Out With A Bing.

You can say whatever you like about Friends. It may be dated and have all kinds of behaviour and dialogue that some unbearable prude would like you to think bordered on essence-of-Viking, but that doesn’t really matter as it isn’t true and, crucially, Friends had the advantage of being funny. And what’s even more important is that Friends is still funny and it probably will be for the rest of time. At least I hope so because I do fear that one day humankind will stagnate to such a degree that the only things left that we’re allowed to laugh at are idiots doing voices for small animals on YouTube and the BBC comedy ‘Ghosts’; which is amusing rather than funny and serves as a very good example of the distinction between the two. That Friends is still proper funny, laugh out loud funny, and let’s just rewind that and watch it again funny is a testament to what you can get when you have a team of good writers and a handful of actors that gel well enough to deliver whatever is thrown at them. There is no doubt that all of the Friends cast were capable of delivering good lines but no-one was as funny as Chandler Bing, and now Chandler Bing won’t be funny again. Ever. Even if he wanted to be.

As you might have heard, over the roar of an impending Armageddon in the Middle East, Chandler Bing is no more because Matthew Perry is no more. No more in the sense that there is never anything more once you’ve been found unresponsive in your hot tub. My first thought was that he was a nice man but not a very happy man, tortured as he was by his numerous addictions and possibly by the fact his career never continued on anywhere near the level it was when Friends finished. Of all the main cast members he seemed to me the most naturally gifted and yet he was one of those poor sods that was forever trapped by one character, to the ludicrous extent that it wasn’t even possible to rely on being typecast; once you’ve played Chandler Bing there’s nowhere else to go. Oh, but what a glorious character to own. What a splendid, magnetic personality to be allowed to inhabit; stoned, drunk, wired or straight, it didn’t really matter – Matthew Perry may not have always hit the mark with every line as Chandler Bing but his strike rate was phenomenal compared to anyone else in almost any other sitcom of that or any other era.

Everyone who likes Friends has their favourite. There used to be thousands of women who would change their hairstyle as regularly as Rachel, who wanted nothing more than to be her, only never quite as good. Ross got funnier and more pathetic as each series went by and Joey managed to get so stupid it was almost a relief to remember that someone was making all that stupid up. Monica was in there for the common sense control freaks and Phoebe represented all the hypocritical, high-minded, self-centred, underhand, faux-hippy vegans (for this is essentially what she was). Chandler Bing on the other hand had a sadness none of his friends could reach. His job was to be crippled with self-doubt and a deep seated lack of confidence but all the while trying to cover this up with a sharp mind that would suggest the complete opposite. His job was to give weight to the very compelling notion that sarcasm is the highest form of wit, not the lowest (lowest being a notion often only championed by those with no or little sense of humour at all, hence the resentment). And Matthew Perry himself would admit that he didn’t so much play Chandler Bing as be him, always chasing a laugh and as addicted to that as any other of the things that ultimately ended his life at 54 – some will say too early but I prefer to take the line that more often than not you go when you go and better just to make your peace with that; if everyone lived to be 100 we’d be in a double shit-pickle right now.

Perry was always admirably blunt about his flaws and vices and if he was bitter about the second half of his career he never let it show enough to take away from what he had achieved nor wallow too much in the self pity of acknowledging that the rest of his life, no matter how long he had left, was always going to be difficult. He claimed he had no recollection of roughly three years worth of Friends and that is quite a scary thought. Kelsey Grammar may have got away with it on Frasier, and Perry did on Friends in one sense, but his un-luck was to be the sort that could never fully let go of his demons and that one of anything naughty was never enough; it’ll be interesting to find out what was floating around his bloodstream in the hot tub but I’d surprised if it was nothing more than cinnamon tea and an aspirin.

I’m not sure Matthew Perry is a hero of mine but Chandler Bing certainly is and since they are one and the same the loss seems like double. It just seems unfair that there are so many famous people out there who are thoroughly bereft, absolutely barren, of any worthwhile talent and who will live long and happy lives providing what history will judge to be a bloated, entertainment free disservice all round and then you get the actor who played one of the greatest comedy characters ever and now he’s gone, never to return. It also feels very odd, and very early, to know that there are only five out of six members of Friends left to keep us happy; not that they do that much now, but it’s still out there and as popular as it ever was – at least it’s not been reduced to nothing by cancel culture just yet. I hope Perry is resting now, another unhappy funny man spending his time out of the spotlight by doing not much more than haunting himself. As in life, so in death. What a talent he was, and so kind to bring us what he thought Chandler Muriel Bing could be. I doubt anyone could have done it better. RIP, you lovely mess of a man.

G B Burton. 29.10.2023