Ross is the Main Character on Friends

The ‘Everyman’: First I would argue that Ross is not an ‘everyman’ normal guy among his other character portrait like friends. He is as much a character as the rest of them. He is extreamly intellectual to the point of annoyance of his friends, and he is prone to wild overreactions throughout the show in Anger (put on sabbatical), Romance (got married to Emily way to fast), Jelousy (This apply’s to Susan as much as Mark), and from the very beginning Depression (his first words on the show was saying ‘hi’ with a deep sigh) Ross is not a normal average Joe. He is a Scientist and a Dork and maybe secretly ailed with bipolar depression. Second though, even if he was an average joe, I would argue the main Protagonist is not always an Everyman. For sure sometimes they are, and the Everyman Jack Carter makes a great Sheriff of Eureka. But other times, like James Garners role in “Support your Local Sheriff” your leading protagonist is anything but a normal average Everyman. Sometimes your main protagonist is anything but the everyman, he is ‘the amazing man’ that is the farthest thing from the normal and average guy. He is an impossible hero with an extravagant history who we are reminded at every turn just how impossible our hero Goku the supersayen is, training to have lifetimes worth of training in a matter of hours. In Literary terms this kind of Protagonist is called…. Mary Sue: Mary Sue is a term for the protagonist that is a little unbelievable at times. They are usually very attractive or in some cases extremely ugly, and they are sometimes Captain of the Enterprise and get to cheat death all across the universe while bedding women on every planet and leaving them behind without consequence or a horrible break-up. They are an unrealistic people all together and is usually a sign of poor writing, but sometimes they turn out to be the greatest characters ever that readers love the most. And We love Goku and Kirk and James Bond because they are impossible unrealistic amazing fantasies we enjoy to vicariously live. We love Batman because he can accomplish anything, and Goku because he defies what all the Mentors ever expect of him, and Kirk because he makes us believe that “there is no no-win scenario”. And that’s why we love Rachel for all these same reasons too. She comes from a wealthy family and yet starts without there money a life of independence with the aid of Friends she has not spoken with in years. She will astonish and amaze at every turn giving Ross reason to want to pursue her, along with many other guys. She moves out of a dead end job purely because a guy thought she was cute at a bar (Mark). Phoebe is amazed when she tells her she never had to ask a guy out. She is ‘the only daughter’ her ‘dad is proud of’, she has date ‘moves’ that leave Joey amazed, Phoebe’s Canadian ex-husband meets her for just a few minutes and his mind is blown! If you enter in Data that matches Rachel’s on this site you should see she test positive as a Mary Sue at a whopping 42! http://www.onlyfiction.net... Vicarious: To restate some of my older points, she is the Mary Sue that gets to do everything the Audience wants to do and is enabled to vicariously through Rachel. So Ross may have got to live with each of the cast at one point I admit but my point was Rachel lived in every one of there apartments. Phoebe’s moved in with Ross, Ross never lived in Phoebe’s apartment though. And while he visited a lot you never vicariously get to live in Monica’s apartment through Ross. And Rachel does much more an Audiences might like to live out that are unreasonable turns of events. Through Rachel we raced across the Atlantic to stop a wedding, and then we get to feel noble and big when she accepts its better at this point to let Ross go, she missed her chance. Through Rachel we get to ‘hire ourselves a little treat’ at work, she gets married and drunk in Vegas and has an affair away in Barbados. I could go on but I don’t have the space. To put it short she lives out all the things a viewer might want to do but forbids themselves to do and is incapable of doing themselves all the time on the show. The Pursued: Your view on this as making Ross the shows star Protagonist and not Rachel I think shows your using a strictly male perspective. As Men we like to be the Pursuer and think very little of a man who is Pursued. Meanwhile it is the Reverse for the Women the way the look at Rachel. They would think very little of her if she did have to pursue her man, but think all the world when she can just be pursued. Consider the movie “Cinderella”, or “Snow White”. Who do you think is the main protagonist in these movies? The title stars are without question supposed to be Cinderella and Snow White. But they do nothing but wait for there Prince to come find them and to match the slipper with there shoe. The Girl Hero is always pursued, but it does not mean they are not the story’s leading character.