Greetings, reader!
Well, it's the last Thursday before Valentine's Day, so I figured I'd celebrate with a post. Since I already ranked my favorite rom-coms last year, this year's Valentine's Day post will focus on the world of television. I figured I'd rank my favorite love stories from TV shows, but then I got an idea from the culture here in Finland - Valentine's Day in Finnish is "Ystävänpäivä", which literally translates to "Friends' Day". The holiday is a bit less about romantic love in here, as it can be also seen as a celebration of platonic friendship, which has always felt like a wholesome take on the holiday. So, I'll be ranking the top 5 romantic love stories from TV shows, as well as the top 5 friendships!
Also, semi-spoiler alert: I won't do any hard spoilers ("X and Y's surprise engagement in the season 2 finale totally shocked me!"), but there are some soft spoilers (the fact that two characters end up together might not be evident in the show's beginning, et cetera) which may or may not bug people who haven't seen the series and want to go in fresh, so keep that in mind.
#5 in love stories: Amy and Rory from Doctor Who
Doctor Who underwent several changes in 2010, with Steven Moffat stepping in as showrunner and Matt Smith stepping in as the new Doctor, making for what I consider the show's peak era - and the Doctor's companions Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill) were an essential part of this run.
The thing with Amy and Rory is that they went through so much together. The only thing greater than their friendship with the Doctor was their love for each other, which was tested again and again yet always came out on top. Especially evident in heartstring-tugging episodes like the bombastic season 5 finale The Big Bang, sentimental season 6 episode The Girl Who Waited and the couple's swan song The Angels Take Manhattan, this love story was touching and powerful from beginning to end.
#5 in friendships: Nick and Andrew from Big Mouth
This might seem like an odd choice at first glance, because the friendship between the two main characters of this animated coming-of-age sitcom is much more full of drama and fights than many more 'pure' fictional friendships. But the thing that really gets me about Nick (Nick Kroll) and Andrew (John Mulaney) is that it's a pitch-perfect, realistic representation of the friendship between two dumb kids.
The series is written by Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg, and many of its themes are based on their own puberty-age struggles and their true childhood friendship. Nick and Andrew might get into stupid fights and hate each other occasionally, but they always find a way to make up and be best friends again, just like kids are bound to do, and the ups and downs of such friendships unique to that stage in life are portrayed beautifully in Big Mouth.
#4 in love stories: Leslie and Ben from Parks & Recreation
One cool thing about the romance between Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) is that it's not too obvious from the beginning. While it doesn't exactly come out of the blue, it also isn't laid out in a clearly foreshadowed fashion, as is the cliché with each sitcom's 'biggest' love story. When Ben and his buddy Chris joined the main cast at the end of season 2 (also known as the moment Parks & Recreation got about five times better, going from 'The Office rip-off' to 'one of the greats'), Ben immediately had good chemistry with Leslie, but it wasn't obvious that they were going to end up together.
However, throughout the third season, things started to slowly point towards such an outcome. The series built their relationship in just the right tempo when compared to the first-time viewer's feelings - just when you start to feel like something should happen, something does happen, and the storyline gets better! Once they did end up together, Ben and Leslie had an abundance of great romantic moments throughout the rest of the series. Parks & Rec probably has more awesome love stories than any other series (April & Andy, Ron & Diane, Chris & Ann, Tom & Lucy, Donna & Joe...), but the best out of the bunch is a clear choice.
#4 in friendships: Liz and Jack from 30 Rock
Most of television's greatest friendships are ones between two peers, more often than not of the same gender, who are generally roommates or classmates or childhood buddies. Therefore, television's great friendships aren't often ones between a strictly Republican, grey-haired corporate big-shot boss-man who wears suits and plays golf, and a young, awkward and liberal smart-ass female TV writer who gets into fights over people cutting in line to the hot dog stand.
Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) and Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) are polar opposites in so many ways, that it's absolutely hilarious and weirdly heartwarming how they end up becoming such good friends. Mind you, about 83 per cent of their conversations are bickering and debating about typical workplace issues like "What should we do about our environmental superhero mascot who has spiraled out of control?" or "How should we fake an outer space mission to trick our main star into thinking he went to outer space?". But beneath it all, it's clear how much the two really care for each other, especially in the later seasons as their friendship grows and they start to have more and more actually nice moments with each other amidst all the bickering.
#3 in love stories: Lorelai and Luke from Gilmore Girls
This larger-than-life romance might be ranked even higher if it wasn't for the fact that the later seasons of the series unveiled some unfortunate imperfections in Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) and Luke Danes (Scott Patterson) as a couple, although I might attribute this more to inconsistent writing than the essence of the characters. Whatever the case may be, there's no denying that these two characters were soulmates in an unconventional yet ultimately right and powerful fashion. When first watching Lorelai's bubbly&babbly energy contrasted with Luke's grumpy and reclusive demeanour, first-time viewers might not think them to be a perfect couple-to-be right away. But their unique chemistry, as well as their insane levels of caring for each other, slowly grow on the viewer and eventually melt their heart.
I promised not to do any 'hard spoilers', but let's just say that the road of these two unlikely lovers ending up together was not very straight-forward, but all of the long build-up made the eventual payoffs all the more worthwhile. Eventually their love story feels like something large in scope, even epic, which is quite something for a quirky 2000-2007 comedy-drama.
#3 in friendships: Ted and Marshall from How I Met Your Mother
It was surprisingly difficult to choose the very best friendship from How I Met Your Mother, as there are many good ones - especially the subtle and underrated friendship of Ted (Josh Radnor) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan), which I came close to picking. It's amazing how their friendship is so deep but so between-the-lines that you only start appreciating how well the two know each other and how big of a connection they have on your second or third re-watch (other examples of the fascinating category of "strong but low-key TV friendships" include Jake and Rosa on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Jim and Kevin on The Office).
Still, I had to go with the more obvious and even greater pick in the end - Ted's friendship with Marshall Eriksen (Jason Segel). The two have great chemistry together, an abundance of iconic shared adventures and lovable inside jokes, and it's clear that both individuals would follow the other through the gates of Hell. As someone who often finds Ted Mosby relatable to a worrying degree, it's nice to see that he always has Marshall to act as a moral compass and give much-needed words of wisdom whenever he's screwing things up, and seeing friendships like this on television makes me very grateful for the real-life Marshall Eriksens I have around me.
#2 in love stories: Jake and Amy from Brooklyn Nine-Nine
One of the best things about Brooklyn Nine-Nine has always been that it doesn't repeat the mistakes that similar sitcoms before it have made. One great example is the sweet love story between goofball Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) and the incredibly driven Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero), and how healthy it is. When looking back on the 'biggest' and most central romances from past sitcoms, like Ross and Rachel from Friends or Ted and Robin from How I Met Your Mother, one notices that those relationships are unhealthy as hell. The couples seem caught in a vicious cycle of breaking up, getting back together, re-breaking up and so on, while also constantly fighting, lying, miscommunicating and cheating on each other to the point that it's really more about keeping viewers on edge concerning "will they or won't they", and at this point the more important question becomes "...should they???!".
Enter Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The love story between Jake and Amy doesn't have a fracture of over-romanticizing unhealthy and toxic relationships in it - mind you, there are moments and storylines of disagreements and arguing and drama just like there are in any relationship, but they are always ultimately dealt with in a healthy manner. It was so refreshing to see a sitcom where, after originally getting together, the 'main couple' actually stays together instead of breaking up over and over again each season. In addition, Samberg and Fumero simply have brilliant chemistry together, and following the characters gradually fall in love throughout the first seasons will tug at your heartstrings.
#2 in friendships: Charlie and Hurley from Lost
Nothing like being stranded on an island to forge unforgettable friendships. Lost has some of the most interesting and well-written characters and character relationships in television history, from the heartbreaking love story of Desmond and Penny (I'm not crying, you are, shut up) and the adversarial animosity between Jack and Locke to the father-and-son bond between Michael and Walt and the actually very well-done triangle drama between Jack, Kate and Sawyer. But the best character relationship in the series is, by far, the friendship of Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) and Hurley (Jorge Garcia).
The characters themselves are humongous favorites of mine - the flawed-but-lovable rock n' roll energy of Charlie and the goofy optimism in even the direst circumstances that Hurley brought to the series were absolute staples of Lost. It's a delight to see these two slowly become friends, to the point that the highlight of many episodes is a scene where they indulge in any number of shenanigans, from solving mysteries together and opening up to each other to helping one another become better people or just having a ball during their "downtime" on the island. The friendship between Charlie and Hurley was the greatest source of comic relief to this survival drama, but it also brought a lot of heart and eventually heartbreak - when tragedy eventually befell one of these two characters, the saddest part was his friend's reaction when finding out.
#1 in love stories: Jim and Pam from The Office
Didn't have to think twice about this one - Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer) is roughly what you get if you combine the powerful moments of Amy and Rory, the chemistry of Leslie and Ben, the epic build-up of Lorelai and Luke, and the healthiness of Jake and Amy. The love story between Jim and Pam is one of the absolute best things in The Office, as witnessed by the fact that their wedding episode, their engagement episode, the episode with their first kiss and the episode where they become a couple all made it into my top 15 favorite episodes of the series. The highlights of their romance are some of the biggest highlights of the whole series.
The story of Jim and Pam can be roughly divided into three distinct phases. The first phase is everything from before they ended up together, which is some of the very best flirtatious chemistry ever seen on the big or small screen. It's quite obvious from the first few episodes that those two should be together even though they were a long way from getting there, and watching them interact with each other with such impeccable chemistry and feeling brought a lot of heart into the otherwise quite cynical and distant first season. The second phase is them being together, which makes for a multitude of payoffs and joyful moments, as watching TV's greatest couple get married and raise a family together is just so endearing - and it's nice to see that their chemistry stayed intact even after finding a nice status quo and not being a budding "forbidden romance" anymore.
And then you have the third phase - the marital problems they face in the final season. Not to spoil any specifics, but Jim and Pam undergo their share of troubles in the show's 9th and last season, and this storyline was a stroke of genius from the writers. Simply keeping them happily together forever after would've been a bit 'boring' from a writer's perspective, and a complete lack of problems would've been a bit unrealistic for a romance that started as one of the most realistic depictions of falling in love that I've seen on any series. But, having them break up or go through the general Ross&Rachel drama would've been equally bad. So, instead, the writers kept the couple together but created some dramatic stakes by having them go through problems larger than they had faced before, and just the kind that many married couples surely face in real life and can relate to. At its toughest moments, this storyline was gripping and hard to watch, but ultimately it gave so much more meaning to Jim and Pam's love story, and following them overcome their issues made their romance more powerful than ever.
#1 in friendships: Troy and Abed from Community
I really didn't have to think twice about this one. I was probably 14 or 15 years old when I watched my all-time favorite sitcom for the first time, and it was at the end of the second episode of season 1 when Troy (Donald Glover) and Abed (Danny Pudi) burst into a wonderful freestyle rap while studying Spanish, when I thought: "This looks like it's gonna be the coolest bromance in any TV show ever". And boy, was I right.
One could argue that the platonic chemistry between Glover and Pudi is even greater than the romantic chemistry between any of the couples on today's other top five. The actors play so well off each other, with the inherent weirdness, nerdiness and goofiness of both characters bouncing off the other in a way that really resonated with the weird, nerdy and goofy kid discovering the series in his teen years and feeling represented. Troy and Abed's friendship is hilarious, when looking at running gags like "Troy and Abed in the morning" and the vast amount of hijinks that they get into, but it is also incredibly heartwarming and touching.
For example, look at the season 1 episode Environmental Science, where Troy has to let go of his "cool guy" image and own fears when he realizes that helping Abed deal with his problem means more to him. Or Abed's facial expression when watching Troy sail away in the character's farewell episode being the most heartbreaking part of Troy's departure from the series (seriously, how can one facial expression convey so powerfully that the character is hurting because his friend is leaving but also that he has accepted the situation and knows that he'll survive, AND HOW DID DANNY PUDI NOT WIN AN EMMY??).
The power of their friendship, and the show's overall balance of over-the-top silliness and real, hard-hitting emotions, is perhaps best described by the season 3 episode Pillows and Blankets. Over the course of a few episodes, differences between Troy and Abed have emerged to the point that they turn against each other - this makes for a gripping episode, but because it's Community, the rift takes place during a campus-wide pillow fort vs. blanket fort battle. As hilarious as the episode is with its civil war documentary -style and Dean Pelton's (Jim Rash) iconic line "Do people even go to classes?", it doesn't keep the episode from also being one hell of a tear-jerker - no matter how silly the setting, my heart still breaks every time Troy reads Abed's letter about his former friend's weaknesses and retaliates with a text message on how betrayed he felt after years of being the only friend who truly understood Abed.
And maybe that is the exact reason for why Troy and Abed's bond means so much to a viewer like myself - the feeling of being understood. I've never related to a fictional character as much as I do to Abed Nadir, and watching such an oddball befriend someone who truly gets him in ways that others never have is so powerful because I've experienced the exact same thing with my best friend, and I can tell you that it means everything to have someone like that in your life. Throughout the series, Troy and Abed help each other overcome their challenges and become better people, and they do it with smiles on their faces while bringing the show its greatest comedic moments as well as the most heartfelt ones.
Thank you for reading! Next week's post celebrates Black History Month, as I rank my 10 favorite films by Black directors. See you then!
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