The One With The Prom Video Analysis

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Television portrays love in many different ways. Sometimes, it’s two people attached at the hip who have just been this way for as long as anyone can remember. These always happen to be background characters–the parents or the friends who are always spewing out advice. Other times, you follow a complicated story filled with drama, grand gestures and the idea of “fate” being tossed around. These are the centerstage relationships that we follow, care about and tend to even root for. For as long as we’ve been able to dream up fantasy lives, we have looked up to fictional relationships, using them as a guide, because in reality they’re completely unattainable and idolized. They bring into question the idea of destiny–the idea that our existence …show more content…

While this may be the case, it risks putting any relationship in danger. The overexposure of Ross and Rachel is what let’s them believe they have to end up together. In the episode “The One With the Prom Video”, Ross and Rachel seem to think any prospects of another relationship is unrepairable after their friend, Chandler accidentally reveals to Rachel that Ross has created an outwardly offensive list of reasons not to date her. Phoebe then chimes in saying they are each other’s lobsters, claiming that “lobsters fall in love and mate for life” which encourages Ross and Rachel to reevaluate their relationship and ultimately …show more content…

Even when Ross and Rachel aren’t officially together, there are romantic undertones that contribute to their lack of happiness anywhere else. The truth of the matter is “there [are] no grand theories at play on what a relationship should actually mean; the happenings [are] just symptomatic of selfishness and self-obsession” (Martin and Olah 10). Ross and Rachel continue to fight for each other because they are the only people that put up with each others’ irrationalities. The message that a relationship should just be two people who “put up with each other” rather than work in tandem to achieve mutual happiness is toxic to spread to an impressionable audience with romanticized ideals of what a relationship should be already engraved in their

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