What You Only Notice About This Friends Relationship As An Adult

Since it first premiered in 1994, Friends has managed to remain hugely popular while finding new audiences in the process. The iconic sitcom that once garnered over 52 million viewers for one episode, has been off the air since 2004, but has still gained massive viewership in syndication (via Vulture), with enough of a weekly audience to still make the show a hit today. But with its seemingly infinite popularity and easy re-watchability comes also comes a re-analysis of the show from viewers. 

In rewatching the show, some fans can't help but notice the show's outdated quotes (via Bustle), or reconsider if the titular friends were actually friendly to one another. But one Friends storyline in the show has adult fans rethinking how they viewed it since they were kids. Remember Richard Burke? It's hard to forget the mustachioed ophthalmologist who served as Monica's second-most-notable love interest on the show. Played by Tom Selleck, long before his Blue Bloods days, Richard was a recent divorcee and longtime family friend of the Gellers. Richard and Monica see each other again as adults at a party she's catering and instantly see a spark. Despite the large age gap between Richard and Monica (21 years), they date, disregarding hesitations from friends and family.

Though Friends portrayed Richard as a funny, kind, and compassionate character who was liked by the other characters — especially Joey and Chandler, some fans are revisiting the May-December romance and can't help but voice their disdain for Richard. In a reddit thread posted by user caret-top called What are your unpopular Friends opinions/theories?, various fans of the show posted their takes on Richard. User BabyKangarooPhalange wrote they "really hate Richard" and found it "really weird and creepy that he was dating his best friend's daughter who he'd known since she was a baby."  "When I watched the series as a kid I always liked Richard and their relationship. Now that I'm roughly the age Monica was, it makes me feel uncomfortable. I mean, he's literally the cliché guy who breaks up with his long-term, age-appropriate wife and immediately gets a hot girlfriend half her age," user Leahonphone added. And what further angered some on the thread was that Richard returned later in the series to win Monica back, right before Chandler was going to propose to her. "And then he calls himself such a 'good guy' for letting her go when really he just knew he'd lost at that point," BabyKangarooPhalange said. 

The conversation isn't limited to one reddit thread, mind you. BuzzFeed even published an article entitled I Rewatched "Friends" And Realised Monica And Richard's Relationship Is Actually Terrible. In the piece, writer Ellie Bate details how disturbing the relationship was, mostly because Richard knew Monica when she was a baby. Monica even says in the show: "I'm dating a man whose pool I once peed in." But, like much of the internet, Joey and Chandler fawn over Richard. And though Selleck might be charming in the show, it's hard for some fans to feel the same way about Richard.