We all know who the main character in Friends is, right? It’s clearly Rachel. Or maybe Ross. Joey? Phoebe? Monica? Chandler? Depending on who you ask, it could be anyone. (Okay, maybe not Gunther.)
That being said, someone had to figure it out sometime, and that someone is scientist Yashu Seth.
May the best friend win.
Yashu got the idea after sitting down and watching one of the most iconic episodes, ‘The One With Ross’ Tan.’
You know, the one where Ross gets a tan. A classic.
Let’s do math.
Yashu decided it was time to find out who the real main character of Friends truly is.
He first downloaded transcripts from all ten seasons of the show, then began to count.
The Ross factor.
Yashu wrote: “Ross had the most number of lines in the first three and the last season. Well, these were the times when the Ross-Rachel angle was in its prime. Could this be a reason?” Probably.
Plus, he talks about dinosaurs an awful lot.
The breakdown
Moving deeper, Yashu found that Chandler dominated seasons 4 and 6 (those jokes do take up space), Joey won season 5, and Rachel took seasons 8 and 9.
Monica and Phoebe both fell lower, with Phoebe having the least lines.
“That’s not even a word!”
When he went even further, Yashu discovered that the number of words spoken by each character began to reveal more concrete results.
You can see that Ross and Rachel are both the winners, and tied close together. What a couple.
He makes jokes when he’s uncomfortable
But wait! Weirdly enough, Chandler came away with the most on-screen appearances.
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He appeared in a whopping 1400+ scenes. “Though, Ross and Rachel were not very far behind with around 1330 and 1370 appearances respectively.” Yashu wrote.
Though, Ross and Rachel were not very far behind with around 1330 and 1370 appearances respectively.
The pattern reveals itself.
Even though Chandler took home most screen appearances (I’ll be sure to have an award made up for him), Ross once again took the cake for most individual scenes without the other friends present. Really? Ross? We sat through that many solo Ross scenes? Wow.
What’s in a name?
The last test Yashu did was to measure how many times each character’s name appeared in the episode titles.
Rachel came away the winner, with 27 times…but guess who trailed her with 24? Yup. It’s gonna happen, guys. You know where this is going.
And the winner is…
…Ross.
I know. I know. But the math doesn’t lie. Because of his individual scene numbers, his lines, and his episode mentions, Ross Geller is the main character of Friends.
I don’t know what to do with this information. But now we all have it.
