The audience is invited here to sympathize and identify with Carol's hurt at her parents' rejection, which is posited as cruel and unjust. Ross' statement that "if my parents didn't want me to marry you, no way that would have stopped me" also puts Carol and Susan's relationship on par with heterosexual ones.

As this episode illustrates, Ross gradually overcomes his initial hostility to Carol and Susan's relationship, particularly as his attention shifts from his ex-wife to Rachel, but he never does come to like Susan. Because Susan is presented as a likeable person in general, however, a woman whom everyone but Ross seems to get along with, Ross and Susan's mutual dislike is positioned as deriving more from their sense of competition than from any major personality flaws in either of them.

The fact that Ross ends up giving Carol away in the wedding ceremony despite his general unease with his ex-wife's lesbian relationship and his dislike of Susan, sending the message that while he might not fully understand Susan and Carol's relationship, he will support it because he cares about Carol and wants her to be happy. This message is further reinforced when we see all the friends at the wedding, mingling with the obviously-lesbian guests and celebrating Carol and Susan's relationship.

Carol and Susan are, however, always firmly marked as Lesbians in the series; while the heterosexual characters on Friends are not constantly defined by their sexuality, the lesbians cannot escape it. This is most clearly and humorously illustrated in Episode 7.16 when Ross asks Rachel what Carol's last name is, and she responds "Carol...Lesbian?" but it is also referenced or subtly implied in little ways throughout the series.

In Episode 2.14, for example, when Ross is visiting his parents and mentions that Ben is with Carol and Susan today, Mr. Geller quips, "A woman in my office is a lesbian." To the blank stares, he shrugs "I'm just saying." (Mr. Geller's non sequitur also humorously reflects the way straight people so often respond to the news that someone is gay--by mentioning someone else they know who is gay.)

Despite generally being limited the role of The Lesbians on the show, however, the women are occasionally shown having a life, as when we see Carol preparing the romantic dinner for her and Susan, and in episode 2.20, where we see Susan and Carol briefly as they're dropping off Ben with Ross on their way to visit a college friend of Susan's who just became the first female blacksmith in Colonial Williamsburg.

Feminist issues on Friends are frequently raised by The Lesbians, in fact, or somehow associated with them. There isn't anything inherently wrong with this, except that it tends to reinforce the idea that feminism--or challenging the conventional roles assigned to women--is primarily the domain of lesbians, not straight women.

This simultaneously short-changes feminist straight women, and reinforces the stereotype of lesbians as trouble-makers.

Friends perhaps more than any other show has popularized the fascination many straight men have with the idea of women having sex with each other. Rarely did more than one or two episodes go by without one of the male characters (usually Joey) making sexually suggestive comments about one of the female characters with another woman.

In Episode 3.06, for example, when Chandler's then-girlfriend Janice (Meghan Wheeler) asks the group if any of them have ever hooked up, Joey replies "Well, there was that one time that Monica and Rachel got together." When Rachel and Monica protest, saying "there was no time!" Joey leers "Okay, but let's say there was. How might that go?"

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