When a show runs past the 10-year mark, the chances are there are going to be one or two storylines that don’t sit well with everyone – and that was certainly the case with Friends.
Although latter-day viewers have pointed out issues of their own with the long-running sitcom while viewing it through a modern lens, there were also a handful of story arcs that didn’t go down well at the time, either.
Top of that list would undoubtedly be Joey and Rachel’s short-lived romance.
Joey first started to realise his feelings for Rachel in season eight of the Emmy-winning show, but she didn’t reciprocate them until a year later.
But it wouldn’t be until the final series of Friends that they’d finally get together, dividing fans’ opinions right down the middle.
And it turns out the cast weren’t too happy about it, either.
In a new interview about Friends’ legacy to promote its upcoming 30th anniversary, writer Adam Chase told The Guardian: “The cast was very much against it. It felt very incestuous to them.”
Fortunately for both the cast and fans, the relationship between Matt LeBlanc and Jennifer Aniston’s characters wasn’t to last, and the pair went their separate ways when the characters realised there was a lack of sexual chemistry between them.
It’s now been 20 years since Friends aired its final season, but it continues to get people talking, not least since it garnered a new audience on Netflix.
Read The Guardian’s full piece about Friends here.