So Long, Chick
We have to be honest: Chandler was the best Friend. It’s not even close, is it? I can understand why some people might not nominate Chandler as their favourite, but I can only assume that those people hold neither funniness, nor depth of character, as the highest values in a sitcom. But there can’t be that many of them: most of us know, as surely as we know that Frasier will never work without Niles, that Chandler was the best Friend.
He was the best Friend at the beginning of the series, when the writers didn’t really know who their characters were - as is pretty common in American sitcoms - and just packed each episode with telegraphed zingers and attempts at generating catchphrases. In those days Ross and Monica were boring, Rachel was cliched, and Phoebe and Joey were stock company TV idiots who were grating more often than they were amusing. It’s a miracle Friends lasted long enough to become a good show. I think it wouldn’t have, without Chandler.
Because even then there was more to Chandler. He was funnier than all the other characters, and he was more relatable too. He was a loser, but not a moron like Joey or a sap like Ross. He expressed more of the frustrations and the contradictions and the stupid irresistible desires of life than any of them. So often in the early days his role was to snipe from the sidelines, but in doing so he was revealed as the Friend who had things to say.
Later on the show was much better and all the characters were a lot more fun. Monica and Rachel developed various neuroses, vanities and obsessions that made them interesting. Joey’s sexy stupidity developed layers of childlike innocence and eccentricity that made him loveable and much funnier. Phoebe became ever more bizarre but also ever more acid-tongued, and was far more interesting for the cruel touch her personality acquired. And Ross, who for at least the first two seasons was just a downer, became weird and pathetic and hopelessly lost in the world, and his suffering made him a laugh riot.
And Chandler…was still the best. The others started mediocre and got good. Chandler started good and got great. By the end of the series, when everything was more complex and more sophisticated, and the writers had learned to work in tandem with the cast to develop many more ways to skin a cat, Chandler was still the funniest, still the most interesting, still the one you most wanted to hang out with, and still the one whose fate you were the most invested in. By that time, Chandler and Monica’s relationship had gone way beyond Ross and Rachel.
A lot of the credit for Chandler must go, obviously, to the writers. They’re the ones who gave him all the best lines. But let’s not kid ourselves: the producers of Friends hit gold when they snagged Matthew Perry to play Chandler. Here was an actor as blessed with the gift of comic timing as any, but whose ability to flawlessly nail a one-liner was combined with an even rarer gift: the ability to make even a ridiculous sitcom character beautifully - sometimes painfully - human.
Perry, as far as I can tell, was himself beautifully, and too often painfully, human. It’s too easy to simply draw parallels between the insecure character and the man who played him. It’s even easier to pronounce solemnly on the phenomenon of the sad clown or the tortured artist. I didn’t know the man, I’ve no idea how close he was to his character, or how much his talent was inextricably bound up in his internal turmoil.
What I know is that this guy has been making me laugh for nearly three decades, that he possessed gifts precious few do, and deployed those gifts in a way that was an eternal blessing to the human race. I also know that, having made his mark on Friends, too many people have underrated just how good he was, and how difficult it is to do what he did at that level. I know that he did masses of great work apart from Friends, and that though never as celebrated for it, he gained the respect and appreciation of many for that too: he proved himself as a great sitcom actor, but there was more.
I know that he suffered, and he agonised, and he looked deeply into himself and thought about what he found there, maybe a little too much. I know that he was not one to wear fame easily. I know that now he is gone.
But what I know more than anything else is the truth that will stand forever: Chandler was the best.