A long time ago, in the olden times, and perhaps before you were even born (we’re taking nothing for granted) there was a little fourth wall-breaking detective show on TV called Moonlighting. Starring Bruce Willis of The Die Hard and Cybill Shepherd of The Taxi Driver as Maddie Hayes and David Addison, the popular screwball noir series hinged on the explosive sexual chemistry of its two leads.
Eventually, the central characters of Maddie and David finally consumated their feisty ‘will they, won’t they’ relationship to the delight of fans everywhere, and the show took an almost immediate nosedive, fulfilling on prime time television the old curse ‘may you get what you wish for.’
A similar fate almost hit the writers of NBC’s hit sitcom, Friends, as executive producer Kevin S. Bright recently revealed to Metro. In the season 2 episode ‘The One Where Ross Finds Out’, paleontologist Ross and ‘just a waitress’ Rachel finally got it together, only to split up quite quickly afterwards, but it turns out that they were never supposed to go on the iconic subsequent ‘break’ where Ross had a fling with the cute copy store girl, destorying the trust between him and his one true lobster.
“I would say initially when [Ross and Rachel] was planned it wasn’t planned that way, that came a little bit later,” Bright confirmed. “It allowed us to have fun with the show and give people something to root for. We were well aware the audience wanted to keep them together but everything that was keeping them apart – we realised when we got them together when the first kiss happened we go, ‘Wow, the air has kind of gone out of the balloon.’ There wasn’t that sexual tension anymore.”
Bright thinks it was the right move to break the pair up, though. For a while, at least.
“I thought what [writers] Marta [Kauffman] and David [Crane] did, which was such a brilliant and brave move with their relationship, as soon as everyone got their wish the wish was taken away. It made it so much better when they did get together.”
Bright also confirmed that talks about a Friends reunion had taken place over the summer.
May you get what you wish for…
Kirsten Howard is the news editor at Den Of Geek UK, and she will assure you that Tokyo Drift is the best one, even if you didn’t ask. You can follow her on Twitter, but we wouldn’t recommend it.