‘The One with Ross’s New Girlfriend’ (originally aired 9/21/95)
Enjoying ‘Ross’s New Girlfriend’ really boils down to one question: do you believe in Rachel’s attraction to Ross? As season one closed, Rachel’s radical change in feelings towards Ross was spurned by a birthday gift – and seemingly nothing else, as there’s a noticeable lack of justification for Rachel’s new frame of mind. At one point in this episode, she even asks herself;
“How did Ross go from being Ross to being R-o-o-oss?”
It’s a fantastic question – and one Friends doesn’t really trying to give an answer to, for better or worse. We can all by into the idea that Ross is a “great guy”, I suppose – it may a bit of stretch, especially when he spends his one scene with Rachel snickering at her explanation of Paolo’s brief return, asking if she’s going to ask for his opinion of an ex, only to go back to him (which for my money, never happens during the course of the first season… please correct me if I’m wrong here; Rachel breaks up with Paolo because he cheats on her with Phoebe, correct?).
But that’s besides the point: much of the second season premiere is Rachel-centric (cashing in on her character’s massive popularity after season one), and it mostly doesn’t work because there’s a lack of definition or movement to what she does. She can’t explain her feelings about Ross, and how they’ve changed dramatically in the week he’s been in China; worse, she can’t even admit them to Ross now, avoiding the many opportunities to explain how he felt. Does she feel that breaking up his relationship would be wrong? Maybe, but even that doesn’t make sense: Joey points out they’ve been dating for two whole weeks, and if their relationship is “bigger than huge” as Phoebe so unsubtly states, shouldn’t Rachel be a little more active in her pursuit of him?
While I’ll agree that most of the Ross/Rachel relationship material later in the season is great, the season and a half it takes to get them together is supremely contrived, dragged out for maximum dramatic effect with arbitrary obstacles like cats careening through the air or hairy Italian guys. And it shows in an episode like ‘Ross’s New Girlfriend’, where Rachel’s new behavior and tone feels completely re-tooled from the last season, a personality change that hinges on an attraction she hasn’t had much time to develop. Are we supposed to empathize with a woman who’s been ignorant to Ross’s feelings for a decade? Not if she’s going to whimper in the corner about it, and that’s all that really happens in her many scenes in the episode.
It wouldn’t be such a glaring issue if there were some kind of entertaining subplots to back them up – but the B and C plots in ‘Ross’s New Girlfriend’ leave a lot to be desired. Phoebe gives Monica a shitty haircut because she’s dumb (would she ever think a woman would want to look like Dudley Moore?), and Chandler gets sexually assaulted by Joey’s tailor, which has happened to Joey many times, without him even thinking twice about it (“That’s how they do pants!” he insists, confused that someone grabbing and fondling his dick would constitute fabric measurement).
‘Ross’s New Girlfriend’ is a supremely disappointing season premiere, a half hour of Friends characters in their most cardboard, one-dimensional forms. Phoebe’s an idiot, Rachel’s indecisive and depressed (apparently 50 feet below rock bottom because Ross is dating someone), Ross is goofy (and slightly dickish), Chandler’s a wiseass, Monica’s anal about everything, and Joey’s so dumb he doesn’t understand sexual assault. A thoroughly unfunny way to kick off their sophomore season (one of the show’s best) ‘Ross’s New Girlfriend’ is painfully unfunny, with three disconnected plots that essentially go nowhere.
Other thoughts/observations:
– Joey’s conversation with Rachel is the only enjoyable scene in the episode, the only real time anybody in that group feel like friends.
– Paolo graces his presence one more time to remind us what a misogynist he is: “I do Racquel.”
– “You’ve got to STOP the q-tip when there’s resistance!” – Chandler, pointing out an obvious fact Hannah Horvarth could’ve used a few weeks ago.
– why would Rachel buy Ross flowers? Insignificant detail, I know, but it still rings false to me.
– Rachel’s slightly racist! “Wel-come to our coun-try”.
– for an episode that’s the one WITH Ross’s new girlfriend, she’s only around in two scenes, hardly becoming a character because the writers can’t allow anyone to invest in Ross and Julie. It renders their entire relationship pointless from beginning to end, a distraction that encapsulates way too much time in this first handful of episodes.
– Joey’s been with a lot of people’s shares of women, in case you were wondering.
‘The One with the Breast Milk’ (originally aired 9/28/95)
Isn’t it odd how vapid the opening episodes of Friends second season? Just when the end of season one suggests some kind of real movement in the status quo and overarching narrative, they hit with these two stinkers to open the season, nearly ruining Rachel’s character for the audience in the process. Though ‘Breast Milk’ is undoubtedly a funnier episode than the season premiere, it’s just as hollow, three unrelated plots that don’t have a lot of material to keep them interesting (or anything linking them together whatsoever).
For the second episode in a row, Rachel drags everything around her down. Now consumed by her love for Ross – which has grown from “maybe I like him” to “he might be the person I’m supposed to be with”, even though they’ve shared three whole scenes together since she had this epiphany- Rachel can’t stand Julie, despite her being a perfectly tolerable human being. I enjoy how Friends presents Julie as a normal person, friendly and absent of the fatal quirks so many partners for characters on the show have.
But the show places no responsibility on Rachel to accept this reality – multiple times in the episode, she brushes off Julie’s friendly advances, muttering about what a bitch she is under her breath. It makes her a wholly unlikable human being, and begs questions whether she should be with Ross at all: just because she didn’t get to fulfill her impulse feeling of suddenly liking Ross, she can’t be happy that Ross has finally found some form of happiness post-divorce. It doesn’t even lead to that by the end of the episode: she appears to make up with Julie, and then dismisses her again as a manipulative bitch.
It doesn’t even stop there! She gets mad at Monica for hanging out with Julie behind her back (“Did my back hurt your knife?”), breaking the holy testament of not shopping at Bloomingdale’s with anyone else but her. For some reason, it leads to the two crying and reaffirming their friendship, without acknowledging Rachel’s overreaction to Monica trying to support her brother and his new relationship (something a friend might actually do in this situation!).
So Monica’s cowering around bitchy Rachel, who is at her whiniest through the entirety of the episode. At least there’s some enjoyment to be gained in Joey’s little Macy’s Western, facing off against a fellow cologne salesman (a job that requires you to annoy the shit out of everyone that walks by). It’s a little too short to really be effective – Joey getting the girl in the end is so tacked on and superficial, it almost ruins the moment – but the idea of Joey having to manufacture some kind of tension at his dead-end job to keep it interesting leads to some fun scenes, including his ‘saloon’ scene in the kitchen with Chandler, the highlight of the episode.
Both ‘Ross’s New Girlfriend’ and ‘Breast Milk’ are focused on Rachel, and both of them in the worst way possible, regressing her character back to some ugly pre-season 1 form, where she can’t accomplish anything in her life because she’s too busy defining herself by her romantic relationship. The idea that she’s magically put Ross on some emotional pedestal is ridiculous, and the show doesn’t try to treat it as anything else, completely rejecting any idea of making the Julie/Ross/Rachel triangle an interesting dynamic. Instead, both episodes are constructed to tell us that it’s SUPPOSED to be Rachel and Ross together – and both fail because they make Rachel an undesirable character, presenting reasons why Ross shouldn’t be with Rachel, and not the other way around.
Other thoughts/observations:
– the rest of the episode is breast-feeding humor, which is neither funny or important in any way.
– the Rachel/Monica and Carol/Susan parallel is so poorly done.
– Monica points out to Rachel that she should accept Ross’s relationship – which Rachel openly refuses to do.
– Ms. Kitty will get you a nice hooker.
– Susan’s tasted breast milk, which is supposed to be some kind of lesbian sex joke… I guess? It feels like it’s supposed to be a joke of some sort, but there’s no life to Susan’s delivery of the line or anybody’s reaction. Very odd.
Processed Media 
Just as TOW The Dozen Lasagnas probably should’ve been called “TOW All The Gay Jokes”, TOW The Breast Milk is basically “TOW All The Lesbian Jokes.” Not just with the Carol/Susan plot but a little more subtly with the Rachel/Monica plot. Monica and Rachel fighting over Monica hanging out with Julie is basically played out like a lesbian couple fighting about one having sex with another woman (hence Monica being told by everybody else that she did a “horrible thing” by going out with Julie). It’s a perfect example of Friends not yet overcoming its Seinfeld roots, as Seinfeld had those same “underlying metaphor plots” (The Outing, The Couch, etc.) but did them much better.
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It could’ve even been adapted from an unused Seinfeld script – the writers of Friends were known to do that in the first season, I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened in season two, as well.
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The Phoebe plot in TOW Phoebe’s Husband definitely seems like it.
Fortunately, TOW Heckles Dies picks things up a little, as it dispenses with the contrived R/R drama to focus more on developing Chandler’s character. I also like TOW Five Steaks And An Eggplant, as it (for once) shows the six characters dealing with a serious matter that has nothing to do with romance – although I can just imagine a teenager today watching the episode and scratching his/her head at all the references to Hootie And The Blowfish.
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