There are so many shows where best friends in the first season of a show somehow find themselves in love, or even married with children, by the time the series finale comes around. And though it mostly occurs in sitcoms, as it hilariously causes weird rifts in the friendship dynamics, there are a few instances when it’s happened in procedural sci-fi shows too.
Between hooking up while tracking down Marvel supervillains, heartfelt LGBTQ+ relationships in Netflix originals, and the most iconic “will they, won’t they” relationship of all time, it seems like TV best friends always end developing feelings one way or another.
Scrubs
Though they had a great bromance, it wasn’t J.D. and Turk who ended up together in the end. The medical sitcom Scrubs was rife with friends crawling all over each other, including Turk and Carla, but none fell harder for each other than J.D. and Elliot.
The two had an almost Ross and Rachel-like on-again, off-again relationship that lasted throughout the whole nine seasons. They were such good friends that when they weren’t together, they were totally fine meeting each other’s new other halves. But in the end, the two get married, and the last fans hear about them is that they’re expecting a child.
How I Met Your Mother
Ted and Robin first met in the very first episode of How I Met Your Mother, and though it looked like she was going to be the mother in question, the show threw fans off the scent, countless times.
Though she had a fling with Ted, she actually ended up marrying Barney, and it seemed like Ted was friend-zoned forever. However, just as fans had thought all those years ago, Robin did finally end up with Ted, in one of her most divisive love life decisions.
Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Though the idea of best friends turning into something more is a narrative trope more commonly found in sitcoms, it was more than prominent in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. For the most part, the relationship between Fitz and Simmons actually carried most of the show.
Fitz and Simmons both worked for S.H.I.E.L.D., as one was a biochemist and the other a weapons specialist. And though they bounced off each other so perfectly, they somehow kept getting separated due to their work, and they finally got their happy ending. However, since the series isn’t actually canon in the MCU, technically, Fitz and Simmons were never really a thing.
The Good Place
Just like Scrubs, The Good Place has a surreal and fantastical narrative, as it sees Eleanor in a heaven-like utopia after she dies, despite having a morally ambiguous life when she was alive. Over the course of the series, she learns to become a better person, and at the same time, falls head over heels in love with Chidi.
In the show, Chidi is assigned as Eleanor’s soulmate, but it takes them a good while to actually reach the point, as they find themselves as better friends, at first.
The X-Files
In what is one of the most overlooked procedural TV series of recent times, audiences tuned in for the extra-terrestrial fun stuff, but they stayed for Mulder and Scully. They were one of the most fascinating working partners in TV, and for a long time, that’s all it was.
But by the time the series finale of The X-Files rolled around, they were holding each other in bed, uncertain as to what the future would be. And in the movie, The X-Files: I Want To Believe, they are still in a relationship six years later, more head over heels in love than they ever were.
The Big Bang Theory
The Big Bang Theory is yet another sitcom in which almost all of the characters are, at one point, all over each other. And though there have been many heartbreaking separations throughout its 12-year run, there have been just as many best friends falling in love.
Between Sheldon and Amy and Howard and Bernadette, everybody got their happy ending. But more heartwarming than any other couple on the show, Penny and Leonard got there in the end too, as Leonard had been pining over her ever since episode one, seemingly destined to be friend-zoned forever.
Friends
The clue is in the name, as no other six friends on TV have ever been more incestuous than the ones in Friends. The fact that Ross and Monica are brother and sister didn’t even stop them from sharing a kiss, at one point.
Ross and Rachel always had feelings for each other from the very start, and it was even just recently revealed in the Friends reunion special that the actors who played them had an off-screen thing for each other too. But the couple who were genuinely best friends for so long without having any feelings for each other was Monica and Chandler, who couldn’t get enough of each other after one night in New York and went on to become the most stable couple on the show.
Schitt’s Creek
Schitt's Creek is one of the best LGBTQ+ shows on Netflix right now. The hit comedy has seen David jump from guy to guy, but he finally realized that what he was looking for was right in front of him the whole time.
Patrick is David’s business partner first and foremost, but over time, he has become more of a love interest, and it’s one of the most gripping parts of the series.
Seinfeld
Though Seinfeld is most famous for having the tagline, “a show about nothing,” there was another major rule that the show went by, which was “no hugging, no learning,” but that rule was almost broken in the series finale. In the first episode of the two-part finale, the gang is in a plane that they think is going to crash.
They all start screaming their feelings out loud, and at one point, Elaine says to Jerry, “I’ve always …” and then the plane stabilizes. Though it isn’t clear exactly what she was going to say, many fans felt that the two always had a thing for each other, and it isn’t hard for fans to imagine what could have been.
The Office
Office flings are not uncommon, but it has never been so full of drama as it has in The Office. The obvious couple who started out as best friends in the show is Pam and Jim, as the two flirted with each other for years before they actually shared their first kiss.
But the real relationship victory is Dwight and Angela. They went from simply being casual coworkers in season 1 to being in a relationship to being friends with benefits to finally getting married in the very final episode of the nine-season-long series. And because of that, the show was arguably all about them the whole time.