Since this is a comedy, she can't be too much of an inaccessible genius.
Instead, the show lets us in on Phoebe's genius via her creativity. but since she's not aware how funny she is, it's hard to make her the joker. It would be easy to say she's only the comic relief. Rachel will always breed drama, and comedies need dramas to keep people laughing. Life can be hard for someone who used to live on easy street.īut these kinds of conflicts help an executive see how the show has legs. Building from someone who is immediately trying to break the mold is great because she's always going to have conflict moving forward.
The entire series is shaped around her trying to break free of this archetype one season at a time. In the pilot, Rachel runs from her coddled lifestyle and boring marriage to try to make in on her own. What's nice is through their romance he makes her into the best version of the Warrior. And dates all the losers, old guys, and alcoholics until she settles for Chandler. This is an intriguing look at the archetype, because it sets forward her main theme for the show. She is so bad at dating, at taking charge in that aspect, that Monica needs her friends to help balance her out. but her central flaw is where we get this riff on the archetypes. she has everything anyone would want in the world. Monica is clearly the strongest willed person on the series. While these are the headstones, let's see how Friends riffs on these kind of stale stereotypes to really amp up the characters in the pilot. they're rigid, but a great writer knows they can mash these up, tweak where needed, and create incredible and unique voices out of these general columns. They give studio execs something to hold onto and to see an actor or actress embody.īut these are not only original characters, they're also based on historical character archetypes, and given twists to make them feel current and fresh.īefore we get into their individual characters, let's refresh our memories with our archetypes sheet. These are great descriptions of these people.
On the first pages of the pilot, we get this excellent character breakdown of the people who would inhabit Central Perk for the next decade. How the Pilot Script Capitalizes on Character Archetypes?