‘Friends’: Rachel Green Cleared Up The “Break” Debate In Season 3 and No One Noticed
Friends followed a rather simple premise. The show wasn’t particularly controversial. At the very least, it didn’t mean to be controversial. Still, Friends fans have spent the better part of two decades debating whether Ross Geller and Rachel Green were actually on a break when he slept with Chloe from the copy place. Funnily enough, Rachel cleared that debate up back in season 3, right when the famed couple broke up (the first time). It seems as though they were on a break the entire time.
Ross and Rachel broke up after she discovered he slept with someone else the night of their big fight
Ross and Rachel were the “it” couple of Friends during the show’s first few seasons. Their early romance in season 2 was sweet, but things went south quickly in season 3. Their relationship imploded when Rachel suggested they take a break from each other after yet another argument.
After the fight, Ross met up with Chandler Bing and Joey Tribbiani at a bar to lament his lost love. What he found was a one-night stand. That would have been fine if Rachel hadn’t changed her mind about their relationship. Ross spent much of the next day trying to prevent Rachel from finding out about his fling. The mission was a failure, and the pair broke up for real that day, effectively kicking off several more seasons of will-they-won’t-they storylines. Since the infamous episode, “The One With the Morning After,” Friends fans have debated the legitimacy of Ross and Rachel’s arguments. Rachel set the record straight in that very episode, though.
Rachel more or less admitted they were on a break when Ross slept with Chloe
In the weeks and months after Ross slept with Chloe, Rachel repeatedly proclaimed that he cheated on her. The entire arc of them getting back together in season 4 was thwarted by the proclamation. Rachel, however, didn’t really think Ross cheated on her. In fact, she admitted they were broken up way back in season 3 of Friends, but few fans seemed to notice.
A Reddit user points out that before Rachel found out Ross slept with Chloe, she approached him at his apartment to ask if she could be his girlfriend again. The user points out that the term “again” implies that their relationship was over the evening before. The length of the break doesn’t really matter. If both Ross and Rachel believed they were no longer girlfriend and boyfriend at the end of the previous night, he technically wasn’t cheating.
That’s not all the proof there is, though. During the heart-wrenching breakup scene, Rachel lambasted Ross for his behavior. Attempting to defend himself, Ross stated that he thought that the break was a breakup. Rachel countered by saying, “You think you’re going to get out of this on a technicality?” Her statement seems to suggest she, too, knew they were technically not together.
That doesn’t mean Ross Geller wasn’t in the wrong, though
Sure, the couple might have been on a break when Ross slept with Chloe, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t in the wrong. Quite the opposite. Ross is the one who insisted he wanted to be with Rachel. He pushed for the relationship, and he didn’t want to take a “break” in the first place. If he was as devastated about the break as he claimed, he shouldn’t have gone out and slept with someone else so quickly.
Ross, in true Ross fashion, compounded the issue by trying to ensure Rachel never found out about it. Presumably, he was the smartest Friends character, but he still didn’t know better than to take advice from Joey and Chandler. Fans of the series, and even fans of the couple together, are skeptical. You could argue that Ross, simply put, wanted to sleep with Chloe and thought he had a free pass because his relationship was, in his mind, over. He didn’t deserve to get back with Rachel back then, regardless of whether or not the break was a breakup or not.
