The One After “The One After the Super Bowl”
For my money, the best joke ever made on Friends is one with hardly any dialogue. In the Season Three opener, the gang walks into Central Perk to find their usual couch claimed by six other friends. Silence. Everyone stands around, blinking. “Huh,” says Chandler. With nowhere to sit, they turn around and shuffle out.
It’s one of the most underrated moments in Friends’ history, because it’s a crack at itself. We know, we’re ridiculous. Should we maybe just leave? It sets us up for a season of reality checks and recalibration. This was the year that Friends became self-aware and a little more grown-up. In subtle ways, the show addressed the public’s grievances (Why do they always get the couch?!), while giving viewers new reasons to stick around and learn to love it again. Having survived its first great wave of success and the crush of its first backlash, this season marked another milestone: the first Friends comeback. Still, there was no going back to a time before Julia Roberts and Diet Coke. The Friends were officially wealthy celebrities—and now, everyone knew exactly how wealthy.
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In the midst of the Super Bowl media blitz, David Schwimmer’s agents had started nudging him to ask for a raise. He’d been designated as the breakout star—maybe not a movie star after The Pallbearer, but certainly the actor with the most leverage. There was something discomfiting about that. Schwimmer still believed in the ethos of ensemble theater, and it had served the cast well. Yes, he was Ross, of Ross and Rachel, but the show was Friends. They were a team, and had agreed from the start to work like one, off-screen as well as on. How long would that team spirit hold with some of them getting paid like celebrities and the others just like actors? Salary disputes had destroyed plenty of other shows, and with a cast this big it would be all too easy for the higher-ups to play them off against each other during every contract negotiation. Things got messy when big money was on the table. His mother—the Hollywood divorce lawyer—never let him forget it. “Do not be divided,” she told him.
Schwimmer went to his castmates with a proposition: it seemed he had a chance to ask for a raise. What if, instead, they all asked for one—the same one this time? Just as Cox had done before shooting the pilot, Schwimmer poured his own leverage into the collective pot, using it to unify and strengthen the group.
In June of 1996, the cast approached Warner Bros. asking for an across-the-board raise to $100,000 per episode. On top of that, they wanted a share of revenue when the show went into syndication in 1998. At the time, it was unheard of for actors to get a share of back-end profits, unless they were also part owners of the show (i.e., Jerry Seinfeld). The proposed raises, too, were astronomical in comparison to those of their sitcom peers. Roseanne Barr and Married with Children star Ed O’Neill earned six-figure salaries, but they were lead actors and had been on the air for years. Most shocking was the tactic of collective bargaining. No television ensemble had ever negotiated as a group, nor had any cast ever had such power at the bargaining table. If they were serious about this all-for-one-one-for-all approach, then they could walk away and take the entire show with them.
Headlines lit up with reports of the Friends cast banding together to make these startling demands, and threatening to strike if they weren’t met. It wasn’t just trade publications, either, but mainstream outlets from Us Weekly to the Washington Post. Historically, the general public wouldn’t have even known, let alone cared, about the details of television contract negotiations. But this one had become both tabloid gossip and national news. From the outside (and the inside), $100,000 seemed like an outrageous ask. Then again, an outrageous amount of money was coming in. NBC charged advertisers upward of half a million dollars for thirty-second commercial spots during Friends. The network in turn paid Warner Bros. $1 million per episode to keep the show on NBC (a few months later, the production company itself renegotiated to a whopping $3 million). Warner Bros. had also decided to sell the syndication rights after just two years—far earlier than usual—and then proudly told the press that when Friends reruns began in 1998, they would bring in an additional $4 million a pop. The cast was asking for a bigger slice of the pie (well, six slices), but the pie itself was pretty damn huge.
It was a tense summer. Entertainment Weekly reported that the actors were going through with their strike, and that fans were being polled outside the studio, to see which character they would miss the least (it was Joey, allegedly). Now the “salary virus” seemed to be spreading to other shows. The two lead actors on Fox’s cop drama New York Undercover staged their own brief strike, asking that their salaries be tripled. Instead, producer Dick Wolf filed a lawsuit against them for breach of contract, wrote a script that killed both characters off in a fire, and started casting sessions for potential replacements. The actors dropped it and quickly hurried back to work. Wolf was appalled that NBC and Warner Bros. were tolerating this behavior from their actors, and he did not mind saying so: “What I would have done was come out on the first day, say I was disappointed the cast had decided to negotiate in the press, and I had the unpleasant news that Matt LeBlanc wouldn’t be on the show next year.” After firing LeBlanc, he said, the rest of them would have shut up and gotten back to work.
They did, in fact, go back to work in August—with LeBlanc, but still without new contracts. Warner Bros. had gone to the actors with a counteroffer of $75,000 per episode (no mention of syndication royalties), but only on the condition that they extend their current contracts from five seasons to six. They didn’t bite. Schwimmer was apparently reluctant to commit himself for that long, and (thanks to him) they were now more unified than ever—a mini-union. LeBlanc recalled they made a formal pact: “If they come to you behind my back, you tell me. If they come to me behind your back, I will tell you. Everyone’s in?”
For now, yes. They continued with work, shooting the first half of Season Three as negotiations dragged on. NBC blamed Warner Bros. for bragging about its big syndication deal in the press, emboldening the cast to ask for so much money. The press, meanwhile, pointed out that “both the production company and the network have worked hard over the last two years to promote the cast as a group, perhaps hoping to prevent one person from becoming inordinately powerful,” as the New York Daily News wrote. “If so, the companies now may be reaping what they have sown.” Be careful what you wish for indeed.
Without a doubt, there was division among the six. “I’m not going to say we never had disagreements with the cast—or that the cast never had disagreements with each other,” said Kevin Bright. “And yeah, sometimes there was yelling, and sometimes there were people walking off the stage. But it was always solved on the stage.” Whatever infighting happened during those first big negotiations—and the far bigger ones that came later—they managed to keep it between one another. In the end, Schwimmer said, it came down to a democratic vote: he and the rest of them would extend their contracts to a sixth season, in return for scaled-up salaries every year.55 After six months of back-and-forth, the contracts were signed in late December 1996.
That was the deal that changed everything, setting a precedent for future negotiations on other shows, and solidifying Friends as something more than a faddish hit. The actors themselves now realized that whatever power they had as individuals was nothing compared to their strength as a group. From then on, they agreed, any decisions they could make together they would make together, whether it came to money, publicity, or their continued participation in the show. Even when it came to awards, they would all submit themselves in the same category: supporting, not lead. They made it known to the producers and the network that if one was fired, they would all leave.
“And then we decided to just pull back and lay low, and stick to the task at hand,” said Kudrow. Everyone was in, and for the long haul. Now it was time to earn those enormous, well-publicized paychecks. After all the media hoopla, the task at hand was fairly obvious: try to convince the audience that they were still the same old Friends.
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Season Three is Friends at its most grounded. After the previous season of surrealistic highs, this one brings us back down to reality (or as close as Friends ever comes to reality). Monica is fresh off a breakup with Richard, after finding out that he doesn’t want children, and realizing how much she herself does. Phoebe finds out more about her complicated family, meeting her birth mother, and struggling to connect with her weirdo little brother. Chandler is back with Janice (Maggie Wheeler), and for the first time, their relationship is more than just annoying laughs and catchphrases. She’s married, with a child, and Chandler soon realizes he doesn’t want to be the guy who breaks up a family. The wounds of his own parents’ divorce are highly visible this season, and while they’re always revealed in a joke, it’s easier than ever to see the vulnerability behind his sarcastic front. This is the first year we see Chandler taking a stab at adulthood, and navigating a real relationship. Good thing, too, because by the end of the season, we see a hint of what’s to come.
There are plenty of classic Friends-isms in Season Three, too. The chick and the duck come in, but unlike Marcel—who just appeared on Ross’s shoulder one day—they turn up for a reason. It’s a ridiculous reason (Joey is bummed about a girl and buys an Easter chick from a pet shop to cheer himself up; Chandler tries to return it and comes back with a duck, as well) but not as ridiculous as a monkey. Big-name guest stars appear in Season Three, but only about a third as many as Season Two’s roster. This year, they’re woven into the actual story, rather than just stomping across it, à la Jean-Claude Van Damme.56 Isabella Rossellini makes one of the show’s most memorable cameos, when Ross attempts to flirt with her at Central Perk by telling her she’s on his list of “freebies” (celebrities he’s allowed to sleep with). This appearance works like a charm because it’s actually conceivable that Isabella Rossellini might pop into a hip, New York coffeehouse—and that if you hit on her, she’d roll her eyes and leave. It’s way more fun to watch Ross get shot down by Rossellini than it is to see Monica go on an actual date with Van Damme.
At the same time, the show seems to cop to some of its absurdities and playfully answer the audience’s frequently asked questions. They just sit around and talk all day. Do these people have jobs or what? In “The One with Frank Jr.,” Phoebe’s brother gawks at Rachel and Monica, then asks Chandler, “How do you guys get anything done?” His reply: “We don’t, really.”
Aniston’s anti-Rachel hair is the most evident symbol of the Season Three recalibration. It’s clear they’re trying to keep it as boring as possible—a little less aspirational normalcy and more straight-up normalcy. Aniston herself was pretty sick of being known as a walking haircut. “There’s definitely a part of you that says, ‘Hmm. Why am I getting noticed for my haircut, and not for my work?’” she said in an earlier interview. The fad wasn’t fading anytime soon,57 and Aniston would always be a hair icon. She’d never shake off The Rachel, but if there was ever any question that she was more than a haircut (and I don’t think there really was), then her work in Season Three answered it, loud and clear.
At the center of this season is the ultimate reality check: Ross and Rachel break up. This was the moment Crane dubbed “the lynchpin of the whole season.”
I might go so far as to say it is the lynchpin of whole series from that point on. Bringing the will-they-won’t-they couple together had been enormously satisfying to watch. Seeing them function as a happy couple was a reward for our patience. But how long before that got boring? How long before that happy couple just got married and moved to Scarsdale? Friends did not rely exclusively on Ross and Rachel to keep it afloat, but the possibility of Ross and Rachel was an integral part of the group dynamic. If they stayed together for too long, they would sink the entire premise of the show. For the sake of the story (which, thanks to the new contracts, had just been lengthened by another year), they had to break up. But they also had to break up because Ross and Rachel were not, in fact, a happy couple. They were the worst.
Ross and Rachel had love and chemistry and passion—all the right ingredients for romance. On the other hand, they had trust issues and vastly different goals and a lot of growing up to do. In short, theirs was a fairly typical twentysomething relationship. After the delirium of new love began to wear off, their fundamental issues crystallized into bickering and irritation—all very relatable, but no fun to watch. From then on it was just a matter of seeing how long they (and we) could ignore the problem.
The real cracks begin to show when Rachel quits waitressing at Central Perk and starts forging ahead with her career. Ross is totally supportive, until she meets Mark—a seemingly innocuous guy who works at Bloomingdale’s and offers to help her get an interview. Now, Ross is less supportive of Rachel because he’s too busy being suspicious of Mark. His attitude worsens when she gets the job and suddenly has less time to sit around adoring him because she’s out there building a life of her own. Here we see the other side of Ross’s nice-guy attributes. His devotion to Rachel becomes possessiveness; his sensitivity becomes insecurity. His detailed fantasies about the two of them moving to the suburbs and having kids now seem like the entitled expectations of a Mad Man, not a Friend.
Ross’s icky, throwback misogyny pops up in other ways—like when he absolutely panics over his son having a Barbie, and swaps the doll out for a G.I. Joe—but the rest of the gang are quick to point out that he’s being a weenie. Now, though, he crosses the line into extreme jealous-boyfriend territory, showing up at Rachel’s office uninvited and sulking when she has to work late. To be fair, she does spend a lot of time with Mark (because he’s her coworker), and she does have to work late quite often (because she’s in an entry-level position, learning the ropes and paying her dues). If Ross took a moment to stop and reflect on the early days of his own career, he might remember that that’s just how it works. But he’s far too busy sending stuffed animals to Rachel’s office and leaving whiny messages on her answering machine. “It’s just a job,” he tells her. He brushes off her work commitments and dismisses her ambition, increasingly annoyed that it’s getting in the way of her real job: being his girlfriend. He argues that his own career in paleontology is important and interesting, while nobody cares about fashion. Because this is a network sitcom in 1997, she says, “Maybe we should just take a break,” instead of the response he really deserves: “Maybe you should just go fuck yourself.”
Everything else about the breakup is brutally real. The miscommunications, the bitter arguments, and, finally, the betrayal that seals the deal. Rachel suggests a break, Ross takes that to mean they’re broken up, and before they both come to their senses, he sleeps with somebody else. Over the course of six episodes, Ross and Rachel have devolved from the star-crossed lovers we’ve been rooting for, to a couple that should have broken up months ago. All that delicious tension between them has turned toxic, and yet it’s still devastating to see them finally split. “The One with the Morning After” finds the two of them hashing it out in Monica’s living room,58 trying to decide if they can come back from this. Gone are the grand gestures and cinematic lighting. A romance that began with musical underscoring and kisses in the rain ends quietly, in a darkened living room, the two of them hollow-eyed and weeping. There is nothing to be done. “It’s just changed, everything. Forever,” she tells him. “Yeah, but—” he looks around in disbelief “—this can’t be it.” But it is.
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In retrospect, it’s startling to see how brief the relationship actually is, considering how large it looms in the story. There are 236 episodes of Friends, and they’re only together in about 10% of them. Not until after the breakup do Ross and Rachel really become Ross and Rachel. The real question was never will-they-won’t-they get together, but would they get back together, after all that. Now they’re older and life is more complicated. There is tension between them again, and it’s not based on an unrequited crush but on a messy history. Both they and the rest of the group have to recover from this breakup, and they all come through it together, but changed.
It’s after this point, too, that Friends really becomes Friends. Season Three is more than just a rebound from the backlash. It’s the end of the overture, and the start of the first real act. It kills all remaining darlings from the first two seasons and introduces new dynamics that will carry the show through the next seven. The season ends with all six of them at the beach. Ross and Rachel are eyeing each other again. Monica is venting about being single and Chandler jokes about becoming her boyfriend (and it is a joke, right?). Once again, the six of them are sitting around the table playing a game. They’re still the same old friends. But something’s different.