Although Friends ended 15 years ago, it remains one of the most beloved TV shows in entertainment history and its popularity has yet to wane. It is definitely one of the most bingeable shows out there. Devoted fans as well as newcomers to the series can’t seem to get enough of watching and re-watching this group of twenty-somethings deal with life’s ups and downs.
Through the years, Friends has stood the test of time thanks to its great humor and its endearing group of characters. No matter who you are, you’re likely to identify at least on some level with one of the six main leads, which undoubtedly makes watching Friends that much more enjoyable. Of all the main characters however, Rachel Karen Green stood out as being particularly popular with viewers, so much so that every time her character got a haircut, throngs of women seemed to rush to copy her. Love her or loathe her, her influence on popular culture cannot be denied.
The problem with such a popular and likable show such as Friends is that people tend to watch the same episodes over and over again. This leads to careful scrutiny and the inevitable noticing of things that don’t quite add up. While Rachel went on to become a successful businesswoman in the world of fashion, have a daughter, and unite with her true love, this unfortunately doesn’t mean that her character was without problems. In fact, there are quite a number of instances where the things Rachel does just don’t make any sense at all.
With this is mind, here are 20 Things That Make No Sense About Rachel In Friends.
Her Ever-Changing Birthday
It’s a known fact that Rachel is one of the most popular Friends characters with audiences, but despite how much we all love and envy her, does she really deserve multiples birthdays a year? Looking over the series as a whole, it seems that Rachel’s birthday changes multiple times.
In season 4, she tells Gunther that her birthday is in May but then later on in that same series, a police officer comments that she is an Aquarius, meaning her date of birth would have to be in January or February. Whether this is all just a ploy to get more attention and presents or whether for some reason she really has forgotten when her real birthday is, Rachel’s ever-changing date of birth is very confusing indeed.
Green or Greene?
We all know Rachel has her ditzy moments and she isn’t always the sharpest tool in the shed. Despite her often clueless moments, you would think that at the very least she would be able to spell her own name correctly, right? Well, as it turns out, this isn’t the case.
Over the course of the series, Rachel’s last name seems to switch between being spelled "Green" and "Greene." On the box containing Emma’s first birthday cake, her last name is written “Green,” but then on the invitation to Ross and Emily’s wedding, it reads “Greene.” On her desk at Bloomingdales, we see “Greene” whereas both spellings are used on her Ralph Lauren office door. Fans tend to agree that the official spelling is “Green” though, as this is how Rachel’s name appears on the credits.
Airport Rules Don’t Apply To Her
Anyone who has ever gone to the airport and taken a flight will know that airport security is incredibly strict. One of the most basic security checks when flying is that your plane ticket matches the name on your own port. Whereas tickets for events might be able to be used by someone other than yourself, plane tickets are not-exchangeable between people. For this reason, the whole plotline where Rachel takes Emily’s place on the newlyweds’ honeymoon is completely boggling.
Aside from the awkwardness and frankly dubious choice to take the trip, the fact that Rachel uses Emily’s ticket with Emily’s name on it while her own port says Rachel is nothing short of baffling. Clearly Rachel knows some airport secrets we don’t.
Her Sailing Abilities
Rachel is one of the more privileged of the Friends group, so it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that she could play polo, or croquet, or even sail. Indeed, Rachel reveals to Joey in "The One with Phoebe’s Cookies" that her strict father taught her to sail and therefore she could help Joey learn the ropes of his new sailboat.
However, despite her getting annoyed with Joey for not following her sailing instructions, we have reason to believe that Rachel might not have been the seasoned sailor she claimed to be. In fact, earlier in the season, Rachel tells the group that her father used to complain that no one would help him sail his boat. In "The One Where Ross Moves In", Rachel tells Danny that she is going to a Sailing Regatta but doesn't know how to sail. Sounds fishy to us.
Her Choice of Baby Name
One of the weirder decisions Rachel made in the series was to call her baby Emma. As you’ll , Emma was the name Monica wanted to call her own daughter someday, but always getting what she wants, Rachel managed to get her friend to allow her to use it for her baby.
While Emma is a beautiful name, is sounds awfully like Emily, the name of Ross’ ex-wife whom Rachel couldn’t stand. If Rachel and Emily had such a bad history together, then why would she want to name her baby so similarly? At one point in the series, Rachel even accidentally calls Emma “Emily,” which seems pretty strange considering all the bad blood that went down between them. The choice of name is also pretty insensitive to Ross, whose whole life was put into turmoil over the Emily and Rachel fiasco.
The Ross-Russ Situation
In season 2, there is a very strange episode of Friends called "The One With Russ". Aired before Ross and Rachel got together but after the whole pros and cons list disaster, this episode sees Rachel going out with a guy called Russ. The weird bit? Russ is basically an identical version of Ross. From the way he dresses to the way he speaks, Russ is basically Ross with slightly longer hair.
It’s not that hard to believe that Rachel would try to find someone similar to Ross seeing as she had feelings for him, but the fact that she didn’t notice the very obvious similarities between Ross and Russ is somewhat hard to believe. It took her far longer than everyone else to see that they were carbon copies of each other.
Agreeing to Let Bonnie Date Ross
Ross and Rachel were the king and queen of roller coaster relationships, and it’s hard to keep track of how many times they were off again and on again. Audiences were undoubtedly frustrated whenever one of them was in love with the other but wouldn’t speak up, which meant that they systematically had throwaway relationships in between that we all knew weren’t right for them.
One example of this is in season 4 when Rachel agrees to let Phoebe set her friend Bonnie up with Ross. Despite having feelings for Ross, Rachel allows the date to go ahead because she re Bonnie being bald. She gets an unpleasant surprise when Bonnie turns out to be beautiful, and Rachel ends up sabotaging their relationship. Rachel should have just told Phoebe how she really felt about Ross, but she allowed someone else to get hurt instead.
She Doesn’t Chandler
Rachel and Chandler aren’t the closest two people in their friendship group, but even so, Rachel shouldn’t forget an entire chapter of their lives they spent together. In the pilot episode of Friends where Rachel is introduced to the gang after she runs out on her wedding to Barry, Rachel and Chandler act as if they’ve never met. However, as the series progresses, we learn that these two friends had indeed met each other several times before, including spending two Thanksgivings with each other at the Gellers' household. It’s also revealed that they even shared a kiss at one point.
After having such a history together, how could they possibly act like they don’t know each other in the pilot? As ditzy as Rachel can be, even she should meeting someone more than one or two times.
Her Lack of Knowledge About Monica’s past
Despite how close they seem in the series, Monica and Rachel weren’t always great friends. Sure they were besties in high school, but after that they seem to have drifted apart before seeing each other again for the first time in a while in the pilot episode. That being said, from the flashbacks that we see throughout Friends, we can see that Rachel and Monica spent their formative years together, and therefore should know pretty much everything about their respective childhoods.
It’s strange then that in “The One with the Football”, Rachel has no idea about why Monica and Ross aren’t allowed to play football together anymore and has never heard of the Geller Cup. For something that is this important to both her friend and her on-again/off-again boyfriend, you’d think that Rachel would have ed it.
Not Knowing Her Ex-Fiancé’s Name
In the very first episode of Friends, we see Rachel turning up flustered at Central Perk, still wearing her wedding dress after running out on her wedding to Barry. In this pilot episode, we hear Rachel call her fiancé "Barry Finkle," but then when we next see him, he is referred to as "Barry Farber."
Every time after that, his surname is Farber, so where in the world did Finkle come from? Was Rachel so flustered and confused after doing a runner that she forgot her own husband-to-be’s name? Did the production team decide that Finkle was an unsuitable or silly name for some reason? We have so many questions.