Over the course of Friends' off-and-on Ross and Rachel romance, the latter's jealousy made her sabotage two of Ross’ early relationships, with both instances involving his girlfriends’ hair. Friends ran from 1994 to 2004 as one of the most popular sitcoms in television history, detailing the lives of a group of friends in their 20s and 30s living in New York City. The group navigates love, friendship, jobs, and adult life while relying on the other five through it all.
Aside from the eventual relationship with Monica and Chandler, Ross and Rachel is Friends’ definitive will-they-won’t-they relationship. Beginning when Rachel arrives in the pilot episode, Ross has a crush on her that he reveals he’s had since high school. The two finally get together after a few close misses in the second season, though the pair go through a tumultuous breakup in the third season that culminates in the classic “we were on a break” line. Over the next seven seasons, Ross and Rachel never fully commit to each other like before, until having a baby in season eight and becoming a couple in the series finale.
Although Ross and Rachel get together in the second season, Ross has two relationships that nearly prevent the couple’s first and second unions. Ross’s jealousy becomes the catalyst for their season 3 breakup, but it’s Rachel’s jealous actions that, while petty, bring the almost real-life romance between Ross and Rachel closer together both before and after their initial relationship. Rachel’s jealousy typically means she attacks the woman Ross is dating instead of Ross himself, and both of her sabotage techniques involve giving his girlfriends terrible haircuts. In season 2, Rachel misinforms Phoebe of the haircut Julie requested, while in season 3, Rachel maliciously suggests Bonnie should shave her head again.
The core conflict of Friends season 2’s first half is Ross coming back from a trip with a girlfriend when Rachel was planning to tell him she likes him back. Ross dated many women, but Rachel continually mocks Julie and won’t give her a chance because she blames her for being the reason that Rachel and Ross are not together. Eventually, this culminates in a personal attack on Julie. In the season 2 premiere, Phoebe accidentally cuts Monica’s hair in the style of the wrong actor; Monica requested hair like Demi Moore, but Phoebe mistook the actor’s name for Dudley Moore, causing a catastrophe of a haircut. Rachel then devises the same strategy for Julie, telling Phoebe that Julie wanted Roddy McDowall’s hair instead of Andie McDowell. It appears Julie corrected the mixup with Phoebe before the haircut considering her hair doesn’t drastically change for episodes.
Rachel decides to sabotage Ross’s next relationship with the same tactic. The second half of season 3 details the aftermath of Ross and Rachel not being together, though by the season finale, Ross has a new girlfriend and Rachel’s feelings are renewed. Bonnie is an outwardly sexual woman whose charms make all the boys in the group swoon over her, enacting Rachel’s jealousy. When on the beach trip in Montauk, Bonnie ends up appearing after Rachel and Ross had spent most of the trip flirting with each other. As Rachel was so focused on getting back with Ross at the time, she devises to ruin his and Bonnie’s relationship by enticing her to shave her head again, a decision she knows Ross wouldn’t love.
Ross and Rachel have one of the strangest dynamics in Friends, sometimes seeming to be the perfect couple while also using some of the strangest ways to show their feelings. Building on real feelings and a potential relationship between David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston, the pair's relationship is iconic in TV pop culture. If one thing is understood about the couple, it’s that their timing is completely terrible. In most of the instances where Ross and Rachel could possibly get back together, like before Ross marries Emily or after they have a baby, something gets in the way. Thankfully for Ross’s future girlfriends and the eventual endgame nature of their relationship, Rachel leaves her haircut sabotages in her 20s, never really interfering with Ross’s relationships in Friends again.