In a sixth-season episode of Mates, members of the group make what they contemplate to be a horrifying discovery: Chandler Bing can’t cry. The revelation comes by way of a fluke (they’re watching E.T. and, confronted with the lovely alien, Chandler’s eyes keep dry). However the scenario, because it so usually does on Mates, shortly escalates. Earlier than lengthy, Joey is accusing his greatest good friend of being “useless inside.” Monica is interrogating her husband, trawling for tears. All she succeeds in doing, although, is increasing the listing of issues that fail to make Chandler nicely up: the sight of a three-legged pet, the dying of Bambi’s mom, the considered changing into a father.
Chandler, the episode will later reveal, is extraordinarily able to crying. The actual punchline of “The One The place Chandler Can’t Cry,” although—and the irony—is that Chandler is, in some ways, the emotional anchor of this present. On the floor, he would possibly appear to be the least partaking of the six buddies: professionally steady, financially safe, blandly competent. His defining characteristic is his sarcasm. Had he been portrayed by one other actor, he may need supplied little greater than comedian reduction: Chandler the smart-talker, the clown, the man who appears to be like on the world and sees little greater than an countless joke.
However Chandler was performed by Matthew Perry, and the casting made all of the distinction. Perry, who died this weekend on the age of 54, was as gifted a dramatic actor as he was a comedic one. And he summoned each abilities to create a personality who’s indelible exactly as a result of he’s a lot greater than merely humorous. Perry gave Chandler a top quality that’s widespread amongst actual individuals and uncommon amongst sitcom characters: vulnerability.
When Perry was forged to play Chandler, he was 24: the youngest member of the Mates ensemble, taking part in the character who in some ways appeared the oldest. When the present’s near-instant success introduced fame, he chafed. Perry spent years preventing habit and overcoming it. He advocated on behalf of others who fought the identical battles. That work, Perry mentioned final 12 months, was his life’s proudest achievement. But it surely was work that additionally served the function that earned him his fame. Perry put ache into every efficiency.
This was, in its manner, radical. Sitcoms, historically, erase the world’s anxieties whilst they channel them. Their environments are stridently insular; their characters face issues, however hardly ever actual precarity. Mates follows that system so fully that it may possibly verge on callousness. Phoebe, the present reveals, frolicked residing on metropolis streets. Her mom took her personal life. The collection treats these particulars, for probably the most half, as extensions of Phoebe’s charming eccentricity. The characters on Mates get a lot of their mileage from maximalism: They’re bigger than life and subsequently protected against the unhappiness it may possibly convey.
Besides, that’s, for Chandler. He has been harm—by his dad and mom’ divorce, by loves he has misplaced—and he’s open concerning the wounds. He had a bohemian childhood (his mom wrote erotic novels; his father hosted a drag present in Las Vegas). He reacted by turning conformity into a way of life. He went on to withstand a benchmark of maturity: the willingness to open himself as much as different individuals.
Mates reached its juggernaut standing in the course of the interval when “emotional intelligence” was remodeling from a coinage right into a cliché. And Chandler embodies the transformation. He’s the present’s most conflicted character as a result of he’s additionally its most self-aware. “When my dad and mom obtained divorced, that’s after I began utilizing humor as a protection mechanism,” Chandler says at one level, and the one factor that’s shocking concerning the analysis is its bluntness. Via Perry’s efficiency, in any case, audiences already find out about Chandler’s tendency to deal with jokes as his defend.
With each arch remark and wry smile, with each completely timed pause, Perry made Chandler extra sophisticated, and extra messily human. He translated the outdated adage “Comedy is tragedy plus time” into the pert vernaculars of the sitcom. Chandler lives in a perpetual state of misalignment, his inside life chafing towards his outer circumstances. He appears to be like like a corporation man however acts like a young person. He has the overall look of an grownup who has mastered the artwork of adulting. However he’s additionally a man who has chosen to furnish his eating space with a foosball desk, who ruins an expert alternative as a result of, when his interviewer mentions “duties,” he’s unable to stifle his amusement. If Mates is a present about rising up, its curiosity is centered on Chandler: Will he develop up? Can he?
That’s the reason Mates was capable of deal with Chandler’s tears as a plot level. His potential to cry mattered as a result of Perry made it matter. “It’s about intercourse, love, relationships, careers, a time in your life when all the things’s potential,” the present’s preliminary pitch promised. Chandler, although, is Mates’ most acute acknowledgement of the opposite aspect of that assure: Maturity is a gradual act of compromise. To develop up is to acknowledge what number of issues received’t be potential. Chandler spent 10 seasons studying that. That he laughed as he did so made the lesson much more poignant.
