Generation Friends

by Saul Austerlitz

  The show promoted a series of work-arounds to this challenge, allowing its characters to mature in tandem with their cohort. In season 9, Phoebe would be paired off with Mike Hannigan, played by the endlessly winning Paul Rudd. While he was superb on the show, even someone as gifted as Rudd felt decidedly secondary in the presence of the charmed circle of Friends.

  David Crane was attracted to two simultaneous, and often contradictory, beliefs. The first was that they should surprise the audience and avoid delivering the overly expected plot twist. This was especially relevant the longer the show progressed, with marriage and children calling each character to their overly cozy embrace—something Crane hoped to hold off for as long as possible. The second was that Friends had promised its audience that, whatever the curves and switchbacks it carved on its circuitous route, it would eventually give them what they wanted. Crane was professionally and emotionally invested in the idea of satisfying the audience, but he was also constitutionally ill inclined toward doing so without complications. He was starting to wonder: What if Joey developed feelings for Rachel?

  It was one thing for Rachel to fall for her hunky assistant or Ross to get entangled with a comely college student. To take Rachel and manufacture an unexpected romance with another friend who was not Ross was to rattle the audience with the force of what they had not expected and likely did not want. Nonetheless, the idea of trying out Rachel with Joey had been nagging at Crane for some time. Monica and Chandler had gotten married, and Friends had sidestepped Monica’s expected pregnancy by getting Rachel pregnant instead. Now that Rachel was pregnant, and Ross was revealed to be the father, it was practically de rigueur that the two finally, at long last, get married.

  Crane wanted a roadblock placed in the way of Ross and Rachel redux, and what more substantial complication than to have another friend develop feelings for Rachel? Chandler was out of the question (although that might have made for a very interesting alternate-universe plotline), and while Joey had been coarsened over time into a dumb-actor stereotype, pairing him off with Rachel might reawaken some of his dormant sentimental streak.

  The idea was totally wrong, and Crane knew it. Joey and Rachel did not belong together. Friends’ audience did not want to see them together. And the show’s actors were making a highly persuasive argument against embracing this plotline. “You can’t do that!” Crane remembered their telling him, united in their antipathy toward this idea. “That’s like having a crush on your sister!” They went on, exercised by their displeasure: “It’s like playing with fire!” Crane agreed with them but believed playing with fire was exciting. There was a reason children had to be warned away from doing it.

  Crane saw it as putting up a temporary structure composed of equal parts solid and crumbling bricks. Joey’s love for, and fidelity toward, Rachel as a friend would suddenly blossom into something deeper. It was wrong, Crane felt, for Rachel to even consider dating someone else as she was carrying Ross’s baby. Ultimately, Rachel and Joey would serve as a privileged interlude, a speed bump delaying what might otherwise have been an inevitable conclusion, but Crane believed it would also allow the audience to see Joey in a new, heartbreaking light.

  Joey had been, from the very start, an unapologetic horndog, eternally single and in search of the next conquest. He was the guy who had a nickname for his penis (the Little General, upgraded from the Little Major). When Ross attempts to defuse Joey’s discomfort at Carol’s breast-feeding his son, describing it as the most natural, beautiful thing in the world, Joey responds, missing the point entirely, with, “Yeah, we know, but there’s a baby sucking on it.” When newly minted stock guru Monica announces her motto is “Get out before they go down,” Joey smiles into his cereal and responds, “That is so not my motto.” Joey was kind—we saw him befriending a single mother in the hospital in “The One with the Birth”—but he was also allergic to commitment and inclined to see women as inducements to pleasure and little more.

  The show itself had understood the thought of Joey and Rachel to be taboo. In “The One with Rachel’s Book,” from the seventh season, Joey had discovered his new roommate’s taste for erotic fiction and, intrigued and flustered, sought to embarrass her by declaring it a kind of feminine pornography. Rachel’s sexuality is confounding to Joey, and he returns to it time and again until Rachel unexpectedly turns the tables on him. If he is so interested in her sexual expression, then why don’t they just do it? “Come on, Joey,” she coos at him, “sex me up.” Cornered like every cowardly catcaller, Joey nervously backs away from the threat of unchecked feminine eros: “I don’t want to. I’m scared.”

  The eighth season begins in a swirl of conflicting stories and confusing developments in the aftermath of Chandler and Monica’s wedding. After finding a positive pregnancy test, everyone knows someone is pregnant, but no one is quite sure just who. The courtly Joey gets it in his head that it is Phoebe who is shortly to become a mother, and he approaches her, taking her hand in his and soulfully wooing her: “It’s a scary world out there. Especially for a single mom. I always felt that you and I have a special bond, so . . .” He drops to one knee and takes out a ring box: “Phoebe Buffay, will you marry me?” The truth is sorted out, although not before Phoebe vigorously and enthusiastically accepts his proposal. (When Monica points out that he might notice something is amiss when no baby arrives in nine months, Phoebe replies, “It’s Joey!” She then turns to him and mouths, “Love you.”)

  Joey proceeds to undo some of the audience’s goodwill toward his exceedingly gracious gesture by repeating the same speech, verbatim, this time for Rachel. Rachel lets him down gently: “You are so, so sweet, honey, but I’m not looking for a husband.” (Surprisingly, given where she starts on the series, Rachel flourishes into the most plainspoken feminist voice on Friends.)

  Some dormant chivalrous gene has been awakened in Joey nonetheless, and a handful of episodes later, in “The One with the Stain,” he expresses his disappointment at the prospect of Rachel’s leaving in his own inimitable Tribbiani fashion, calling her “the hottest roommate [he] ever had.” (Joey’s roommates have included a dancer played by model Elle Macpherson, so the compliment is genuine.) Joey sets up a crib in the living room and even offers the baby the use of his beloved stuffed animal Huggsy.

  Joey is simultaneously courtly and crude, and while he occasionally rankles Rachel with his Catholic-schoolboy mentality, as when he tells her, “You can’t be a single mother alone,” he is mostly intent on pledging his support.

  Rachel is pregnant and miserable at the start of “The One Where Joey Dates Rachel.” She is worrying over the impending birth, and Joey’s asking for a restaurant recommendation reminds her how much she misses getting dressed up and going out on a date. Joey, discovering his latent gallantry, offers to take Rachel out on a date of her own, and Rachel, pleased to be invited, agrees.

  In the next scene, Rachel is preparing herself in the bathroom when there is a knock on the door. She calls out to Joey to tell him to answer it, but when he does not respond, she clomps to the door, where Joey sprawls across the door frame. He offers her lilies—her favorite flower—and a brownie. The gesture is sweet, even when Joey admits that the brownie is “actually just a bag. It’s a long walk from the flower shop, and I was starting to feel faint.”

  Rachel complains of “a hint of morning sickness and I’m wearing underwear that goes up to about there,” slapping the waistband against her chest. She is trying to break the illusion, but Joey is insistent on treating this like a real date. “So, nice place you got here,” he observes as he struts around the apartment, taking it all in. “Foosball, huh? Pizza box. Subscription to Playboy—my kind of woman.” Rachel tells him these belong to her roommate, and Joey asks if he is good-looking. She says he is, and he says it “must be tough to keep your hands off him.” Joey is enjoying the role-playing so much that when Rachel jokes, “I’m pretty sure he’s gay,” he bristles: “No no,
he’s not, why are you trying to ruin the game?”

  In the next scene, Rachel corners the waitress and requests a different side dish to go with her filet mignon instead of steamed vegetables: “Is there any way that I could substitute the three-pound lobster?” Joey proves his bona fides as a thoughtful date by ordering the same meal for himself.

  Rachel begins talking about getting him the rent check, and Joey demands she stop. They are on a date and must act like it. “Wow,” Rachel tells Joey, “I get to see what Joey Tribbiani is like on a date. So, do you have any moves?” Joey tells her that he does not, that he just acts like himself—then bursts out laughing: “I couldn’t even get through that.” He has two go-to moves. The first is arranging to have a bottle of wine sent over by a “fan,” followed by his saying, “This is so embarrassing.” The second is to lean in and murmur, “I was going to wait until the end of the night to kiss you, but you’re just so beautiful.” He asks Rachel what her move is, and she tells him it is to ask, “So, where’d you grow up?” Joey is unimpressed: “Rach, you’re lucky you’re hot.” But she insists that he respond to her question and its follow-ups, and after a minute or two of delving into the complexities of his relationship with his father, he stops himself, amazed. Rachel gets up to go to the bathroom, telling him as she passes him, “And now you’re watching me walk away.” “So simple!” Joey exclaims.

  As they arrive home, Joey enthuses about their evening, saying it was the best date he’s ever been on: “I never knew I could enjoy the non-sex part of a date so much.” Rachel asks about “end-of-the-night moves,” and Joey reluctantly shares his secret: raspberry-flavored lip balm to “make my lips look irresistible.” Joey has made himself vulnerable by revealing the actorly tricks of the trade necessary to be a ladies’ man and asks Rachel to open herself up. She resists, then reluctantly agrees, asking Joey to stand up. “When we’re at the door, I lightly press my lips against his,” she says, putting her finger up to his chin, “and then move into his body just for a second, and then I make this sound.” Rachel releases a low moan, and then immediately relinquishes the stage, insisting that it really does work.

  Joey needs no such assurance, rendered entirely unable to speak by her brief performance. Rachel gives him a brisk peck on the cheek and says good night, and Joey is left blinking in the living room, his brow furrowed. He tries to physically shake off the spell Rachel appears to have cast on him, seemingly without much success.

  This still feels like a joke—Rachel can even have Joey catching feelings!—but the next scene between them recasts the moment in another light entirely. Rachel suggests that they watch Cujo, one of Joey’s favorite films, together. Joey agrees before Rachel reminds him of his big date that night. She then goes on to ask him a question: “After our date last night, did you feel a little weird?” Joey enthusiastically chimes in: “Oh my God, you did too? It totally freaked me out. What was that?” Joey is referring to his emotions—a foreign country of which he is only dimly aware, like Sri Lanka—but soon realizes Rachel is talking about the lobster, which made her sick all night. Joey covers up, saying he was sick, too: “Yeah, you don’t want to look in my hamper.”

  Joey is out that night with a sultry, dark-haired, short-skirted beauty who is practically the epitome of what we know of Joey’s taste, but he struggles to feign enthusiasm for her dull Stephen Baldwin anecdotes. She heads off to the bathroom, and Joey takes in the view, his long, low exhalation an acknowledgment that, if forced, he could settle for this. Nonetheless, he returns home early from his date. Rachel is watching Cujo, and Joey is appalled that she would watch such a scary film alone. He pulls up a stool, and she asks him, “What are you doing over there? Come sit here. You protect me.” Joey perches on the edge of Rachel’s chair, and she drapes her blanket over him. When Cujo appears again, she pulls him down beside her, covering her face and cowering: “Seriously, how could you watch this? Aren’t you scared?” The camera pulls in on Joey’s face as he admits a fear of an entirely different kind: “Terrified.” He slowly, reluctantly wraps his arms around her, only just beginning to take in the feelings he hardly knows how to acknowledge.

  Echoing Ross’s earlier misstep when contemplating dating Rachel, Joey crafts a list of his dislikes but (in what is perhaps intended as a reminder of Joey’s inherent kindness) comes up with only one item: Rachel made him switch to light mayonnaise. Joey’s brain is engaged in a losing battle with his heart, pleading with him that all is well as we hear him shakily tell Rachel (in voice-over), “I love you.”

  Joey is convinced, much like the show itself, that Rachel and Ross are destined to wind up together, and so what use can his feelings be in the face of such fated romance? The show tilts the playing field away from Ross, with Joey the natural caretaker and gentle presence soothing Rachel’s turbulent pregnancy. He is the one who knows pickles make her sick and happily accepts the job of scarfing down her sandwich to remove it from her sight.

  Ross is possessive and judgmental (he keeps referring to her as “Rachel who’s carrying my baby,” implying a certain sense of ownership), and Joey is gentle and giving. Joey ultimately tells Rachel how he feels, breaking the news gently to her while at dinner: “I think I’m falling in love with you.” Rachel looks behind her, convinced this is all a particularly foolish practical joke, before understanding dawns and she seeks the words to let Joey down easily: “I love you so much, but . . .” It is surprising to see Joey, the ever-vigilant lothario, now helpless in the face of unrequited love. He delicately cuts off Rachel, telling her he knew it was coming, and when she worries about losing him, he reassures her: “Hey hey, you can’t—ever.”

  The Joey/Rachel story line is a three-handed dance, with Ross the invisible partner crowding their every step. Before even telling Rachel of his feelings, Joey assures Ross that he has no intentions of pursuing Rachel: “I am never going to act on this Rachel thing.” After Joey imagines Rachel taking a break from childbirth to tell him that he was “the best sex I’ve ever had,” he pictures the baby coming out with Ross’s face on it.

  Joey’s feelings appear to die away, and Friends feints in the direction of dropping the plotline before the eighth-season finale, “The One Where Rachel Has a Baby,” in which Ross reconsiders the possibility of romance with Rachel. You might mess everything up, Phoebe tells him, “or you might get everything you’ve wanted since you were fifteen.” Joey, meanwhile, is holding a despondent postpartum Rachel’s hand, promising her, “You are never, ever going to be alone.” Joey discovers the heirloom ring that Ross’s mother gave him earlier in the episode, fruitlessly encouraging him to propose to the mother of his baby, and swivels to face Rachel. Without his saying anything, Rachel believes he is proposing and replies, “Oh my God—OK.”

  Friends, as always, revels in the bafflement of its audience, delivering the plot twist that it was not suspecting while withholding the one it anticipated. And this will not be the last instance in the Rachel/Joey saga in which the end is not the end. The ninth-season curtain-raiser, “The One Where No One Proposes,” begins with only Joey aware that no one has intentionally proposed to anyone else.

  Ross, eternal lover of love, the man married more times than he can rightfully keep track of, is almost convinced that he has proposed to Rachel before Joey clears the air. He apologizes profusely to Rachel for the confusion and almost instantly reverts into the clueless horndog we expect. He watches the baby nurse and exclaims, “Man, that kid is going to town!” Order has been restored, and Joey is once more a bystander to the ever-fluid romance of Ross and Rachel, who are now living together.

  Later in the ninth season, Joey hits on Phoebe when she serves as an extra on his show, telling her, “Sorry, I’m just so used to hitting on the extras.” Almost every extra on the show chimes in that they slept with Joey, too. We are being granted a privileged glimpse of Joey’s softer side at roughly the same time in the series that his caddishness is being emphasized fo
r laughs. The interlude with Rachel is a canny attempt to humanize Joey, but he is doomed to remain clueless as ever when it comes to treating women outside of their charmed circle respectfully.

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  But Friends is not content with static relationships or preordained outcomes, and Rachel soon moves back into Joey’s apartment. It takes him until the fifth morning to remember to wear pajamas, but there is an easy comfort between him and Rachel that is noticeably lacking in the fraught, jealous, strangely hostile face-off with Ross.

  In another reversal, it is now Rachel who finds herself nursing unexpected feelings for Joey. It is Rachel who dreams of forbidden erotic encounters and is surprised by the ferocity of her unconscious desires. It is now Joey who blithely tells Rachel that the only time he was ever in love was with her, saying, “And that makes me think about all those times I wanted to grab you and kiss you, but you didn’t know, so I would just pretend everything was cool, but really it was killing me.”

  Now Joey is channeling Rachel’s feelings without knowing it, and Rachel is squirming with discomfort at having to keep a secret. (This plotline echoes an earlier reversal, when Rachel was carrying a torch for Ross after he began dating Julie.)

  In the ninth-season finale, “The One in Barbados,” Joey is dating paleontologist Charlie (Aisha Tyler), who finds herself attracted to Ross. Joey is frustrated by his bad run of dating luck and castigates himself for always going after the wrong girl as he flops onto his bed. Rachel, speaking with exceeding gentleness, tells him this has not always been true, but Joey, his heightened agitation demanding motion and action, is out the door and into the hotel hallway almost before she has finished speaking.