Friends’ First Episode Was Nearly Changed by Sexist NBC Executives

David Crane and Marta Kauffman, the showrunners of the 1990s sitcom Friends, have revealed that NBC forced them to re-analyze one of Monica Geller’s decisions during the pilot episode. Monica is one of the six iconic characters who spent almost a decade sharing their lives with audiences worldwide, from dating and career changes to falling in love and becoming parents, and dealing with every crisis writers could come up with.

But during the pilot episode, “The One Where Monica Gets a Roommate,” Monica does something that drew the attention of the executives at NBC. Something that, ultimately, the live audience had a hand in deciding if it would go in the final cut. In the episode, Monica sleeps with a guy on their first date. She refers to him as “Paul the wine guy,” and she decides to sleep with him after he tells her he hasn’t had sex in two years. The problem is that Paul has lied to her, and he told her that in order to convince her to have sex out of pity.

Friends

Release Date September 22, 1994

According to The Hollywood Reporter, NBC executives were not happy with this part of the script. Crane says: “The guy who was in charge said: ‘We’re not going to like Monica because [in the pilot] she sleeps with a guy on the first date,’ We made the argument that it makes her sympathetic.” He then mentions the live audience being handed a disgusting questionnaire:

“The network, in trying to prove that the audience wouldn’t like Monica if she sleeps with a guy on the first date, distributed a little questionnaire to the audience at our dress rehearsal.
And it was so skewed. The question was like: ‘When Monica sleeps with a guy on her first date, is she a) a slut or b) a harlot?
‘”

The answers on the ballots surprised the execs, who hopefully noticed they were in the wrong, and audiences saw it wasn’t such a big deal: “People wrote in saying: ‘No, it’s fine.'” And none of the possible answers were checked. It was most likely reason enough to give the showrunners complete creative liberties when exploring what must have felt like “open-minded” plotlines throughout the entire show.

TV’s Cultural Progress from I Love Lucy to Friends

The show’s cultural impact speaks for itself. The audience acclaim was constant up until the end, and it all had to do with the lighthearted spirit of its storylines and its constant emotional manipulation with ‘will-they-won’t-they’ romantic arcs. It’s a very vanilla show, but at the same time, the TV landscape was pretty different 30 years ago. Fan-favorite character Monica being shamed because of something like sleeping on a first date is insulting to us now, but that’s how progress develops. Remember, executives prevented Lucille Ball or anyone else in I Love Lucy from even saying the word “pregnant,” despite her being married to her on-screen husband. Things take time.

Related Filming Friends’ Fountain Opening Was a Miserable Experience

According to Friends star, filming the opening sequence in front of the fountain wasn’t exactly fun, but Chandler himself saved the day.

Fortunately, the showrunners didn’t follow the rules and decided to include everything that served the story, from openly gay characters and their marriage to something as simple as casual sex. Yes, some jokes didn’t age well, but in retrospect, it presented themes of adulthood that should always have been “normal” without having to fear the wrath of network execs afraid of some characters’ autonomous decisions.

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