In a sixth-season episode of Pals, participants of the gang make what they believe to be a frightening discovery: Chandler Bing can’t cry. The revelation comes thru a fluke (they’re looking at E.T. and, faced with the lovable alien, Chandler’s eyes keep dry). However the scenario, because it so regularly does on Pals, temporarily escalates. Earlier than lengthy, Joey is accusing his highest buddy of being “useless within.” Monica is interrogating her husband, trawling for tears. All she succeeds in doing, regardless that, is increasing the listing of items that fail to make Chandler smartly up: the sight of a three-legged pet, the demise of Bambi’s mom, the idea of changing into a father.
Chandler, the episode will later divulge, is terribly able to crying. The actual punchline of “The One The place Chandler Can’t Cry,” regardless that—and the irony—is that Chandler is, in some ways, the emotional anchor of this display. At the floor, he would possibly appear to be the least attractive of the six buddies: professionally strong, financially safe, blandly competent. His defining function is his sarcasm. Had he been portrayed via every other actor, he would possibly have presented little greater than comedian reduction: Chandler the smart-talker, the clown, the fellow who seems to be on the global and sees little greater than an never-ending comic story.
However Chandler was once performed via Matthew Perry, and the casting made the entire distinction. Perry, who died this weekend on the age of 54, was once as proficient a dramatic actor as he was once a comedic one. And he summoned each skills to create a personality who’s indelible exactly as a result of he’s so a lot more than simply humorous. Perry gave Chandler a top quality this is not unusual amongst actual other folks and uncommon amongst sitcom characters: vulnerability.
When Perry was once solid to play Chandler, he was once 24: the youngest member of the Pals ensemble, enjoying the nature who in some ways gave the impression the oldest. When the display’s near-instant luck introduced reputation, he chafed. Perry spent years combating dependancy and overcoming it. He advocated on behalf of others who fought the similar battles. That paintings, Perry mentioned remaining yr, was once his existence’s proudest success. However it was once paintings that still served the position that earned him his reputation. Perry put ache into every efficiency.
This was once, in its approach, radical. Sitcoms, historically, erase the sector’s anxieties whilst they channel them. Their environments are stridently insular; their characters face issues, however hardly actual precarity. Pals follows that method so utterly that it could actually verge on callousness. Phoebe, the display finds, frolicked dwelling on town streets. Her mom took her personal existence. The sequence treats the ones main points, for essentially the most section, as extensions of Phoebe’s captivating eccentricity. The characters on Pals get a lot in their mileage from maximalism: They’re higher than existence and subsequently safe from the unhappiness it could actually convey.
Aside from, this is, for Chandler. He has been harm—via his folks’ divorce, via loves he has misplaced—and he’s open in regards to the wounds. He had a bohemian formative years (his mom wrote erotic novels; his father hosted a drag display in Las Vegas). He reacted via turning conformity into a way of life. He went on to withstand a benchmark of adulthood: the willingness to open himself as much as other folks.
Pals reached its juggernaut standing all over the length when “emotional intelligence” was once remodeling from a coinage right into a cliché. And Chandler embodies the transformation. He’s the display’s maximum conflicted personality as a result of he’s additionally its maximum self-aware. “When my folks were given divorced, that’s once I began the usage of humor as a protection mechanism,” Chandler says at one level, and the one factor this is sudden in regards to the analysis is its bluntness. Via Perry’s efficiency, in spite of everything, audiences already find out about Chandler’s tendency to regard jokes as his protect.
With each and every arch remark and wry smile, with each and every completely timed pause, Perry made Chandler extra difficult, and extra messily human. He translated the previous adage “Comedy is tragedy plus time” into the pert vernaculars of the sitcom. Chandler lives in a perpetual state of misalignment, his internal existence chafing in opposition to his outer cases. He seems like a company guy however acts like an adolescent. He has the overall look of an grownup who has mastered the artwork of adulting. However he’s additionally a man who has selected to furnish his eating house with a foosball desk, who ruins a certified alternative as a result of, when his interviewer mentions “tasks,” he’s not able to stifle his amusement. If Pals is a display about rising up, its pastime is targeted on Chandler: Will he develop up? Can he?
Because of this Pals was once ready to regard Chandler’s tears as a plot level. His talent to cry mattered as a result of Perry made it topic. “It’s about intercourse, love, relationships, careers, a time to your existence when the entirety’s conceivable,” the display’s preliminary pitch promised. Chandler, regardless that, is Pals’ maximum acute acknowledgement of the opposite facet of that ensure: Maturity is a gentle act of compromise. To develop up is to acknowledge what number of issues received’t be conceivable. Chandler spent 10 seasons finding out that. That he laughed as he did so made the lesson much more poignant.
