Ross Geller

Dr Ross Eustace Geller, Ph.D. (born October 18, 1967) is a fictional character on the popular US television sitcom Friends (1994–2004), played by David Schwimmer.

Family

Ross is the older brother of Monica Geller, and was often favored by their parents (particularly their mother) over her. When he was born, he was described as a "medical marvel", since his mother was originally believed to be barren. The two siblings are extremely competitive as was demonstrated in 'The One with the Football', where it emerged that every Thanksgiving during their childhood they had taken part in a football match called 'The Geller Bowl'. This continued until one year (Geller Bowl 6) Monica broke Ross' nose, and their parents forbade them from ever playing football again. In their childhood, Monica and Ross were very violent with each other. For example, Monica apparently hit Ross with a giant pumpkin. For his part, Ross once jammed a stick through the spokes of Monica's bike causing her to flip over and hit her head on the curb and jamming a pencil in her hand. In season four, when Gunther asks, he says his birthday is in December, however, in "The One Where Emma Cries", Ross says his birthday is October 18th. Ross is also allergic to lobster, peanuts and kiwi as revealed by Monica in "The One with the Baby on the Bus". In addition, Ross scandalizes the group by not liking ice cream, saying "it's too cold".

Career

Ross later went to college where he met Chandler Bing, with whom he formed the band 'Way No Way', and Carol Willick, who became his first wife. At college, Ross trained for a career in paleontology (on a dare), completing his Ph.D., and later became employed at the New York Museum of Prehistoric History. In the episode where Rachel moves out of Monica's apartment, Ross claims to have "given up a career in basketball" to become a paleontologist. He also claims that he would have been good at advertising. In "The One with the Mugging", Ross claims that he invented the phrase 'Got Milk?'. After Monica questions this claim, Ross turns to Joey and mentions that he "should have written it down". He also claims to have had the idea for Jurassic Park and Die Hard (coincidentally his, Chandler's and Joey's favorite movie) stolen from him. Ross's love of dinosaurs became a running joke throughout the series. Monica ponders when Ross's dinosaur stories would become extinct.

Ross was forced to take a "sabbatical" as he called it, from the museum due to a problem with rage, amplified by the recent stress of his second divorce, losing his apartment and having to move in with Chandler and Joey, after his favorite sandwich was half eaten and thrown in the bin by the director of the museum. He later found a job as a professor at New York University and caused a stir among his peers when he dated one of his recent students for a while. Eventually, he was given tenure, despite it being clear that he is a mediocre teacher: forgetting classes, boring his students to sleep or giving away grades without actually taking a look at the evaluations. In the series' finale, he reveals that his students usually give him bad evaluations at the end of semester, but passes this off as them being distraught over the fact he won't be teaching them again.

Ross comes into conflict with Phoebe Buffay most of all. Ross' scientific beliefs and Phoebe's self-devised beliefs led to conflict over the theories of evolution, gravity where Phoebe feels like she is being pushed down, and whether or not Phoebe's dead mother had been reincarnated into a cat. Also, it is revealed in "The One with the Mugging" that Phoebe once mugged Ross during her homeless years. She kept Ross's own childhood cartoon strip named "Science Boy" (who had a super-human thirst for knowledge) in a box labeled "crap from the street" (claiming it was stuff she thought was too important to sell or smoke). Phoebe claims she learned a lot from Science Boy. The evening Ross found out that Carol is a lesbian Phoebe and Ross almost had sex in the club that was to become Central Perk, but they were interrupted by their friends.

Despite being one of the most financially secure members of his group, Ross is notoriously cheap. He gets his hair cut at bargain chain "Super Cuts", steals toiletries and other amenities from hotels (including the Gideon's Bible and light bulbs), and celebrates with Israeli champagne.

Marcel

In response to his loneliness after his divorce from Carol, Ross adopted a capuchin monkey named Marcel. The relationship was troublesome at first, but the two grew quite close, until Marcel's sexual drive (causing him to hump inanimate objects and people's legs) forced Ross to donate him to the San Diego Zoo. An underlying joke was how comparable their relationship was to that of a live-in couple. Ross later felt the urge to see Marcel again, but was told by the zoo that he had since died. However, a zoo keeper informed Ross that Marcel had actually been stolen. It turned out that Marcel was now a famous mascot for a brand of beer (Monkey Shine) and was starring in Outbreak 2: The Virus Takes Manhattan. (The monkey, Katie, who played Marcel, played the monkey in the real movie Outbreak). Marcel's favorite song was "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." Ross, later in the series, admits to how unusual his purchase was, saying in The One With Unagi, "Remember when I had a monkey... What was I thinking?"

Apartment

In seasons 1-4, Ross lives in the same apartment. In season 5, Ross moves to the apartment owned by relative of his second wife Emily, who kicks him out when Ross and Emily divorce. He spent a short time living in Chandler and Joey's apartment before settling in the apartment directly opposite Monica's, which had once been inhabited by Ugly Naked Guy (which he managed to procure by pretending to share Ugly Naked Guy's common interest of 'being naked', much to the dismay of the other friends who could see him across the street from Monica's apartment). This meant that all the Friends but Phoebe now lived in very close proximity.

Relationships

Ross' marriages to, and divorces from, three different women greatly embarrassed him.

Carol

He divorced his first wife of eight years, Carol, when it emerged that she was a lesbian and was having an affair with another woman. However, in a flashback episode to when he and Carol were newly dating, he gushed about how "she's on the lacrosse team and the golf team" and he enthuses that "she plays for both teams!". They still got along fairly well, however, and shared custody of their son Ben, who was born in 'The One with the Birth', one of the final episodes of the first season. Ross' age when he married Carol , considering he states he's "26 and divorced" during the first episodes of the series, is probably 21 or 22. They claim to have been married in 1989, when Ross was 21, and Ross told second wife Emily that he dated Carol for four years before marriage, coinciding somewhat with his mention of her in the flashback to his sophomore year of college.

In an alternate reality storyline during the show ("The One That Could Have Been, Part 1"), Ross remained married to Carol, but their sex life was stagnant. He doesn't seem to realize Carol is a lesbian. When Ross suggests to Carol that they have a threesome, she not only is all for it, but has the perfect woman: Susan. While sitting on the couch, Ross expresses to Carol that he's nervous about the threesome and asks her if she is still willing to go through with the plan, to which she excitedly and rapidly replies "Yes!". Susan knocks on the door and Carol greets her all the while not taking their eyes off each other. Carol and Susan hold hands as Susan takes off her coat and hands it to Ross while Carol introduces them, all the while not losing eye contact. Later at the hospital, Ross tells Joey about the threesome in a bragging manner to which the conversation later dies down to him explaining how he got "bored" in the process and ended up making himself a sandwich. Ross is forced to accept that his wife is gay, and he ends up consoling Rachel after she discovers that her fiance (Barry Farber, whom she leaves at the altar in "The Pilot") is having an affair as well.

Emily

Ross's second marriage, to his British girlfriend Emily Waltham, (played by Helen Baxendale) appeared more hopeful than his first. The wedding took place in London (in a half-demolished building, where her parents were married), where Joey and Chandler were both the best man and Monica was a bridesmaid. (Phoebe could not attend as she was too far into pregnancy, and Rachel only came at the last minute.) However, at the ceremony Ross said Rachel's name instead of Emily's which led to the complete breakdown of his relationship. Ross attempted to reconcile with Emily, but she insisted that Ross never see nor speak to Rachel ever again. Ross was unable to comply; when Emily found out that Ross had been spending time with the friends (including Rachel) she realized she could never trust Ross again, and the marriage quickly dissolved. She later got engaged but on the night before her wedding she left Ross a message on his answering machine saying she was having doubts about getting married. Rachel accidentally deleted the message, and convinced Ross not to call her back.

Rachel

Ross is perhaps most famous for his turbulent relationship with Rachel Green. Ross had harbored a crush for Rachel since their high school days, when Rachel was Monica's best friend. When Rachel moved to the city, Ross' affection returned. However, Chandler convinced Ross to stop pursuing her and ended up dating Julie, drawing jealousy from Rachel, who had recently learned of Ross' crush and hoped to start a relationship with him. The two finally got together in "The One with the Prom Video". The relationship ended with Ross' jealousy over Rachel's co-worker Mark. Believing them to be "on a break", he slept with Chloe (Angela Featherstone), the "cute girl from the copy place with a belly-button ring". When Rachel found out, she broke up with Ross in a famous scene in Monica's apartment, which involved Ross and Rachel arguing in Monica's living room while the other four Friends were trapped in Monica's bedroom, afraid of interrupting the argument. This incident is on the episode "The One with the Morning After". (The scene was so emotional that both David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston actually cried after it was shot.) The two shared an 'almost on-again, almost off-again' relationship over the years, at one point getting married as a result of a drinking binge in Las Vegas. This wasn't resolved until weeks later when - unable to get an annulment - they had to get a divorce, leading Ross to panic over being a triple divorcee. Later in the series, they slept together again, resulting in the birth of Ross' second child Emma. In "The Last One", Ross is encouraged by Phoebe to declare his love to Rachel before she leaves to pursue a career in Paris. His plea is successful and the two once again enter into a relationship. In the Friends spinoff, Joey claimed that all his friends were married.

Age and birthday

Two episodes fix Ross's birthday as October 18. In "The One Where Emma Cries" Ross names that date as his birthday. In "The One With Five Steaks and an Eggplant" he is taken on his birthday to a concert of Hootie and the Blowfish. That episode aired on October 19 and the birthday was on the penultimate day depicted in the episode.

There is, however, contradictory evidence. In "The One with George Stephanopoulos", when Joey and Chandler buy Rangers tickets to celebrate Ross's birthday on the 20th of October, Ross says that his birthday was "seven months ago". In "The One with Joey's New Girlfriend", when Gunther asks Rachel when her birthday is, claiming to be making a list of people's birthdays, Ross says, 'Mine's December...' before being cut off by Gunther.

As to year of birth, in "The Pilot", which aired in September, 1994, Ross exclaims, "I'm only 26 and I'm divorced." That would mean that Ross was born in 1967 (assuming that in using "26" he was not projecting forward to his upcoming October birthday). A person born on October 18, 1967 then would be expected to graduate from college around 1990, and we later learn that Ross and Chandler were Class of 1991. The discrepancy is not that great, and could be explained by Ross having taken some time off between high school and college, perhaps when he tried to "make it as a dancer" as revealed by Monica in The Last One. Although in "The One with Ross's Library Book" Ross replies to an attractive woman, who read his book, that he skipped 4th grade after her comment, that he looks younger than she expected. But this could easily not be true meaning that he only said that to impress her.

Ross's age is not, however, always treated consistently. He describes himself as 29 in each of Seasons 3, 4 and 5. In Season 3, he tells Chandler "No, thanks, I'm 29" when offered chocolate milk, in Season 4 when the guys try to party without Gandalf they all say they're 29, and in Season 5 when he's trying to reconcile with Emily he says either he does or he would get divorced for the second time before age 30. However, a drunk man refers to Monica as Ross's mother at Ross's wedding rehearsal dinner in London. She is later depressed and having to be comforted by Chandler for having a "30 year old son."

Also to add to the confusion, in "The One with the Videotape", while Ross is telling the "western Europe" story to try to get a girl into bed, Ross claims that he backpacked across Europe in 1983 then whispers to himself "I was thirteen?", implying he was born in 1970 or 1969.

Children

Ross has two children. The elder, Ben, is Ross and Carol's son. He was conceived before their divorce. Born in "The One with the Birth", Ben lives with Carol and her partner Susan. He was named after the name on a janitor's uniform worn by Phoebe as she attempts to escape from the janitor's closet that she, Susan, and Ross are trapped in while Carol was in labor. At first, Ben is a shy boy, but an afternoon spent with Rachel transforms him into a mischievous prankster. He is played by Cole Sprouse.

His younger child is Emma. She was born to Ross and Rachel, conceived in a one-night stand. Emma lived with Ross and Rachel until a fight made Rachel decide to move in with Joey, and took Emma with her. She remained there for the rest of the series until Ross and Rachel got back together in the series finale.

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