Why Matthew Perry’s awkward Chandler Bing was relatable

Joey (Matt LeBlanc) waiting for Chandler (Matthew Perry) in a scene from the '90s American sitcom F.R.I.E.N.D.S

Go well, my friend. That is how a world, one that is still coming to terms with the collective grief of Matthew Perry's sudden demise at age 54, is pouring out its last words for the man for whom words were his best defence.

The prophetic Chandler knew, 'I guess I'll be the one who dies first.' And he did.

‘Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.” That’s how begins his memoir, an emotionally exacting yet a riveting, brave and hopeful go-to, it literally could have been titled in its reprints ‘to hell and back’ had Perry’s medications didn’t consume and pull him into the abyss of his hot tub on Saturday night.

He held out his hand to the sufferers. Before the world judges the addicts, time it poured into mental health infrastructure and sensitisation more. If fellow drug/alcohol addicts came to Perry, he’d help them and tell them, ‘yes, I know how to do that. I will do that for you even if I can’t always do it for myself.’ And he created the Perry House in Malibu, a sober-living facility for men and wrote his personal message of a play for the world, The End of Longing. “When I die, I know people will talk about Friends, Friends, Friends. And I’m glad of that, happy I’ve done some solid work as an actor, as well as given people multiple chances to make fun of my struggles on the world wide web… but when I die, as far as my so-called accomplishments go, it would be nice if Friends were listed far behind the things I did to try to help other people,” he wrote in his memoir.

Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing (Flatiron Books), published exactly a year ago on November 1, 2022, is Perry’s raw memoir that takes a dig at itself and not present itself as a victim or a martyr or patting his back for having made it all by himself, while he actually did that. In a delusional world, self-awareness and courage is what Perry lived, taught and left us with. His addiction, illness and paralysing loneliness, and surviving through it all by himself, in a hot tub, with a little help from friends (virtually mostly, and literally when Courtney ‘Monica’ Cox and Lisa ‘Phoebe’ Kudrow stood by him). He taught us not to judge and to always lend out that hand to pull someone else from drowning, into addiction (drugs, alcohol or what have you), to hold out that lantern even if your own life is in the dark tunnel with no end in sight. It is when we hit rock bottom that we become the greatest strength for those flailing their arms around us. Ask Perry what it is to live and die in loneliness, longing for belonging, but you can’t because there is no direct-to-home phone connection between heaven and Earth yet.

Joey, Ross and Chandler from Friends.

If Joey was about sex and food, Ross the insecure foot-in-mouth grumpopotamus about dinosaurs and divorces, the triple nipple guy got a layered character arc that he essayed with a lot of heart and verbalised a personality trait for many who remained unrepresented on screen until then.

Chandler taught the millennials, in what is a watershed moment, to laugh at themselves and showed what non-toxic masculinity can be like. The one who disarmed with his wit and his waiting. Ever so patient and accommodating. He made the awkward cool, and wry sarcasm the sought-after.

A scene from the show.

And all the phobias (trans, queer, homo) his character ailed from, Matt did a decent job of essaying a cis-het character of his time, a data-cruncher trapped in an emotional-comprehensional-analytical flux, who had no means or tools to process his parent's reality, and how that shaped him. Turned him into a conservative, despising that which remained unexplained to him. He was never sensitised about the possibility of myriad realities, genders, choices. Heck, he was an unhealed child in a man's body, who didn't even know that all fights don't end in break-ups until Monica invited him into the vicissitudes of an adult relationship.

Chandler and Monica.

It were the '90s, and writing of such a character, a product of his time (by David Crane, the show co-creator and co-writer, an out-gay guy) was, in effect, a response to and criticism of the said phobias than an endorsement of them. You can also say a lot by choosing not to go at something all hammer and tongs. To see it as the latter is a simplistic reduction. To judge a Chandler, who had his own anxieties, from today's lens is doing Matty and the creators of Chandler a great disservice. To judge history from the present lens is tricky.

Some American films, of course, by then, had addressed the inherent phobias of White Supremacists. The show could have been radical. That reality exists, and is valid. Praise the good, acknowledge what could have been great. Chandler Bing was good and flawed, like a lot of us. He said a few triggering things. That was the show writer giving us a glimpse of how conservative America shape young people and we, the conservative or yet-to-be awakened Indian youth, who hadn't come of age yet, saw that awkwardness being translated on screen and it made us introspect, gasp and cringe, as well. That screen projection of our fault lines made him relatable. That vulnerability was relatable. Because he was a loving character, not an all-out abominable cut-out caricature, Chandler made us see the cracks in and through him and helped us to have a little dialogue with our own selves, see and fix our own cracks.

Chandler Bing holding a Gabriel García Márquez novel in Friends.

Matthew Perry is dead, Chandler Bing lives on. "I make jokes when I'm uncomfortable." It's the greatest survival tool nobody else equipped us with. Chandler wasn't hold-your-tummy funny, his brickbats were sardonic, deadpan and dark. If nobody else laughs at your jokes, you laugh yourself. That, along with the art of waiting and soft masculinity, will remain Chandler's & Perry's greatest legacy. Matthew Perry is one of those rare actors who brought so much of himself to the character.

Phoebe, Rachel and Chandler

He gave hope to a lot of us growing up in the '90s, on our darkest, most difficult days. May peace finally be an inseparable bedfellow. There can be no F R.I.E.N.D.S without Chandler Bing/Matthew Perry (1969-2023). As a '90s child, rewatching that '90s show won't be the same ever again. Wish, like his dinner rehearsal on the sitcom, he gave us a funeral rehearsal, because I  rarely practise my tears before I smile — oh, wait, his entire life was that, only we never cared enough.

Matthew Perry (in centre) with his actor-dad John Bennett Perry (in white) in a still from 'Fools Rush In' (1997).

A 5-year-old Perry was made to travel between Montreal and Los Angeles, straddling between his separated parents. At 14, he was a nationally-ranked Canadian tennis star. At 24, Perry nabbed a role that will change not only his life but the lives of millennials across the world, the role of a lead cast on the then-titled pilot Friends Like Us… The 2021 documentary Friends: The Reunion, a remembrance of things past, was a tepid attempt to make the grim world to scratch its memory and laugh once again. If, to borrow a phrase from a fellow film critic, Aswathy, “sitcoms have saved many lives from drowning. They are the coastguards of the virtual world,” Perry’s memoir will be the friend many out there suffering, silently, will keep turning and returning to.

He was loved and spurned in equal part. He lived through cancel culture long before the term became fashionable. Matthew's other sitcoms (Go On; Mr Sunshine) and films, both mainstream and independent, Numb, A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, Almost Heroes, The Whole Nine Yards, Three to Tango, 17 Again, The Ron Clark Story, Birds of America, demand a separate article. Another show of his that I have heard so much about, both great (Perry's acting chops) and not-so-great things is Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Today, is about losing that friend from F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

As Marta Kauffman, co-creator of the NBC sitcom, writes in the Foreword to Perry’s memoir: “…Matthew was able to turn his pain into comedic joy for others, but, he tells us, it was at a cost. Matthew takes us through his ‘hell’ but doesn’t wallow…this book is filled with hope for the future. If you want to know about who Matthew Perry is, stay away from the rags and read this.”

I'm not great at advice, either. Rest in sarcasm, Chan Chan Man, and in your dog-child Alfred’s barks, who will, reportedly, be fostered by late Perry’s old pal Kudrow now. Yes, Chandler, you’re “the funny guy”, and I know it because I’m not a door. I'm full, and yet I know if I stop writing this, I'll regret it.

The friends in F.R.I.E.N.D.S

Dial that number in heaven to find Matman galivanting about, playing with the non-human, the more-than-human, a baby chick and a duck, cracking up to someone dancing with a turkey on their head, and if you find that black La-Z-Boy recliner next to Joey's empty in their living room, drop by Central Perk coffeehouse for Chan Chan Man will still be sitting in that orange couch waiting to burst your bubble.

F.R.I.E.N.D.S showrunners, too, gave Perry the last word in the final episode, as six onscreen friends head out of the apartment and Rachel suggests grabbing a coffee. "Sure. Where?" jokes Chandler.