Chandler from Friends wasn’t a character, but a way of life

(Also Read: Best memories from Matthew Perry’s Friends stint, fans remember Chandler Bing: We will take care of Joey)

Darkest character from Friends

If we vote for the darkest character from Friends, Chandler Bing would take the cake. Phoebe Buffay would be close competition, yes, but she seems more at peace with her past. She refers to her mother’s suicide so casually every time that it makes the others far more uncomfortable than her. On the other hand, Chandler chooses flight over fight. Joey doesn’t like sharing food. And Chandler doesn’t like a confrontation.

Sample what sounds like a Chandler wedding vow: “We swallow our feelings, even if we’re unhappy forever. Sound good?” Or the self-disclaimer, “What’s wrong with me? Oh, don’t open that door!” Matthew Perry would resonate, if this line from his memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, is anything to go by, “I’m not the biggest fan of confrontation. I ask a lot of questions. Just not out loud.”

There have been moments throughout the 10 seasons of the show where Chandler has had to face his fears: like the one where their neighbour Mr. Heckles dies and Chandler finds similarities to the lonely, old man through his high school slambook. What Chandler was feeling then is very similar to what Matthew wrote in his memoir, “It is very odd to live in a world where if you died, it would shock people, but surprise no one.” It’s a line that Chandler could’ve very well said on the show, except it would be served in the tangy sauce of sarcasm.

Humour as armour

Chandler’s zingy one-liners aren’t always directed at others, but often at himself. In those moments, we get a peek into Chandler’s troubled past, but we’re too busy laughing at him that we overlook the embedded ache. But that’s exactly what Chandler wants: he doesn’t want sympathy, but only a validation of his self defense mechanism, a pat on the back of the boy who played well. He was so busy making us laugh that he doesn’t even know how to cry anymore.

Chandler is an escapist, but a self-aware one at that. He’s not in denial, or he chooses to be, given the sweet taste of it. Remember when he introduced himself as “I’m Chandler, I make jokes when I’m awkward,” or him spelling out his morning ritual, “I say more dumb things before 9 am than what most people say all day.”

After Friends, Matthew Perry took on multiple serious roles, from The Ron Clark Story to The West Wing, which fetched him a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination respectively. But he remained at peace with the fact that his musings as a serious actor would never be able to eclipse his reputation as a funny guy. His humour was his identity, and also his downfall – and he lived by that.

Identity crisis

Unlike any other character on the show, Chandler unravels in bits and pieces throughout the seasons, like most of our works-in-progress selves do. Like Chandler, Matthew also grew up in a broken family as his parents separated when he was a kid. Chandler had to tackle an added layer of identity crisis thanks to his father’s sexuality, while Matthew battled addiction for most of his adult life.

When Chandler says, “What it must be like not to be crippled by fear and self-loathing,” that’s not an expression of pity or what-could-have-been. But a joke he’d crack to Sigmund Freud after reading his psychoanalysis. “And if you’re going to blame your parents for the bad stuff, you also have to give them credit for the good stuff,” Matthew wrote in his memoir. Of course, Chandler is aware that the real world sucks, but as Monica said to Rachel, he knows he’s going to love it.

Speaking of Monica, Chandler’s love life comes closest to hers as far as the frequency and pattern of their dating is concerned. Both of them combat self-esteem issues that come in the way of them finding love. Chandler is used to finding faults in every date he goes out with because as he said, “Until I was 25, I thought the response to ‘I love you,’ was ‘Oh crap.’”

Chandler seemed like that front-row student who secured a corporate job because he’s never had a safety net, compromised on his dating life, only to wonder if there’s anything more to life. He doesn’t have the flexibility of a masseuse like Phoebe, the creative fulfilment of a stylist like Rachel, the pleasure of cooking up a storm in the kitchen like Monica, the passion to defend his profession like Ross, or the uncertainty of an acting gig like Joey.

After years of repeatedly explaining what he does for a living to his friends, Chandler realises the lack of recognition stems from the fact that he never gave anything else a shot. Which is why once he finds his happy place with Monica, he quits his job to become a copyrighter: Could anyone BE any more competent with churning out great one-liners?

Matthew Perry also touched upon this concept of a bucket list in his memoir. He wrote, “I think you actually have to have all of your dreams come true to realise they are the wrong dreams.” Chandler, however, was so busy getting by that he never had any dreams. And if achievements like being the most financially secure of the lot was a dream, then it wasn’t one he wanted to have in the first place.

The dream that Chandler never had was to be with a friend who would complete him instead of reminding him of his inadequacy. When he saw Monica chase her missing half with blind determination, he saw in her what he had been running away from all his life. Chandler, underneath all the humour and self-deprecation, needed someone to take care of. And Monica needed herself to be taken care of.

She’d stopped pampering herself in order to be a slim girl and had replaced the urge to eat with the urge to feed others, to clean her space, and to bring everything in order. She became a stickler because she couldn’t afford to be lenient again. And Chandler yearned for a centre to lend his life some structure and purpose. As he said to Monica, “You’re high-maintenance, but I like maintaining you.”

Much like how Matthew Perry wrote in his memoir, “You are everything I never knew that I always wanted.” He died without ever getting married. But that’s probably because he lived vicariously through Chandler, who married and adopted kids, despite where he came from. I would like to believe Chandler would also turn to the man who created him, if he ever faces marriage woes: Matthew may not be there to give him advice, but he’d sure get back up to interest him in a sarcastic comment.

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