Matthew Perry saved Friends by making the writers drop a storyline where Chandler cheated on Monica
It's funny when Ross cheats on Rachel, but it would've broken Friends if Chandler had cheated on Monica
Aux News Friends
A lot of people are taking Matthew Perry’s death as an opportunity to reflect on Friends, and actor Lisa Cash—who appeared in one episode of the show—shared a surprising reveal with TMZ about a bullet that the show was apparently only able to dodge because of how much Perry cared about Friends and Chandler Bing. According to Cash (Variety says nobody involved with the production of the show has confirmed any of this), she was hired for the 1999 episode “The One In Vegas: Part 1” to play an employee at a hotel that Chandler was going to cheat on Monica with.
Supposedly, this would’ve been part of a storyline where Courteney Cox’s Monica had lunch with ex-boyfriend Richard and Chandler got very upset about it, causing the two of them to have a big argument and somehow leading to Chandler cheating on Monica while in Las Vegas. Cash says that, the day before shooting the episode, Perry himself went to the writers and explained that “the audience would never forgive [Chandler] for cheating on Monica,” and the storyline was cut. Cash’s role was then switched to a flight attendant in a scene with Ross and Joey instead.
Cash suspects that the original version “would’ve changed possibly the course of the show and his character,” which seems like an understatement—because Perry is absolutely correct that nobody would’ve ever forgiven him, and moving forward with this storyline would’ve meant everyone involved completely misunderstood these characters. See, it’s okay for David Schwimmer’s Ross to get into those kinds of storylines, since he famously cheated on Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel while they were “on a break” in a pretty similar situation, because Ross is sort of the martyr of any given Friends storyline. You want to see him fail because it’s funny when he fails, and his character exists to make that possible while still being likable because that’s who he is from the moment you meet him. Ross is funny because he’s a loser and the audience knows he’s a loser, but he refuses to accept it with every fiber of his being.
Chandler, on the other hand, is a perpetual underdog character. Like Ross, he’s a loser, but a different kind of loser who is constantly aware of it. You laugh at him because he tries to be funny and often is not, which makes him endearing, rather than him just being the “funny guy”—which is who Joey is anyway, but we’re not here to unpack him. If Chandler ever stopped being endearing and became cruel, which is what would’ve happened if he had cheated on Monica, then he would stop being an underdog and it would break his character—and then, probably, the show.
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Did he though? It seems like at best he helped it not get worse. I remember that show being terrible toward the ends. Joey and Rachel?
Joey and Rachel made galaxies more sense than Ross and Rachel
You know I saw it once what, 25 years ago? So I don’t remember much beyond I thought it was weird. I also remember they made Ross into a total psycho didn’t they? and that he and Rachel getting back together in the end seemed really forced and abrupt.
They try to make Ross worse because Schwimmer ask for a raise that also include all of the other actors. Typical Hollywood tactic. I actually kind of surprise they didn’t kill his character.
“I actually kind of surprise they didn’t kill his character.”
Because you’re colossally stupid?
Bingo. Schwimmer is the reason they all never have to work again and the reason NBC had to pay them what they were worth.
People forget this, but after the first half of the first season, it was Schwimmer who was pegged to be the breakout star. Ross had the biggest arc and his divorce/baby/crush on Rachel drove much of the first season.He may be the most dramatically talented – or at least, the one who has shown the most interest in doing non-comedy roles. I first saw him in NYPD Blue (I know he was in other stuff before then)Ross and Schwimmer are different people. Schwimmer is a bad-ass.
Ross’s turkey sandwich meltdown was the funniest thing he did.Making him psycho was a good choice. Cringey sad sack Ross got hard to watch.Should Ross’s be Ross’ in that first sentence? Neither seems right.
My headcanon is that Captain Sobel is actually one of Ross’ disassociative power fantasies, except that Ross is so fucked in the head he’s a loser in his own power fantasy.
Thank you for that.“I want to help you, George Washington? Geez Lisa, even in your dreams you’re lame.”
“So, in this dream you have, where you’re a Captain in the 101st Airborne in World War II you’re, what, saving lives, fighting Nazis, performing brave deeds and you’re beloved and respected by the men under your command? You’re beloved, respected, a hero?”“No…no…I mostly just undermine a guy who’s a better officer than me at every chance I get, and yell at the men about trace amounts of rust on bayonet lugs and how canned peaches are United States Army property, Doc.”“Jesus Christ.”“PEACHES ARE A VITAL PIECE OF WARFIGHTING EQUIPMENT.”
I read this and was confused and then hours later realized I need to re-watch Band of Brothers.
100% “Ross’s”.Coincidentally, I once shared an office with an Australian woman and we used to have lengthy arguments about all kinds of stuff (mostly to avoid doing proper work). One of them was about whether there should be an “s” after the apostrophe in the possessive of a person whose name ends in “s”. Our boss at the time was called Ross, and it was only by pointing out the absurdity of “Ross’” in comparison to “Ross’s” that I got her to concede.
ross’ might look silly but it is grammatically correct.
Ross’s is definitely correct. Possessive is always shown by ‘s, regardless of what the last letter in the name is . . . unless we are talking about classical (i.e. Achilles’) or biblical (i.e. Jesus’) figures for some reason. I think there might also be a debate over how to show possessive in the context of states. Long story short, I’m a nerd.
From what I can make out, common usage makes both acceptable, and style guides will generally pick one or the other to maintain consistency.
Agreed. When I was an editor, we used the Associated Press stylebook, and they would have just the apostrophe after the “s.” Many other styles, though, would have the apostrophe and “s” after the ending “s.”
Both Ross’s and Ross’ are acceptable, though I prefer the former.
As a person whose last name ends with an “s” I couldn’t disagree with you more! That extra “s” is completely superfluous!
The final seasons get so much undeserved hate it’s ridiculous. It’s got so much great stuff: you’ve got Ross’s ‘I think we should be seeing other people’ as Charlie straight up makes out with her ex in front of him, you’ve got Ross wearing the same blouse as his date, you’ve got Joey learning French, you of course have the iconic ending of the show and you’ve got the following scene:
Joey and Rachel is by all means a perfect couple in real life, but a terrible couple for a sitcom given that there is not much humor in two alphas hooking up. However, it did give us one of the most spectacular storylines in all of Friends and that is the ‘Ross is fine’ story line. David is absolutely brilliant in his portrayal of Ross who is ‘totally fine’ with Rachel hooking up with Joey.
It’s funny when Ross cheats on Rachel,
Hugh Laurie gets it.
Love advice from House is both the best and the worst advice ever!
Like in most situations, House is not wrong here.
Don’t forget the best bit:“You are a horrible, horrible person.” I watched the pilot again the other night, and, yeah: Rachel wasn’t great from the get-go. Everyone seems to forget that she was literally a spoiled rich girl who’d never worked a day in her life who literally only ended up in the group because she’d just bailed on the only “job” she ever planned on getting: being a gold-digging trophy wife. “America’s sweetheart”? America’s more fucked in the head than I thought.
“America’s more fucked in the head than I thought.”
Or people can change over the course of a fucking DECADE!
If you’ve seen literally any episode of Friends (including the pilot you claimed to have watched) you’ll understand that she very specifically and explicitly did not want to be the spoiled rich girl trophy wife. Yes, she was a spoiled rich girl. That’s not her fault. She worked tirelessly through all ten seasons to establish herself on her own terms. I have no idea what show you watched.
Ross and Rachel were on a break, Bam!
I mean Sam!
I mean SPAM!!!
This would have been Ross/Rachel all over again. It just wouldn’t work. In addition to being a rehash it looks like they weren’t trying to protect Chandler like they did Ross. In that case you had a long story with Ross acting like a jealous idiot about Rachel/Mark. They fought increasingly leading to Rachel saying maybe they should take a “break from us” in that episode (they also made sure to have Ross get drunk before sleeping with the copy girl). The Ross/Rachel relationship was broken by the time it happened this just looks like Chandler getting unreasonably upset and jumping into bed with someone else. It just wouldn’t work.
I wish I could say how much I appreciate the way you are completely f*cking with [people’s] heads here.At the same time I, also, am completely head f_cked. Where do we go from here?
Chandler almost cheating on Monica after a big fight would have been a perfectly reasonable plot, but it would’ve been a pretty out of character for him to actually go through with it, and the audience (and other characters! Let’s not forget that his oldest friend is his wife’s brother.) would never have forgiven him.
For all these reasons, sure. But also: their relationship wasn’t just nice or cute, it was presented as a mutual remedy for their respective neuroses.Chandler’s constant self-deprecation and Monica’s high-strung anxiety are these self-destructive flaws they carry, that hurt their own lives more than they harm others. Together, there’s a clear sense that they’re fixing something in each other. Chandler brings a stillness and adoration Monica needs; Monica gives Chandler validation and confidence he’s never had.It’d feel like more of a betrayal because of how obviously they need each other, specifically. Ross is also neurotic and flawed as hell, but the currency of his relationship with Rachel was never quite as focused on the mutual “wounded odd duck” qualities they shared.
This is such a wonderful take! Very thoughtful and insightful. Thank you for this.
Ross didn’t and couldn’t have cheated on Rachel because … well, you know.
Chandler and Monica as a couple has held up really well in retrospect. It’s like the writers wanted to go in the completely opposite direction of Ross and Rachel and so made a really mature, loving, supportive relationship.Having Chandler cheat sounds like a mind-bogglingly stupid decision.
It sounds like lazy writing, to be honest. “What’s a good way to create relationship drama? I know! One of them cheats on the other!” If that’s all you can come up with, you’re not that good of a writer.
This.
It was the post-Sam-and-Diane problem. How do you keep a couple dramatically interesting once they’re together? Lots of immature drama! Unfortunately, this overtook a lot of tv shows for the next couple of decades. Thankfully, people like Mike Schur have explored other ways of keeping couples together and happy while still engaging to the viewers.
If you think that’s all that goes into writing you are a retard.
Lazy and repetitive! Instead of recognizing that Chandler & Monica were the opposite of Ross and Rachel, it sounds like they wanted to repeat Ross and Rachel.
It would have been horrible to repeat the Ross and Rachel soapy drama with Chandler and Monica. And more and more, it sounds like the writers lucked into writing a mature and stable relationship that fans loved and that was at times funny. I have heard that they just planned to hook up Monica and Chandler and were caught off guard when the audience loved them together. And it seems like they had no idea WHY the audience loved them together, but the late Matthew Perry seemed to. They were friends who fell in love and beyond a few hiccups, they became very solid. Friends was always a mashup between a soap opera and a sitcom, but unlike with a dramatic soap, the audience actually did delight in seeing a happy couple.
I love the scene where Chandler assumes their relationship is over because they got into an argument and Monica looks at him and just knows he’s had a bad past and reassures him they are OK. “Welcome to an adult relationship!” she tells him and kisses him.
Exactly. That was such a lovely scene, and Perry plays Chandler so resigned and dejected and then he physically brightens up when she says they will be okay.
But they were on a break!
I almost quit watching The Office when Jim started shitting on Pam.This seems similar.And it reminds me of the writer who came in for the seventh(?) season and complained about the actors shutting down all her hilarious ideas cause they thought it didn’t fit their characters.
I remember Harlan Ellison complaining about the Star Trek people saying his characters wouldn’t do the things he wrote them doing.
Or Ken Penders complaining that SEGA wouldn’t let him do anything with Sonic as a character, but then all his ideas for Knuckles were terrible.
But Harlan tried to introduce a drug dealer on the Enterprise in 1960’s era Star Trek, that never would have been allowed then, by the network, or Roddenberry. It was something that he should have known would never make the episode.
To be fair, there wasn’t much Harlan Ellison didn’t complain about.
It would have been worse if Jim had cheated on Pam with the temp girl from Season 8, which supposedly was the plan until Krasinski refused to do it, for the same reason as Perry. Just completely out of character.But yeah that S9 stuff sucked. The boom mic guy? Jesus Christ. Post Michael Office is not good.
I was just about to post this:I’m curious if that was a similar situation. John Krasinski refusing to do that makes sense, but flipping the table a bit and having Pam be the tempted one makes sense as well.Consider: This is a story arc where Jim loses his shit on Pam for the first time, which is set up to be as jarring and surprising as when Roy does the same in his own way. The episode ends with finally breaking the fourth wall and introducing the presence of the documentarians as both a presence and co-workers, the boom mic guy having been there the whole time and being shown as clearly smitten with her, as Jim was when Pam was engaged to Roy.This being the ‘credits shot’ solidifies that the writers plan to do something with this, significantly. But they kibosh it the very next episode, with Pam painting a mural, and one of the warehouse guys trying to attack her (or something), and boom mic guy defending her by hitting him with his boom mic. Okay.Here’s the story they shouldn’t have thrown out: Boom mic guy is late-series Jim. The camera throughout the series is always interested in the truth of the story, and there’s a reason someone pans to him in that moment, and without him seeming to notice.Boom Mic Guy has clearly been pining for Pam, and likely was part of the filming when Jim yells at her. It’s an emotional moment for a series that was waning, but came back a bit when Greg Daniels came back for the final season.Anyway, BMG is not someone who is being filmed, so whatever happens is off-camera, and there’s a reveal from Pam to Jim similar to her reveal to Roy, that he kissed her and she let him briefly, etc.. Rather than freak out the way Roy did, Jim is upset but keeps his composure, and gets to experience what he did to Roy, in part because he behaved like him, and also that Pam looks elsewhere when treated like that. Marriage stays intact.Instead, they went with Andy mopping a carpet. Good show overall, though.
Honestly the fact that they fully committed to the show really being filmed by a documentary crew changed the way I rewatched the show. The sheer amount of luck they had getting so many amazing shots just by filming these people over and over…I dunno I often think they should’ve done it like Parks & Rec and Modern Family – just never explain the documentary. Or do it like What We Do in the Shadows and just make fun of the whole genre, and keep killing the doc crew lol.I still love The Office, those first 6-7 years are pretty fantastic. Post Michael has its moments honestly but without Carell at the center it just feels weird.
The fact that P&R and Modern Family leaves the documentary aspect unexplained makes me think that whenever the characters talked to the camera was like when Zack on Saved by the Bell would stop time to explain things.
I agree about Carell, but respectfully disagree on the documentary style. Yes, there’s a suspension of disbelief in terms of capturing candid moments, but it’s the small, slice-of-life moments the documentary aspect adds to it, I think. The Office is such a strange pitch to people who have caught the odd late episode, because it’s essentially a 3-4 part show. Part One is the six-episode first season, which is essentially a remake of the British Office, still good, but a different show: the camera is darker, Michael Scott has no redeeming qualities, etc. The show was finding its feet.Part Two is the unofficial beginning of the real show, right from the first episode. Seasons 2 and 3 are first-ballot television hall of fame, and the dry tone of the show was refreshingly new at the time. I was in college, and remember skipping classes because my roommate was showing me this on DVD. Season 4 falls under this too, but not as much.Part Three is Seasons 5-7, in which I believe Greg Daniels departed the show, and the youth of the writers begins to show. IMHO, the show begins to lose the integrity of its characters (primarily Kevin, who turns into a very unfunny and un-human cartoon character). Some good episodes, but the cracks show throughout. The tone of the show changes entirely.Part Four is Carell’s departure and the last two seasons. Season 8 is borderline unwatchable, or at least some watchable episodes of a different show. Some episodes I remember thinking, ‘I can’t believe how bad this is.’ The final season had a lot of redeeming qualities, but the show for quite a few years had lacked self-awareness, and it was sort of just another sitcom that landed on old nostalgia near the end. Still an overall accomplishment, though! Thanks for listening to me yell at clouds.
Agreed on all points. I’m mostly ok with the doc style honestly, I just remember being floored that they actually fully committed to making it logical, unlike all the other shows.
Post Michael Office is not good.
It was pretty good when Ed Helms fucked off for a bit. Got worse immediately after he came back though.
The story I heard is they made Andy extra-douchey when he came back because they were pissed at Helms for leaving mid-season for Hangover 3. It is extremely noticeable how much he backslides as a character.
He was pretty bad at the start of the season too. I think it was more that they wanted a Michael-like character and he was the closest thing. But yeah, it veered way too far into unlikable territory.
Even Michael’s final season is not good.I’d say The Office had about six good years before they needed to take it out behind the barn.
For some reason after the Pam & Jim wedding episode I missed a few weeks and never went back to it… I think that was probably a good enough ending for me.
The Robert California stuff had it’s moments.
“I almost quit watching The Office when Jim started shitting on Pam.”
Man, the stuff they get away with on network TV these days…
I’m not sure how much people forgave Ross. His character wasn’t that likable – or well liked – by the end.
Or at the beginning or the middle
He was drunk, and she had just told him that they were on a break, which usually means that you’re broken up, the other person just didn’t want to say it.
“Being on a break” is what a woman says when she wants nothing to do with the relationship issues, but expects YOU to 1) put yourself on a shelf, 2) still be faithful to HER and 3) be immediately available to carry on for when/if she is ready to resume, whether it’s one week, one month, or even one year from now, all while not having the balls to definitively end it.It’s basically having your cake, with sprinkles, eating it too, while getting a mani/pedi, in the French Riviera, on your dime.
Sounds fake as hell!!!
TBH all of the characters annoyed me.
Chandler and Monica were kind of an oasis after Ross and Rachel, because they managed to still be funny/relatable without all the drama.
Perry was absolutely right with his protests.
Right? It’s amazing how normal – and refreshing – their normalcy was, yet still able to find humour in their relationship. It was cute and sweet, not dramatic.I think there’s a moment where Chandler wants to distract Monica, so he points out a messy closet to her and knows she’ll be engaged for hours. They bounced off each other’s foibles so well and roll with it.
I liked it when Chandler thought they were going to break up because they had a fight, and Monica realized he’d been in so many shit relationships that he didn’t realize fights were normal. “We had a fight! It’s okay!”
I also like this exchange when they try to get married in Vegas…
– “Okay, we have something blue. We need something old.”
– “I have a condom in my wallet from the eighth grade.”
– “That’ll work!”
– “I don’t think so…”
Yeah, none of their relationship is ever portrayed as being really under threat, like Ross & Rachel’s constantly was. They had funny misunderstandings and fights, not “IT’S OVER!” drama. Not Monica-related, but my favourite Chandler line is from a flashback to how he ended up getting Joey in as a roommate:“Well, one guy’s got a sister who’s a porn star and has beach house he said I could use on weekends. And the other guy, when I answered the phone and said ‘Hi, this is Chandler Bing’, he said ‘Whoa. Short message.’”
They were on a break. #TeamRoss
They already had Chandler pee on Monica, did they need to have him cheat too??
“Joey kept screaming at me. ‘Do it now, do it, do it, do it, do it now!’ Sometimes late at night I can still hear the screaming.”Still among my favorite of Matthew Perry’s line readings.
There is never a wrong time to post this.
I’d like to imagine this is how it went down:
Matthew-”Chandler doesn’t cheat. He’s not Joey. He’s not Ross.”David and Matt-”Hey! Fair.”
Ross did not cheat on Rachel. They were clearly on a break.