THE ONE WHERE CHANDLER CHECKS OUT... BY SANDRA HARRIS.
BY SANDRA
HARRIS. ©
I never got around to writing something about the FRIENDS’
Reunion in 2021. Ah shure, I’ll write something next time they’re in the
news, I said to myself. Sadly, the next time the cast of FRIENDS made
the news headlines was just last weekend when Matthew Perry, aka Chandler Bing,
one of the most popular cast members, was found dead in the hot tub/jacuzzi of
his six-million-dollar California home. There was no-one else on the property
at the time and any autopsies have so far proven inconclusive.
That’s so sad. But just look at Robin Williams, one of the
world’s funniest comedians on the outside, and on the inside he suffered like
crazy and eventually took his own life because he couldn’t go on. I’m not
saying that poor Matthew Perry has gone down the same route. That hasn’t been
proven yet at all.
I’m probably just saying that it’s often the jokers and the
wits and the funny guys who feel the most pain on the inside. The comedy is
their way of masking that pain. We all wear a mask ourselves most days behind
which we hide who we really are. It’s not all that uncommon, you know.
FRIENDS is a sitcom about six chums all living together and working
and finding love in New York, a tough place to be if you don’t have your
‘friends.’ See what I did there? Lol.
They were all in their twenties, I think, when the show
started in around 1994, all wide-eyed innocents looking for adventure; then, by
the time it ended forever in 2004, they’d grown more mature, more rounded out
as human beings both emotionally and maybe a wee bit physically as well...! We’d
actually watched them come to mature adulthood in real time on our television
screens. Some of us ‘grew up’ with the characters on the show, as it were.
Ross was always my favourite male character, with his
paleontology, his gay ex-wife and their co-parenting, his fastidiousness, his
too-white teeth that time and the leather trousers that got stuck to his legs
and his on-off relationship with the spoiled, pampered Rachel Greene, played by
Jennifer Aniston with the hair every girl wanted to have in the 1990s.
I wasn’t crazy about Joey, the DAYS OF OUR LIVES daytime
soap star who always seemed like he was a little bit one-dimensional to me.
When he saw a cute girl, he’d go: ‘How YOU doin’?’ When he came upon
people eating off the floor, he’d produce a knife from his inside pocket, drop
down on his hunkers and drawl; ‘Alright, what we havin’…?’ And let’s not
forget that ‘Joey doesn’t share food…!’
Chandler I always liked though. He was so insecure about
himself, he used to make the self-deprecating jokes and get his spoke in first
before others had a chance to. He was forever looking for love, though he once
went to Yemen to get away from one particular girlfriend, the excruciatingly
loud but well-meaning Janice ‘Oh Moy Gawd’ Hosenstein.
When he started dating Monica, the obsessive-compulsive
cleaner-tidier, I was delighted for them both. They each deserved their happy
ending, and why shouldn’t love be right there on their own doorsteps? It takes
some getting used to in the FRIENDS camp. We the viewers find out before
a shocked Ross does. ‘Get offa my sister…!’
Chandler Muriel (yes, Muriel!) Bing of all people
deserves a happy ending. The character’s home life is a bit of a train wreck.
His parents are kind of an embarrassment to him. His mum, Nora, played by the
exquisitely bitchy Morgan Fairchild, who can deliver the cuttingest put-downs
whilst looking like a china doll fresh from its box, is an erotic romance
novelist. Dirty books, in other words, snigger.
Chandler’s father, Charles, is a gay female impersonator who
goes by the stage name of Helena Handbasket. He’s played by Kathleen Turner,
who does him down to a T, with a gravelly, smoke-battered voice and a nice line
in cutting put-downs of her own. His own. Sorry, her own. Or their own? Whatever, lol.
And when Charles and Nora come face to face, you’d better
duck because the air will be full of insults all hurtled with the speed and
deadliness of Hephaestus’s javelin. While Chandler dies a thousand deaths from
mortification, we, the viewers, laugh till we cry.
The main reason for Chandler’s
dreadful insecurity is probably that his parents announced that they were
getting a divorce over Thanksgiving dinner when the poor lad was only nine. Well,
that would put the willies up anyone, although some folks might say that Nora and
Charles separating is no bad thing, seeing as they’re pretty much toxic
together.
Chandler's job in statistical
analysis and data reconfiguration (or, as Rachel has it, in the
fateful quiz that causes her and Monica to lose their apartment to Chandler and
Joey, as a ‘transponster!’) sounds as dry as dust. On the other hand, it’s easy to see that Monica is the
light of his life and he feels blessed to have her. She’s a wonderful chef as
well, so he needn’t fear that his getting hitched to Monica will deprive him of
his best pal Joey. Joey goes where the food is…
I bought my daughter Matthew Perry’s biography for Christmas
of 2022. It’s called FRIENDS, LOVERS AND THE BIG TERRIBLE THING, the
latter being his addiction to drugs and substance abuse. Apparently, he was out
of his mind on drugs when he made some of the FRIENDS episodes. I don’t
know if he was still taking them when he died or if he’d come off them, but it
seems like kind of a lonely way to die either way, all alone in a hot tub.
My son said to me today that he wondered if Matt Perry knew
that he was loved by the public. I had to reply that I didn’t know. You can be
at the top of your game, beloved by your fans, friends and family, able to buy
a six-million-dollar house in a great area with all the amenities, and still
slip through the cracks and want to throw it all away. It’s sad but it’s true. Here’s to
Chandler Muriel Bing and the man who played him for a decade on TV. Could he be
any more of a legend…?
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