Although “Friends” is seen today as a very safe, cozy sitcom, it did have its moments where it pushed the boundaries of what mainstream television was allowed to do in its time. The show was very frank about its characters’ sex lives, and while its depiction of LGBTQ+ people is certainly dated now, “Friends” was pretty progressive in that respect by ’90s standards. The mere fact that so much of the first season featured Ross’s ex Carol (Jane Sibbett), who raises a child with her soon-to-be wife, was impressive considering that it would take another 20 years before two women in New York were even allowed to get married.
For the most part, “Friends” was allowed to be progressive for its time without being troubled by the networks, but two episodes throughout its run did cause enough controversy to be pulled from certain channels. Season 2’s “The One with the Lesbian Wedding” and season 4’s “The One with the Free Porn” were both pulled from various networks at certain points, although for very different reasons.
Why ‘The One With the Lesbian Wedding’ was banned
1996’s “The One With the Lesbian Wedding” starts off with Ross finding out that Carol and Susan are getting married; he initially refuses to have any part in this, not because of homophobia but because he’s still bitter about Carol leaving him and Susan stealing his wife. However, Ross is forced to get involved after the wedding’s caterer gets in an accident and the couple ask Monica to provide the food instead.
What’s interesting is that this episode had the chance to play both sides here; it could’ve kept Ross upset about the wedding for personal reasons without him acting homophobic to the audience while also avoiding having the episode feel like too much of an endorsement of marriage equality. That would’ve been the safe choice at the time, and one that might not have alienated too many conservatives throughout the country. Instead, the episode sees Ross having a change of heart after he finds out that Carol’s homophobic parents refused to attend the wedding, which leads to him becoming Susan and Carol’s biggest supporter.
The outrage from viewers nationwide was less severe than the creatives on “Friends” had expected, with “The One With the Lesbian Wedding” being largely celebrated by the media as a sign of how far the LGBTQ+ movement had come. “A prime-time same-sex wedding might have provoked widespread rebellion among network affiliates not too many years ago, but NBC reported that only two — KJAC in Port Arthur, Texas, and WLIO in Lima, Ohio — had decided that the ‘Friends’ episode was ‘not appropriate’ for their viewers,” the Portland Press Herald noted at the time. “On the other hand, 212 affiliates chose to broadcast the half-hour segment. In other words, the biggest news about the wedding on ‘Friends’ was that it was almost not news at all.”
In addition to being a bold argument in favor of queer marriage at a time where it was illegal in all 50 states, “The One with the Lesbian Wedding” also helps to give Ross closure about his failed marriage with Carol. Poor Ross was struggling hard with getting over Carol throughout the first season, and this is the episode where he can fully move on from that painful part of his life. Carol and Susan are barely mentioned in later seasons of the show, and that’s because this episode wrapped up all the conflict baked into their storyline.
Why ‘The One with the Free Porn’ was banned
The March 1998 episode “The One with the Free Porn” features Joey and Chandler accidentally finding a free porn channel on their TV. Fearing that if they click away they might lose it forever, the two decide to keep the TV on no matter what. The episode features a lot of implied sex on the TV, as well as a few frank discussions about the pros and cons of pornography.
This is also why “The One with the Free Porn” was skipped during “Friends” reruns in the United Kingdom; the brief clips of the porn on the TV was considered inappropriate for the time of day the episode often aired. In general, Channel 4 and E4 had a tendency to cut a lot of the show’s references to pornography; for instance, there’s another scene in season 9 where Chandler watches porn (in “The One with the Sharks”) that was edited out of day-time reruns.
The good news for British fans of “Friends” is that the show was picked up in 2011 by Comedy Central UK, a channel that had zero qualms about showing any of the series’ NSFW moments. Nowadays, British fans can enjoy every episode of “Friends” just like any American, with no cut scenes or edited dialogue. It only took 13 years, but from 2011 onward, “The One with the Free Porn” in the UK got to enjoy the same status as the rest of the show’s syndicated episodes (even the worst ones).
