Whereas Friends was thought of progressive for its time, the ‘90s traditional sitcom confronted its justifiable share of community pushback. Co-creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman recalled that they as soon as needed to stand as much as an NBC govt who needed to vary Monica Geller’s (Courteney Cox) pilot plot, which featured her sleeping with somebody on a primary date.
“The man who was in cost mentioned: ‘We’re not going to love Monica as a result of [in the pilot] she sleeps with a man on the primary date.’ We made the argument that it makes her sympathetic,” Crane instructed U.Okay.’s The Instances in a retrospective article in regards to the collection.
In “The Pilot,” chef Monica sleeps with a co-worker nicknamed “Paul the wine man” on a primary date after he shares along with her that he hasn’t had intercourse with anybody since his final breakup two years prior. Because the episode unfolds, it turns into clear that he lied to get her into mattress.
“The community, in attempting to show that the viewers wouldn’t like Monica if she sleeps with a man on the primary date, distributed a little bit questionnaire to the viewers at our costume rehearsal,” Crane mentioned. “And it was so skewed. The query was like: ‘When Monica sleeps with a man on her first date, is she a) a slut or b) a harlot?’”
Nevertheless, the viewers selected a 3rd, unlisted, not one of the above choice. “Folks wrote in saying: ‘No, it’s tremendous’,” Crane mentioned.
In the identical interview, Kauffman talked about one other occasion the place the viewers helped form the sitcom’s plotlines — that of Monica and Chandler’s (Matthew Perry) relationship.
“We thought it will be a one-night stand,” Kauffman defined. “However they obtained such a robust response from the viewers in London that it really altered the place we had been going with the storyline.”
