In Season Three when Ross and Rachel were at their peak “Ross & Rachelness” Rachel meets Mark who gets her a dream job out of the kindness of his heart. This makes Ross jealous and the story is framed that Ross is insecure and crazy. Mark even has a fiancee you see so he can’t be interested in Rachel. But…
The fiancee is literally never mentioned again even when it would be very relevant later in the story.
It turns out Ross was right all along. Mark tells Rachel he actually was into her after all, whatdya know? But quickly things moved on to “We were on a break” so that all gets kind of forgotten.
Before the later seasons when he became completely pathetic I liked Ross so this always bugged me.
Bonus “Friends” trivia: Monica is 52 which now makes her older than the youngest of the Golden Girls (Blanche 51) was in their first season.
Don’t recall all the details, the fiance or girlfriend may not have existed, just part of the usual ploy to steal someone else’s girlfriend. He may have planning to tell Rachel about how this other girl dumped him or cheated on him as a way to get Rachel emotionally involved in his life and for him to get emotionally involved in Rachel’s pants.
It could just be a continuity problem, maybe they planned more follow-up with the girlfriend/fiance angle and the break succeeded so well they forgot about it, but it’s all barely noticeable, clearly Ross and Rachel were going to end up together, this was just one of many bumps on that road.
What I’m wondering is how many times Ross would have been married by now.
Rachel said “Maybe we should take a break … a break from us,” and then Ross called her and they were about to make up when Ross heard Mark say something in the background, and, being Ross, he jumped to conclusions and hung up and ended up sleeping with “Chloe the copy-girl”. Then when Rachel found out, they started fighting, and Ross said “I didn’t think there was a relationship to save, I thought we were broken up,” and Rachel said “We were on a break!” As the seasons progressed, that became Ross saying “We were on a break” and Rachel saying they weren’t. That always annoyed me.
But you are correct, essentially; there never was a formal break-up that they both agreed on. Heck, when Rachel said they should take a break, Ross just walked out.
ETA: At the time those episodes aired, I wondered if Mark was just a liar who never had a fiancee at all.
I can’t remember any direct quote but ISTR she was his fiancee also. As to the OP, I guess I hadn’t really thought about it before but yes, that is a pretty big continuity error. Maybe they hadn’t intended to extend the Mark character’s role and were just planning to use him as a catalyst to R & R taking A BREAK!!! and then nobody bothered with keeping his character’s back story intact. One of my favorite episodes, by the way. Not because I cared about their relationship - I got tired of it pretty quickly- but the barbershop quartet scenes still crack me up.
“. . . you’re one and only boyfriend It’s NICE to have a boyfriend!”
" . . . can’t, a guy send a barbershop quartet to his girlfriend’s office anymorrrrre!!!"
FWIW, they were on a break, whatever that means-- a trial separation, or something, I think that’s pretty clear. However, Ross was pretty quick to jump into Chloe’s pants. Even if they were on a break, that was really out of character for Ross, and bugged me.
[hijack]Something I liked about the show was the way they got rid of Julie by having her fall for Russ the first time she met him.[/hijack]
Monica’s apartment was a rent controlled sublet from her grandmother who apparently must have lived there since La Guardia was mayor. Also, I guess it wasn’t that cheap since she did need a room mate.
Chandler had a steady, corporate job and at one point was promoted to some management position and of course Joey was the guy on the gonorrhea poster
Remember, too, that about the only furniture they had were the two recliners and a foosball table.
Ross was a paleontologist which I’d assume is a well paying profession.
Phoebe lived with her grandmother for part of the series and I have no idea how she was meant to afford her own place. I think she lived in a different (possibly cheaper?) part of NY than the other friends.
I know you probably didn’t literally want an explanation but the question comes up a lot.
I think it was Monica and Ross’s grandmother’s apartment. They were just paying her rent which may have been rent-controlled. Chandler and Joey’s place was a little smaller and Chandler was making good money and usually paying the rent.
And it became a plot point in the episode where Mr. Treeger yelled at Rachel and Joey got mad at him, because he pointed out to Joey that Monica and Rachel were illegally subletting a rent-controlled apartment and that he was going to report them and have them evicted … unless Joey helped him learn to ballroom dance.
I have always had a hard time taking Rachael’s side in this. The way saw it:
Ross’s perspective:
After the fight, he blames himself for being too jealous and not trusting Rachel around a guy he thinks wants to date her.
He calls to try and make up, and the guy he was jealous of is at the apartment with Rachel opening a bottle of wine.
Now he is not only hurt that Rachel would immediately invite over the guy he was jealous of, but this totally reinforces his fears that everyone he loves is deceiving him and actually wants to be with someone else (remember his first wife left him for another woman).
Enter Chloe the copy girl. Not only is she attractive, she is pursuing Ross, not the other way around. Both of Ross’s major relationships to date have been him pursuing and then being rejected. (we won’t count Julie as a major relationship)
Rachel’s perspective:
After the fight, she is so upset and tired of dealing with Ross’s paranoid jealousy that she decides to have the guy Ross is jealous of over to the apartment for drinks.
How dare Ross have sex with someone else after she told him their relationship was at least temporarily off in words and then invited the man he was jealous over for drinks? Why would he possibly think it would be ok for him to have sex with someone else?
Honestly, having a one night stand with a near random hookup after being psuedo dumped is a lot more understandable than immediately having a romantic get together with the the person your ex is jealous of. If Mark had been a long time friend that Ross was unreasonably jealous of, that would have been one thing. But he is a new coworker who took an unusual interest in Rachel, and who it turns out, was interested in dating her the whole time.
Not necessarily La Guardia. More like John Lindsay. But yeah, people in NYC have some crazy incredible rents because of rent control. I know people who have temporarily moved for up to a year, and have continued to pay the rent the whole time, because they’d never be able to find a place half as cheap when they got back.
The view increases the rent on an apartment a lot. The set up where Monica and Rachel overlook the street, and therefore have the expensive unit, while Chandler and Joey overlook the alley, and have the crap unit is quite realistic. You see the same reality reflected in the relatively nice apartment that Leonard and Sheldon have on TBBT, while Penny has a crap unit in the same building. I once had an alley view apartment that was the same size as the ones across the hall, and $100/month cheaper (and it wasn’t expensive to start with).
Well, he worked in that field. At first he worked for a museum, then he was a non-tenured (but possibly tenure track) professor. His apartments were never that great.
We don’t even know whether Pheobe lived in Manhattan. We do know she stopped free-lancing, and eventually took a job with a name-brand massage place, because she wanted benefits. That actually pays pretty well. Once she did that, she was probably still the lowest earner in the group, but not by any means poor. In fact, she probably hit middle class status if that worked out for her. I can’t remember whether she stayed there or not, though.
