. “Being recognized for that is an honor.”
That day, the audience went wild for the Janice bit. There wasn’t much need for warming up; the crowd was so alight with tension and excitement. With other season finales, they had pretaped certain scenes without an audience, to keep cliffhangers or big reveals from leaking before the episode aired. For the last episode, the producers debated whether or not to pretape—or perhaps to fill the audience only with friends and colleagues. How else would they keep the media from reporting every detail? But, more importantly, they wanted every inch of the show to be good—and it was always better with a real audience. “The hell with it,” they decided. “It’ll get out or it won’t get out.” There was so much hype around the finale, and already a number of stories had surfaced, most of which were way off base (including a rumor that they’d shot several different possible endings). And again, there weren’t that many twists to conceal. Everyone knew that Monica and Chandler’s baby would be born. The only surprise was the fact that they had twins.83 Most viewers also knew that Cox herself was now pregnant (another story that had been heavily covered in the press), and it didn’t seem worth it to try to hide her body completely with weird camera angles and giant bags. No one wanted a Friends finale where Monica only appeared from the neck up. So again, to hell with it. They decided to shoot it all in front of the audience, put Cox in an oversize shirt, and just not worry about keeping secrets. Really, what was the point?
There were no alternate endings. It was always going to be Ross and Rachel, and an empty apartment. Kauffman and Crane had once toyed with an ambiguous reunion for the couple—or a scenario in which they didn’t get back together, but it seemed like maybe they could someday. But they soon realized that no, that would only leave everyone painfully unsatisfied (themselves included). “We had dicked the audience around for ten years,” as Crane delicately put it. “And we didn’t see any advantage in frustrating them.”
The only problem, in fact, was that they’d put so much creative effort into keeping Ross and Rachel apart. Going into Season Ten, they realized maybe they’d done too good a job. Ross and Rachel really did seem like platonic friends, and amicable coparents. They didn’t even seem to hang out much without the rest of the group. So, Kauffman and Crane began to tiptoe their way back into the romance, bringing up little reminders of the past, both the good parts and the lousy parts. Ross goes home to Long Island with Rachel when her father has a heart attack, reminding us of how he loved her as a teenager. Later, they run into her old work friend Mark, and Ross’s maniacal jealousy comes out all over again. Rachel gets a job in Paris, and only then does the truth become obvious (to Ross, that is). It’s actually been easy for the two of them to stay apart for so long, because they’ve been in close proximity. The enticing possibility of them has always been there—and Ross and Rachel are all about the drama of potential romance rather than the stability of a relationship. Or at least they were, back when they got together. But that was a long time ago.
Initially, Kauffman and Crane planned a story (slated to run two episodes before the finale) where they go to Paris together, and Ross begins to fall for her again. They cut it. It wasn’t necessary, and actually seemed like too much justification. Ultimately, neither the characters nor the audience needed a grand romantic adventure to bring Ross and Rachel back together. In the end, there is no big reason for them to fall in love again. It’s simply that they are in love, and they’re finally grown-up enough to admit it. It’s time to stop, well, dicking each other around.
* * *
Rachel got off the plane. Monica and Chandler came home with twins. Everyone thought the last tape night would take forever, but it seemed to fly by. “Can’t something go wrong?!” Crane thought. “Can’t something slow us down? It’s happening too quickly.” But there they were, in the empty apartment, setting up for the final scene. Now, Cox seemed to crack. During one of the last sections of dialogue, she forgot one of her lines. They stopped, she checked the line, and they started again. And again, she flubbed it. Over and over, Cox stumbled through words, unable to get the line out. Watching her, their ballast, struggling with the ending, the weight of this moment sunk in deeper. The purple walls were stripped bare, ready to be taken down. A sunset-tinted light shone through the window. It was over, and it was just so sad. Cox missed the line again, as a brutal tension filled the room. Once more, Matthew Perry stepped in to shatter it: “Somebody is gonna get fired.”
A familiar trick, but it still worked like new. Cox said her line, then they said the rest of them, and then there was nothing left on the page. Bright had them do the scene again, just to be safe, but only the first take was used. Repeating the ending took too much out of the actors as well as the audience. Anyway, he said, “it all came out perfect, the first time.”