“The One With the Routine” Shows How Much Monica and Ross Changed for the Worse

[TMC]

https://decider.com/2018/12/27/frien...edium=referral

On long running shows, it’s pretty inevitable that characters will change over time. Different writers are brought in, or the actor makes a request to make a change, or the writers room’s institutional memory is faulty. What’s also inevitable is that the changes are often subtle and gradual, until one day you’re watching an episode and it hits you in the face that a character is completely different than he or she was when the show started.

I felt that way the first time I watched the Friends Christmas/New Year’s episode, “The One With The Routine,” when it first aired in December, 1999 in the middle of the show’s sixth season.

To refresh: Monica (Courteney Cox) and Ross (David Schwimmer), along with Joey (Matt LeBlanc), are invited by Joey’s then roommate/potential girlfriend Jackie (Elle Macpherson) to a taping of New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. There, they all get to dance on camera and do a pretend countdown to the New Year, all of which will appear on the show on the real New Year’s Eve. While Joey is trying to figure out how to kiss Jackie and tell her how he feels, Monica and Ross are dancing together, trying to get up on one of the platforms and ensure an on-camera appearance.

Ross comes up with what he thinks is a surefire way for them to get on-camera: they do “The Routine” which won them an award for best brother-sister dance in middle school. The resulting visual is equally funny and creepy, with dance moves that no brother or sister should be allowed to perform unless they’re both little kids.



But what “The Routine” also signaled was that the Geller siblings had lost all sense of self-awareness. The signs were there during the season, but they were hard for fans like me to put their finger on.

Ross, who started off as the lovelorn and mopey (but lovable) schlub who represented all of us, all of a sudden became clumsier, angrier and louder, and seemed to lose the ability to be embarrassed by his antics. Perhaps it was fueled by how his life fell apart after he uttered Rachel’s (Jennifer Aniston) name during his wedding to Emily (Helen Baxendale), but some of what he did that season didn’t make any sense given what we had seen from Ross in the past.

Monica, on the other hand, started the show as picky and a bit OCD, but also had a warm personality. She cared about her friends and family like a mother. But, by the time “The Routine” happened, that warmth gave way to an unpleasant melange of competitiveness and prickliness that made us wonder what happened to the warm, giving Monica. Maybe it’s because, at Ross’ wedding, she hooked up with Chandler (Matthew Perry) and she could let her true personality loose on the group. But a yell-y, easy-to-annoy Monica was just as unnerving to watch as the bumbling, stumbling Ross.

And it all comes together with “The Routine.” It’s weird enough that the two of them are dancing together, Monica wearing a top that would have been more suitable for a casual 3rd date than dancing with your brother. But the fact that the two of them not only have no idea how weird “The Routine” was speaks to their changes. Monica wanted to “win” by getting on the podium, and Ross wanted to show everyone he was over Emily.

But neither realized that “The Routine,” complete with between-the legs swings, sprinkler dances and other ’80s oddities, would be ridiculed instead of featured. The floor director did, though: he thought it would be perfect for the show’s blooper reel.

Yikes. The Gellers were never the same after this, even though there were four and a half more seasons left in the show’s run. While Monica recovered somewhat to once again become the caring woman she was in her 20s, Ross became increasingly clumsy and awkward. It’s one of the few issues (that and the general lack of people of color) that mar what has become one of television’s all-time best shows. And it goes back to that darn “Routine.”