2023-10-30 16:01:10
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Waking up Sunday morning, October 29, and hearing the news, I had the unenviable duty of picking up the phone and sending a message to my sister: “RIP Chandler Bing.”
“Quoi ? !!!”
I announced the death of Matthew Perry, found unconscious in his jacuzzi. He is the first of the Friends gang to disappear.
“Ohhhh, it’s like a part of our childhood is gone.”
This response touched my heart.
She wasn’t wrong. My sister and I had amassed numerous VHS tapes of the beloved sitcom and spent the ’90s watching Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Ross, Joey and Chandler navigate daily life, relationships, job problems and the third nipples.
This tight-knit group of young adults who lived out of each other’s pockets and spent most of their paychecks on coffee at Central Perk was a kind of after-school treat for us. We would watch two or three episodes after homework, and the series served as a sort of soothing balm. In a way that today we would call “parasocial interaction” – the social media age term for adults’ imaginary friends, with a healthy dose of toxicity – they became our friends. At least, as part of a happy daily routine.
My sister and I did not cultivate a twisted relationship with these fictional characters. We just sat around watching their constant shenanigans and ended up connecting as siblings on a different level by referencing popular culture. In other words, we picked up some of their lines in our interactions and laughed at the references we had in common.
Obviously, it was Chandler that we cited the most.
Chandler was the one everyone cited the most.
As Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman said in the 2021 reunion special: “when Matthew reads the dialogues, they sparkle”.
There have been “you have to stop using the cotton swab when there is RESISTANCE” to criticize the other.
“I’m going to Yemen!” we would regularly say when asked where we were going.
The pivotal scene allowed my sister and me to no longer just say “Shut up”more “shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!”
Matthew Perry’s lines, exceptional comedic timing and speaking cadence were always perfect, and he made every joke memorable.
He was also a great physical performer, who clearly appreciated slapstick and the merits of a well-executed punchline.
Season 4 was one of our favorites, so much so that the tape was skipping. She was so worn out by the end of so many viewings that the arrival of the DVDs was something of a godsend for our “Friends” sessions. After all, it was a time, before endless reruns and streaming.
During the 1994–95 season, Chandler felt like the center of attention, especially with the ongoing storyline in which he became infatuated with Joey’s girlfriend Kathy, leading to tough test the central bromance of the series. In the eighth episode, “The One With Chandler in a Box“, Matthew Perry even managed to steal the show out of sight and inside a box, and break your heart by bending a little finger when he says goodbye to Kathy from the hole. ‘air.
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And then there’s my favorite scene, from my favorite episode of Friends: season 4, episode 12 – “The One With the Embryos“.
The boys and girls engage in a heated game of question and answer, imagined by Ross, with the girls’ apartment at stake. When the boys win, Chandler and Joey arrive as victors, riding this dog sculpture to Monica and Rachel’s apartment.
Chandler eats a sandwich and smiles while stretching his arms.
It’s not much, but it’s so memorable. Wordless comedic gold, and arguably one of the best entries of all time.
In hindsight, Chandler could have been a loathsome character. On paper, he was the eternal sarcastic one, whose insecurities were clearly kept at bay by an incessant need to make others laugh.
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And the class clown act eventually got boring, as my classmates at the time confirmed to me.
However, Matthew Perry managed to find warmth and a charming awkwardness in the role. Depth, even. We understood that Chandler needed to laugh so that his life was not empty, that his deadpan humor hid deep feelings of inadequacy and doubt.
“Hello, I’m Chandler, I make jokes when I’m uncomfortable”the character even admitted.
In real life, Matthew Perry suffered similar afflictions. Unbeknownst to the public for most of the show’s run, his battle with drug and alcohol addiction took its toll.
He opened up about his insecurities, his drug addiction and his recovery in his memoir, “Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing,” published last year.
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“Hello, my name is Matthew, but you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead”he wrote in the introduction, referring to the fact that doctors had given him a 2% chance of survival after his colon burst due to opioid abuse.
“I had a secret and no one could find out. I felt like I was going to die if the audience didn’t laugh, and that’s not healthy. But there were times when I said a sentence and the audience wasn’t laughing, I was sweating and sometimes convulsing…If I didn’t get the laugh I was supposed to get, I panicked. That’s what I felt every night. This pressure made me feel uncomfortable. I also knew that out of the six people doing this show, only one was sick.” he writes again.
Matthew Perry also participated in the television series “Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip” (written by The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin), at “The West Wing“and to”The Good Wife”as well as a handful of films, including Fools Rush In, 17 Again et The Whole Nine Yardsalongside Bruce Willis.
Last night, unable to sleep, I saw again “The Whole Nine Yards”as a tribute.
The comedy about dentist Nick Oseransky (played by Matthew Perry), who finds himself living next door to a mobster, “Jimmy ‘The Tulip’ Tudeski” (played by Bruce Willis), wasn’t much of a challenge for Matthew Perry, since he was playing a version of his character from Friends. It’s a throwback to Hollywood’s golden age of slapstick comedies, but one that was perfect for Matthew Perry’s physical talents – as well as an ideal role for Amanda Peet, who is irresistible throughout of the film.
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Despite the film’s constant bashing of condiments (mayonnaise is ALWAYS necessary on a hamburger and that’s it), the whole thing is quite charming. It is true that it is always tempting to praise past films following the death of an actor. That is not the case here.
The “Whole Nine Yards” is just wind, but entertaining wind. The film also gave us an interesting anecdote, since Matthew Perry made a bet with Bruce Willis, in 1999, that if the film was first when it was released, Bruce Willis would be invited in the show “Friends”. He won, and Bruce Willis agreed to appear on the show for free, with his fee going to a charity of Matthew Perry’s choosing.
Like his co-stars, especially the boys, Matthew Perry didn’t really break into the cinema once the 10 seasons and 236 episodes of “Friends” ended. But those seasons and episodes helped make Chandler one of the most beloved sitcom characters of all time.
My sister, as usual, is right. Just like when Robin Williams died in 2014, a piece of our childhood was gone. But, like Chandler riding the white dog with his best friend, arms outstretched and celebrating, Matthew Perry was a champion of comedy.
This is how I will choose to remember him: laughing uncontrollably with my sister in front of the television, Matthew Perry triumphed by making the audience of the show and the television audience laugh.
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