The Unfortunate Problem with Friends' Joey Tribbiani

I play Al Pacino's butt all right he goes into the shower and then I'm his butt this is Joey Tribbiani in the first season of friends seems smaller somehow is it always been purple and this is Joey in the series finale almost 10 years later if you don't see much of a difference outside of his looks well that's half of the problem but there's a lot more to the downfall of one of TV's most well-known characters than his surface level stagnation if you watch more videos like this one be sure to subscribe to nerdstalgic so you don't miss any of our latest releases nvc's friends which ran from 1994 until 2004 is an undeniably important cultural Touchstone over the course of the 10 award-winning Seasons we watch their interests develop and their careers begin end and reach New Heights we watch them fall in love get married and have children we watched everyone grow up everyone except Joey that is oh my God look at me I'm Chandler could I be wearing any more clothes at best one could make the argument that The Lovable carefree and somewhat clueless Joey Tribbiani played by Matt LeBlanc remained exactly the same during his run on Friends he started the series as a slovenly actor looking for love in all the wrong places and though he ends the series with more experience in all areas that description Remains the Same its stagnation masquerading as a character arc when we're introduced to Joey in the pilot episode of Friends we get the sense that he's a bit of an airheaded womanizer Joey stop hitting on her it's her wedding day what like there's a rule or something someone who skates through life with very little in the ways of goals or Ambitions outside of the vague star-shaped dream of becoming a famous actor and finding love or at the very least finding a date how you doing throughout the show's early days we learned that while he's not exactly a well-educated man of the world he is at least passively intelligent he is socially competent and he generally behaves like a normal adult who loves his friends and wants to indulge in life's Simple Pleasures are we still talking about sex he was relatable he was funny he was charismatic and easy going he was a fierce protector of the people he cared about and yes he could be a little bit dumb sometimes please move on go to China eat Chinese food of course there they just call it food it all added up to a character that fans adored and they couldn't wait to see where the show would take him but as time went on his personality was paradoxically exaggerated and diluted while his story was stuck mostly in place his cluelessness was magnified while every other aspect of his personality was pushed to the distorted outer edges he was barely recognizable when compared to his past self and his friends often had no choice but to treat him like a child sure Joey was never supposed to be the smart one in the friend group but this degeneration of his intelligence felt almost mean-spirited on the part of the showrunners now the same can be said to some degree about most of the main cast friends was built on familiar character archetypes and as the show got progressively more popular the showrunners and writers played up the more bombastic traits of each character because they were the ones that got the most reaction from the audience Ross got more neurotic and awkward Monica's controlling nature was often pushed to the extreme Phoebe became cartoonishly eccentric and so on but none of the characters were hit as hard by this as Joey and that's because Matt LeBlanc played Joey's idiocy with a level of charm that made him extremely likable Joey how are you doing but instead of focusing on that charm the showrunners decided the idiocy was more important this effectively ruined a perfectly good character for the sake of a few cheap laughs it's hard to pinpoint exactly where this change started happening or who to really blame because it was so gradual and as early as season 3 we see Joey's absent-mindedness on the incline when he seems completely unaware of Chandler's annoyance with him while he's building the entertainment system and then there's the bit in season 7 where he thinks America has at least 56 States and doesn't understand how a globe works first of all Utah dude you can't just make stuff up these moments which were originally used sparingly eventually became the norm for Joey's character the loyal lovable man that had been established in season one had been replaced by an empty-headed stand-in and it happened so slowly that it was almost unnoticeable until it was unignorable friends was an ever-changing show where the creative heads were constantly testing out new ideas to gauge audience interest sometimes that resulted in extremely iconic moments other times it served to muddy Up characters and slow plot progression to a crawl Joey played Parts in many of the best and worst of these little experiments but by season 10 it was clear that Joey's excessively stupid personality would not be reversed anyone still holding out hope by episode 13 when Phoebe tries to teach him to speak French had to come to terms with that Joey's character has been so thoroughly ripped to shreds that he can't even repeat basic French sentences like a toddler he resorts to straight up gibberish that sounds nothing like what he's supposed to be saying and while the combined comedic experience of Matt LeBlanc and Lisa Kudrow make this bearable to sit through it's such a glaringly obvious demonstration of how he became a parodied version of his worst self when you pair that with the fact that Joey is also the only friend to end the show in practically the same place he started his story is almost tragic in hindsight from the very beginning of the show Joey was characterized as wanting nothing more than love Fame and the companionship of his friends by the end Joey has been so dumbed down and personified that what he wanted wasn't really narratively important anymore unlike the rest of the cast the majority of Joey's story development would be offloaded onto the poorly received spin-off TV show that meant that Joey was forced to watch from the sidelines as Ross Rachel Phoebe Chandler and Monica moved on to new and exciting eras in their lives [Music] not me you can't imagine that after the friends series finale when the gang leaves Central Perk after getting their final coffee everyone got to return home to their children and spouses but Joey went home alone to his same old Empty Apartment nothing changed for him while everyone else got a wrap up his story was abandoned that depressing blow might have been lessened if the Joey spin-off was any good but it wasn't while he simply does eventually find love he is more isolated from his friends than ever before when he moves to La he spends most of the show as a jaded bitter jerk I was nominated for a daytime soap award again and I go I wish I could take it but seating's limited which is somehow a worse character assassination than the one he went through on friends even at his dumbest Joey on friends was always an optimist but spin-off Joey couldn't be further from that positive Carefree guy fans fell in love with and not of it actually matters because NBC and Warner have tried their hardest to sweep the whole show under the rug even if you wanted to it would be very difficult to watch that part of Joey's life unfold the spin-off isn't available on any streaming services and doesn't air anywhere else it's almost like they want us to forget it ever happened sure yeah how can you not remember me because of that we really just have the Friends finale to look back on the one where Joey is both fundamentally unchanged from a story perspective and yet demonstrably worse off as a character and that's a really unfortunate problem thanks so much for watching this video that's all we have for you today but be sure to let us know in the comments what did you think of Joey's character by the end of friends if you'd like more content like this be sure to like this video And subscribe to nerdstalgic [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Nerdstalgic

Views: 373,600

Keywords: Friends, Friends Joey Tribbiani, Friends Joey and Chandler, Friends Ross and Rachel, Friends Monica and Chandler, Nerdstalgic, Friends NBC, Friends Sitcom, Friends Finale, Friends Reunion, Friends Central Perk, Friends This Didn't Work, The Office, The Office Michael Scott, Parks and Recreation, That 70's Show, Brooklyn Nine Nine, How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family, Sitcoms, The Problem With, New Rockstars, Corridor Crew, IGN, Screen Crush, Screen Rant, Nerdist, Collider

Id: MvW8806fQoc

Length: 8min 11sec (491 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 06 2023