Whether it’s frustrating love triangles or rewarding slow burns, there’s nothing like a little romance to keep our TV and movies interesting. However, for all that on-screen couples go through to be together, there are some that only seem to let us down. From universally-agreed-upon poor pairings to some of this author’s hot takes, here are seven couples who did not have us at hello.
Content Warning: This article contains spoilers for the movie Grease and TV shows Euphoria, Bridgerton, How I Met Your Mother, Gilmore Girls, Sex and the City, and Dawson’s Creek.
Cassie and Nate from Euphoria
Let’s be honest, this heading should be [Anyone/Everyone] and Nate… Regardless, Euphoria specializes in deeply flawed and troubled characters, and all relationships involving either Nate or Cassie suffered the consequences of their unresolved traumas, deep insecurities, and toxic behaviors. Bringing them together, however, sparked a particularly wild and destructive fire. The course of their relationship, and its fallout, tore apart some of the show’s tightest friendships, and even incited episodes of both physical violence and illness. The pages of writer/director Sam Levinson’s script are far from heaven, as are the matches made within them.
Simon and Daphne from Bridgerton
The first season of Bridgerton took the world by storm, drawing tens of millions of viewers to Netflix to get their taste of the soapy, sexy British drama. At its center is the growing romance between an unlikely pairing — the social season’s diamond, Daphne Bridgerton, and a “rake” of a bachelor, the Duke of Hastings, Simon Basset. While this couple has their share of both endearing and passionate moments, a fundamental difference in their dreams and intentions for their life reveals this pairing as, at best, unable to properly communicate, or at worst, fundamentally unfit for one another. Simon’s choice to take advantage of Daphne’s lack of education on the sexual aspects of their relationship and her own body, and an intimate moment that Bridgerton seems to want us to believe was empowering for the young bride, which in reality stripped her partner of his autonomy, left this author with a terrible taste in her mouth.
Ted and Robin from How I Met Your Mother
When it comes to a failure to see eye-to-eye on life dreams, Ted and Robin know a little something about that, too. The episodic stories of How I Met Your Mother claim to circulate around Ted Mosby’s endeavors to find a wife through his thirties, but spend most of their time showing him staring googly-eyed at his friend and ex-girlfriend, Robin. The two shared chemistry, with Ted demonstrating his devotion to Robin in a myriad of ways including the repeated thievery of a blue French horn (can’t explain it, just watch and find out), but their relationship hit a dead end when it came to the realities of what their marriage would look like. The show does a fine job of convincing viewers this was an unmovable truth, and showing us how pleasant life could be for both parties with different, better-suited partners, only to change its mind. Ultimately, there’s nothing terribly wrong with Ted and Robin together, but there’s also nothing terrifically right, and the series could not hinge on the intertwining of their fates in the way that the writers seemed to think it could.
Rory and Jess from Gilmore Girls
The book in the back pocket of forbidden but irresistible rebel Jess Mariano was more than I could handle as a twelve-year-old Gilmore Girls fan. He was brusque but charming, monosyllabic but profound, and even once considered smoking a cigarette… Can you say bad boy? When I later embarked on a rewatch, I was horrified to learn I’d been blind to one of the most emotionally exhausting relationships of the show, which is saying something — Gilmore Girls is a series fraught with middling-to-poorly matched couples. Though he was just as “hooked on phonics” as Stars Hollow’s golden girl, and his difficult upbringing contextualized his flighty, hot-and-cold behavior towards her, Jess Mariano’s cool demeanor and alternative taste in books and music did not a healthy relationship make. To not forget Rory’s part in their dysfunction, it’s important to note the infidelity from which her relationship with Jess was born, a fact made worse by her consistent comparisons of her new beau to the one she’d abandoned.
Carrie and Mr. Big from Sex and the City
Carrie’s inability to move on from Mr. Big and the cringeworthy lengths she went to in pursuit of his attention have become something of a meme. The out-of-context statement “Big’s moving to Paris” is, in some spheres, a sort of internet catchphrase alluding to people who cannot see beyond their personal obsessions, even in situations entirely unrelated to those hangups. For Carrie, Big was that obsession, and she could not relinquish it even when it broke her self-esteem down to nothing, and ruined other important, healthy relationships in her life. Even while together with him, her struggles to urge a flippant and non-committal man to show her enthusiastic, or even consistent, love and attention, could be a difficult watch. Carrie sometimes gets a bad rap for this behavior, and it made her an undeniably bad friend or partner at times, but the deep hurt and confusion of an emotionally unpredictable boyfriend were well-represented in her relationship with Big, and it’s a dynamic I would wish on no one.
Dawson and Joey from Dawson’s Creek
There are some on-screen couples you spend so long waiting for that eventually both the anticipation and your interest in their actual relationship, when it does develop, dies out. Dawson, somehow the show’s namesake despite his obnoxious attitude, and his best friend turned love interest, Joey, are one such example of this phenomenon. After pining, overanalyzing, and endless angst, the two make it together for an underwhelming and short-lived relationship, which is revived a few times throughout the show’s seasons to little effect. The show tells its audience over and over again that Dawson and Joey are soulmates and two halves of a whole, which means very little except for that they struggle with trust and boundaries, and when faced with a love triangle with Joey in the middle, it doesn’t really hold up as a convincing argument for Dawson’s side. Ultimately, the intrigue of the “girl next door” trope sours into pettiness and friendship-eroding drama.
Danny and Sandy from Grease
It’s with a heavy heart that I add this iconic couple to this list, but the message of Sandy’s end-of-movie getup feels impossible to justify as some kind of healthy compromise. When good-girl Sandy finds out her summer fling is actually a too-cool-for-school greaser, it seems as though we’re in for a story of defying stereotypes and being true to oneself in pursuit of love. What we get is… not exactly that.
After butting heads about wholesome versus rebellious lifestyles and behaviors, we find Danny donning a letterman jacket in the final scenes, showing timid signs of a more “square” lifestyle, while Sandy shows up in head-to-toe leather, ankle-breaking heels, and dramatic makeup. One could read this transformation as a shy and modest girl finding the confidence to take what she wants, and it’s true that she chooses this new look for herself, but it certainly also reeks of self-objectification and the sacrifice of one’s identity for the sake of a boy’s attention. As a long-time Grease lover, I give this questionable couple some grace, and imagine the life they drive off into with hope, but still can’t ignore the red flags that appear on-screen.
Whether these couples are end-game or ill-fated, their faulty dynamics undermine the magic of their romance. While there are no perfect pairings on-screen or in real life who can easily handle all issues and live out an effortless relationship, these dysfunctional matches also show that sometimes, two people just aren’t made for each other.
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