MovieChat Forums > Friends (1994) Discussion > I guess if you wanted to stick up for Ra...

I guess if you wanted to stick up for Rachel and I know nobody does but hear me out anyways:


You're allowed to say that it's not her fault she thought he made the first move on the episode Videotape. And it's true; you're allowed to say it's not her fault, but that's it and it ends there bar none. Just a few nights ago I was pissing around the internet [not literally pissing] but I was watching an old youtube video of friends about what happened on the videotape and there were thousands of youtube comments, that you have to go through and hundreds of them say, "You Go ROSS!" And "Take That RACHEL!" And they just go on and on before you finally weed your way down and someone finally says [so I didn't have to add this comment] that given the circumstance, the wine and the fact that he was preparing for sex and she was worried about getting the invitations out in time that it's not her fault she thought he made the first move. Someone else replies and says, "I totally believe you dude, what kind of friends are they? You'd think who came onto whom wouldn't be a big deal to them!" And it pretty much ends there, because then they got reamed by everyone else for daring to have a different opinion or outlook!

But I just want to discuss those reactions because they did have a point between them:

1. Rachel said that Toss was desperate for sex. She's not lying there; that statement isn't inaccurate after all, he admits it himself to Joey several times in the flashback sequence of the episode. He tells Joey it's been four months and he's desperate. He also seemed to be wet from the head down, I'm guessing he was clearly wearing every beverage in New York as a result of awkwardly trying to talk women into having sex with him, just before Joey told him about setting up a video camera to tape himself and gave him the backpacking through Western Europe story.

2. Rachel never actually stole the line Backpack Western Europe from Joey, she thought she heard it from someone else, completely unaware that it was one of Joey's many aliases and one of Phoebe's nicknames as well. The episode really relies heavily on everyone simultaneously forgetting why Toss was making a home video of himself in the first place. Was he hoping for a spot on America's Funniest Home Videos? Was it a video journal of his favorite hobbies? A Day In The Life Of Toss? It's a video preparing him for sex, and soon to become a sex tape! Hell, when Rachel entered she wasn't even thinking sexual thoughts, but the viewing audience acted like Toss just sat there while Rachel did everything from dimming the lights, lighting candles instead, turning on Barry White and slowly strip dancing for Toss.
[I used a Barry White example because friends takes the backpacking story as their own version of the croon of Barry White] when that just wasn't the case because on the video Toss brings up sex by mentioning Monica and Chandler's night and admitting that he wanted it but wasn't sure if Rachel did, similar to how he was with her on the couch when he was in the phone with Julie.

3. The friends are perfectly A-Okay with Toss getting his bodily fluid of any sort on sent invitations but they are not A-Okay with Rachel's bodily fluid on traces of invitations even though who would the sperm have come from? There's a point where Chandler points with his half-finger at a framed invitation [Matthew Perry lost part of his finger when he was a kid in a screen door, well everybody already knows that] and he asks Rachel if her bodily fluids are on it or something to that affect. Even though there is probably more of Toss' fluids than there are hers if there was traces of sperm on the envelopes, who would that have come from?

4. There's a point when offering up too much wine can go from being a refreshment to drugging? If he wasn't careful he could have killed Rachel and be charged with involuntary manslaughter as she died because alcohol poisoning is a real thing; that's why we lost Vern Troyer, Amy Winehouse, and Thomas Kinkade. [Granted Thomas Kinkade was always a bit self-destructive] It's gender neutral, if after dancing at the xerox club with Chloe, she took him to his house and kept filling his glass with various liquor and he died as a result instead of having sex with her, she would be facing charges of involuntary manslaughter. Meanwhile, what happened in the episode was Rachel begin to fast forward the tape til she remembered the point he kissed her. She probably remembered the wine glass and got pissed off.

5. Toss was desperate for sex, that much is true. When she says he practically begged her she's lying but it is a half-lie at that. Like I mentioned earlier, we're expected to forget entirely about that and the fact that his entire plot before the videotape comes into play. She stops forwarding at a part and announces, "Two minutes, you'll see him kiss me." He counters it with, "In one minute, you'll see why." That's her being kind he lunged at her wearing a wet sweater.

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