You’d have to have been living under a rock not to know that Matthew Perry, the actor who played Chandler Bing in Friends, one of the most beloved (whatever you might think of it now) sitcom of the 1990’s and early 2000’s, tragically died, aged just 54, this weekend.
Much has been written already about his knack for comic timing, his brutal relationship with addiction and his own seemingly fractured personal life. I won’t write about those things, because I remain wary, even in our ever-confident comment culture of writing about things I have borne no witness to and know nothing about, except from second-hand commentators.
What I do have an opinion about is what I know and saw of Friends, which was mostly a weirdly shiny bunch of 20 and later 30-somethings who had great hair, never seemed to work, or take their shoes off in their bafflingly expensive apartments.
Friends as a series hasn’t aged very well, particularly with Generation Z, who dislike the perceived fatphobia, transphobia, lack of inclusivity, complete lack of realistic economic urgency, and view Ross in particular as the prototype for whiny male entitlement and passive-aggressive relationship toxicity that popped up a lot in similarly huge shows (see: Dawson in Dawson’s Creek, Ted in How I Met Your Mother, most of the male characters in the Big Bang Theory etc.)
But the Ross-Rachel storyline eclipsed a much healthier relationship and male character: the Monica-Chandler relationship and Chandler Bing himself. Without going to deeply into the character of Chandler Bing (which has also been done endlessly the last 48 hours), his character has probably aged most realistically precisely because he was the most angst-ridden but more because of his believable and touching friendship-which-became-a-relationship with the character, Monica Geller.
I think of all the legacies left behind by Friends, the one we – and young people in particular – should pay attention to is the Monica-Chandler relationship.
The slightly off-centre (in the show) Monica-Chandler relationship is a tribute to the kind of relationship that often gets ignored or forgotten in our algorithm-driven, app-obsessed, social-media-moment culture: the warm, slow-grower relationship that may have started in years of friendship that suddenly creeps up on you, and makes you go ‘oh, of course, this person was perfect for me all along!’
I should know. I’m about to marry and have a baby with a man I’ve known and loved on a number of levels since I was a teenager, but only got together with in the last couple of years, when I finally realised, he was The One.
Young people ask me all the time about what makes a great relationship and the perfect match, and precisely because we all came of age watching Disney and later being convinced there is a kind of algorithmic art and science to falling in love, we spend all our time looking for Lightning in a Bottle moments, we often fail to see what was under or noses all the time.
Additionally, because we spend so much time with our noses buried in our phones, we often completely miss the everyday connections and beauty of what’s all around us – and that can also be the people already closest to us, who mean the world to us, and we’ve loved for years.
It feels like a deeply sad time now; with wars raging, populations divided and famous people we were fond of as kids, dying.
So, it’s more important than ever to look up, look around, and seize the day. In a world that can make us feel scared, dislocated and alone, your friends, your actual flesh and blood friends (not online hangouts) are becoming more important than ever.
And who knows, what you might see if you really pay attention to the people, you’ve loved your whole life?
At a time where social media seems to be dividing us far more than uniting us, romance apps are delivering anything but romance and loneliness in every age demographic continues to spiral, maybe our true salvation and happiness lay in our own Friends after all?
They probably won’t be as shiny, bouncy-haired or bizarrely carefree as the famous sitcom, but look carefully – maybe what we’ve all been looking for since becoming adults was there all along?
#RIPMatthewPerry #GenerationZ #TheOne #LightininginaBottleMoments #GenerationA #friends #FindYourJoy
That's lovely - baby Combi is so blessed to have parents like you x