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From Jim and Pam’s electric chemistry on “The Office” to Mulder and Scully’s seven seasons of simmering tension, there’s nothing better than a slow burn romance to make a TV show extra exciting.
The problem is that sometimes the show attempts a slow-burn love story the audience doesn’t care about, or worse: one the audience actively dislikes. Nobody wished for Tom Haverford and Ann Perkins to get together in Season 4 of “Parks and Recreation,” for instance, which made their brief romance an uncomfortable wrench in an otherwise stellar season.
The Tom and Ann storyline was thankfully short-lived, so it didn’t damage the series in any major way. The five picks below, however, are a whole different story. Every couple on this list was either clearly doomed from the start or written disastrously once they got together, and they all severely harmed many fans’ investment in the series. All the shows on this list are all-time greats, but the couples on this list are all-time flops.
Friends, Rachel and Joey
There was a version of Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and Joey (Matt LeBlanc) dating that might’ve worked, preferably one where they caught feelings a bit earlier in the show, but it’s not the one we got. The problem with this show’s last-minute attempt at a major love triangle is that the writers never seemed to have any serious intentions of doing anything of substance with it.
“[Writers] Kauffman and Crane understood that the Joey-Rachel relationship would end before it really began,” wrote journalist Kelsey Miller in her 2019 “Friends” retrospective book “I’ll Be There For You: The One About Friends.” She continued, “They would never have sex or say the L-word; that would be too much to recover from. … Once they actually hooked up, the characters (like the audience) would be too weirded out, and preoccupied with Ross.”
The “Friends” cast didn’t like the idea either. As “Friends” writer Adam Chase told the Guardian in a 2024 interview, “It felt very incestuous to them.” The result was a romantic storyline that nobody in the cast and crew seemed excited for, and their apathy seeped into the viewers’ experience. How could the fans be excited for a storyline that even the writers viewed as a total dead end?
Rhoda, Rhoda and Joe
Rhoda (Valerie Harper) was beloved on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” for being a total underdog. Good things were not supposed to go her way, which is why it was so surprising when Rhoda’s spin-off show decided to have her meet Joe (David Groh) and marry him within only eight episodes. Their wedding episode may have been a massive ratings success, but where could the show go from there?
As Harper would later tell the Herald-Times, “In our second year the writers had a terrible time coming up with stories. … Our writers were forced to stay away from sex, double entendre and sophisticated comedy and went to fights and conflicts for laughs.” In a controversial move that coincided with a significant drop in ratings, the writers destroyed Rhoda and Joe’s marriage in Season 3, separating them in the premiere and establishing they’d been officially divorced off-screen in the Season 4 premiere.
A lot of fans were furious and the show would soon be cancelled in a shortened fifth season, but one could argue the “Rhoda” writers made the best of a bad situation: they could either lose viewers from a groundbreaking divorce storyline or they could lose viewers from the growing monotony of Rhoda and Joe’s relationship. They chose to go out on the more interesting note.
Community, Troy and Britta
“Community” was never particularly interested in romance, which is why it probably never should’ve bothered with pairing up Troy (Donald Glover) and Britta (Gillian Jacobs). The two lacked chemistry even in Season 3, when showrunner Dan Harmon had not yet been fired and the writing quality had not yet plummeted.
Troy and Britta are officially dating in Season 4, a development that new showrunners Moses Port and David Guarascio never seemed to know what to do with. Critics noted that the two’s personalities don’t contrast in any interesting way, and the show failed to give them anything fun or memorable to do. Troy and Britta may not have been the sole reason Season 4 is so widely derided, but they certainly didn’t help.
After 11 episodes of zero memorable material, Troy breaks up with Britta in a manner that some fans found more insulting than the show intended. Troy pretends to switch bodies with Abed and has Abed deliver his breakup speech on his behalf. Britta, for some reason, is okay with this. Ted Mosby in “How I Met Your Mother” once got kicked in the chest for dumping a girl on her birthday; Troy should’ve suffered even worse for pulling this cowardly move.
That ’70s Show, Jackie and Fez
Although Mila Kunis claimed to like Jackie and Fez (Wilmer Valderrama) as a couple, fans and critics definitely did not. In the eighth and final season of the show, the writers tossed Jackie together with Fez, the creep who was frequently caught hiding in Donna’s closet and under Donna’s bed.
While Fez does have some admirable qualities, it’s hard not to feel like Jackie was settling for him. Season 8 flirted with the idea of Jackie finding professional success in the TV news industry, but her storyline with Fez seemingly tossed all that aside.
What’s worse is how the show threw away Jackie’s relationship with Hyde (Danny Masterson) via the agonizing final-season choice to have Hyde drunkenly marry a stripper. “Jackie being with Stephen has taught her a lot about not being so selfish,” Kunis said in a 2002 interview, while Masterson told Smashing Interviews that Hyde being with Jackie exposed his character’s true goodhearted nature. It wasn’t just that the show awkwardly paired Jackie with Fez; it’s that they undermined both Jackie and Hyde’s character arcs to make it happen.
Scrubs, JD and Elliot
Despite the first season clearly and repeatedly telling the viewers that JD (Zach Braff) and Elliot (Sarah Chalke) do not make for a good couple, the show kept giving them romantic storylines anyway. In Season 3, JD spends nearly 20 episodes straight pining over Elliot; when she finally breaks up with her long-time boyfriend and gets together with him, JD instantly changes his mind and dumps her. It is an agonizing, baffling story choice in what would’ve been the best season of the whole show.
The point of that Season 3 storyline, as “Scrubs” showrunner Bill Lawrence told Premium Hollywood in 2009, was to “destroy” any chance of JD/Elliot being an endgame romance. While JD and Elliot did get to enjoy a few seasons of platonic friendship afterward, the show nevertheless returned to the will-they-won’t-they well, letting it dominate a stunning amount of Season 7’s time and energy.
The show’s recent revival series, while largely excellent, did frustrate fans with the choice to split JD and Elliot up once again. The two have managed a comfortable platonic dynamic so far in the revival, but fans’ patience for another attempt at romance is currently at an all-time low. JD and Elliot are both great characters, but hopefully the series is finished with their Ross-and-Rachel schtick.
