Season 6

Rachel asks for an annulment, but Ross doesn’t give it to her. Ross is surprisingly backed up in his decision by Rachel’s parents, who just want to see her married already, knowing that they’re going to have to marry off her two other sisters at some point. But if we married these two kids, the rest of the season and the rest of the series would more than likely be a real snoozer, so we’ll assume that Rachel never told her parents about it, and that they went ahead and got the annulment. One of the funniest Rachel moments of this season was the episode where Rachel screwed up a Thanksgiving dessert by combining two very different recipes. Again, its unlikely a Greek-American Rachel would blow a dessert, having made so many Greek pastries by that age that she wouldn’t need to follow a recipe book. It was also this season where we met Rachel’s youngest sister, Jill, played by Reese Witherspoon, but in our world would be played by some young Greek-American actress if we could actually think of one. (Note: There’s a reason we haven’t done an episode of The Greekest Link in forever.) She’s been living at home and mooching off of her father and now is looking to mooch off of Rachel. Instead of flirting with Ross, she instead flirts with Joey, because of all the guys on the show, a young Greek American girl would probably be most likely to go out with him based on looks and occupation. (Let’s face it, a younger Greek girl would not date a paleontologist or anyone who did the work that Chandler does. If you can’t sum up what you do in a sentence of less than eight words, it’s unlikely a Greek girl would go out with you.) Jill sticks around and dates Joey because she knows it would infuriate Rachel to see her dating someone she didn’t approve of her dating. Toward the end of the season, Rachel meets Ross’s girlfriend’s dad, played by Bruce Willis, and starts dating him. Finally, a Greek-Americanesque plotline for our Greek-American Rachel, dating a significantly older man. Of course a Greek girl would never have asked for this guy to be more sensitive and to have shared his feelings, which eventually ended up turning her off from him anyway, so who knows how much longer that relationship would have lasted. In other news, Monica and Chandler get engaged in the season’s last episode. 

Season 7

This season would have opened with Ross and Rachel kissing and Monica accusing Rachel of trying to “steal her thunder” by purposefully becoming the center of attention and upstaging her friend’s big news. I’m not even going to touch that one and I can’t begin to speculate if a Greek girl would do that to one of her friends. This is also the season where we discover that Rachel reads smutty romance novels. I don’t know, I could be wrong, but I don’t see a Greek-American Rachel having the time or the patience for that type of reading. (I think we need to take a survey of what Greek-American girls are reading these days. All I know is that I don’t see Greek-American guys reading much outside of the TV Guide or things on the internet.) One of the best portrayals of Rachel this season was when she taught Joey how to sail. I wouldn’t have a changed a thing in that episode to Greek it up at all. When a Greek girl knows something, she’s an expert in it, can teach it to anybody, and will have just the right amount of patience and discipline to make sure that it’s done perfect. Having been on the business end of Greek women throughout my lifetime trying to teach me things, I know this for the fact, and still have the bruises to prove it. (Thank you unnamed third grade Greek school teacher for teaching me the finer points of verb conjugation without completely severing the tendons in my knuckles with all the excessive ruler smackings.) In one of lowest moments of the season, Rachel decides to hire and then date an underqualified but good-looking assistant. A Greek professional woman cares about her career way too much to ever go that route, so that wouldn’t have happened with a Greek-American Rachel. 

Season 8

This season starts Rachel’s journey into single motherhood. Imagine how many shotguns would be pointed at Ross if Rachel were Greek-American. For the sake of the child, Ross and Rachel, like each other or not, would have probably been immensely pressured by her Greek-American family to get over themselves and tie the knot already. Even Ross’s parents later in the season make them pretend that they’re married around all of their mutual friends. Later on that season, at Rachel’s baby shower, Rachel discovers that she’s totally unprepared to be a mother, and Rachel’s mother volunteers to move in with her and Ross after the baby is born. In a Greek-American world, Rachel would probably not think she was unprepared to be a mother, but Rachel’s mother would still want to move in with them. Rachel has her baby at the end of the season.

Season 9

In this season, we meet Rachel’s other sister, Amy, played by Christina Applegate. We’d like to cast a ditzy Greek-American actress in this role but since we couldn’t have found one to play her other sister, who may have been a princess, but not a ditz, we certainly couldn’t think of any to replace Christina Applegate, so we won’t. Rachel and Ross tell Amy that they would never let her raise their new baby if they were to unexpectedly die. In a Greek-American world, they’ve already designated someone else as Godparents so end of story. 

Season 10

Rachel gets together with Joey for all of a date. A Greek Rachel would have probably gone on at least three dates before deciding it wasn’t worth pursuing it further. Fast-forwarding to the end of the season, the questions is, would a Greek-American Rachel have debated the job in Paris as much as she did? A Greek-American Rachel wouldn’t have left with her baby to go to another continent without the baby’s father in tow. Given her extended Greek family in the area that also would have been crushed to see her leave, this pretty much would have made the decision to go to Paris almost impossible. So Friends ends the same way, with much less drama. 

Conclusion

In the end, we see that a Friends with a Greek-American Rachel would have well, just sucked. We discover why maybe there will never be a memorable Greek-American character in a sitcom, certainly not a successful sitcom. (See: My Big Fat Greek Life, off the air after just six episodes.) When you’re done with all the stereotypes, Greek-Americans aren’t really that funny, at least not in the sitcom way. Sitcoms are often based on the misguided, sometimes stupid decisions, of the characters in them, and well, Greek-Americans are usually pretty well-grounded. So next time you think that your life, your Greek family, and Greek friends are one big sitcom, just relax, because it’s probably not that bad.