The death of Chandler Bing

The death of Friends star Matthew Perry still resonates even after the celebrity news cycle has moved on. Comedy writer James Cary contemplates how endings are written.

James Cary

James Cary is a writer of situation comedy for BBC TV (Miranda, Bluestone 42) and Radio (Think the Unthinkable, Hut 33).

Actor Matthew Perry looks formally away, with a US flag in the background

A 2012 portrait of Matthew Perry at the launch of a drug control initiative.

Office of National Drug Control Policy, via Wikimedia Commons.

How do you end a sitcom?

That’s not a joke. For those of us who write sitcoms, it’s a practical question. Every episode needs an ending. These days, every season needs an ending. And then the whole thing needs some kind of grand finale as the characters ride off into the sunset.

A sitcom ending should be both surprising but also retrospectively inevitable. That’s what I tell aspiring sitcom writers. The ending of a sitcom shouldn’t be a nasty shock. Nor is it just the moment where the episode runs out of time or story.

Casablanca is one of the all-time great endings. Rick tells Isla to get on that plane, and there’s the business with Lazlo, Strasser and ‘the usual suspects’. I’ve read that the writing of the ending came fairly late in the day. The Motion Picture Production Code forbade showing a woman leaving her husband for another man. This seems restrictive but in our hearts we want to believe that Rick would do the decent thing.

From the very first scene of the very first episode, it was clear that the planets had aligned for this actor, this show and the viewing public. Everybody loved Chandler.

When it comes down to it, our hearts yearn for a happy ending. And if not happy, bittersweet. But mostly sweet.

The ending of Matthew Perry, star of one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, is both surprising and inevitable. No one expected him to die at the age of 54. But given his problems with addiction, it is not as shocking as it might be.

Perry confessed one of his greatest addictions, along with painkillers and alcohol, was to be the funniest. He needed to hear those laughs. In the HBO Max Friends reunion special, he said “To me, I felt like I was going to die if they didn't laugh,” he said. All comedians feel this but it seems that Perry felt it especially acutely. When co-star Matt LeBlanc recalled tripping over his mark and everyone on set laughed, Perry had to jump in. “Because I was like, ‘Somebody's getting a laugh, I can't handle it — I need to get a laugh, too.’”

No wonder Matthew Perry was so funny as Chandler Bing. He was so determined to be the funniest. And he was. From the very first scene of the very first episode, it was clear that the planets had aligned for this actor, this show and the viewing public. Everybody loved Chandler.

For most people, the death of Matthew Perry was the death of Chandler Bing. And we just weren’t prepared for that.

It was a dream character to play: a young man in his twenties who is funny because, well, he is really funny. Being funny is his thing. It’s to cover his cowardice, but he is the funny guy. Ross is the nerd. Joey is the ladies' man. Rachel is the princess. Phoebe is cooky. Monica is uptight. And Chander is the comedian whose lines were being written, rewritten and perfected by a battery of writers who are among the funniest people in the English-speaking world.

But Perry still had to deliver those lines, on cue in the right order, no matter what else was going on in his life. And a lot was going on. But he coped. He was just so funny. The only evidence of his personal demons on screen was his weight loss and weight gain. He was a consistently excellent performer. In an earlier era, when more mainstream romantic comedy movies were made, Perry might have given Cary Grant a run for his money. And then maybe Alfred Hitchcock may have given him a new lease of life.

But I don’t think Perry has been so mourned because of his talent, and that he was taken from us before his time. He wasn’t a River Phoenix or a Heath Ledger whose death meant we have been denied some truly great films they would surely have made. (Personally I feel that way about Victoria Wood who died aged 62 and had at least two more truly great works in her).

For most people, the death of Matthew Perry was the death of Chandler Bing. And we just weren’t prepared for that.

Life isn’t scripted. At least not by us. Sitcoms resemble real life. But our lives are messier, and more complicated. Our jokes aren’t as funny. And sometimes it’s just tragic.

Matthew Perry simply was Chandler from Friends. “I’ve said this for a long time: When I die, I don’t want ‘Friends’ to be the first thing that’s mentioned,” he said. It’s not hard to imagine Chandler making a joke out of that. One can also imagine Perry’s character saying, “I always figured I’d die alone. In a hot tub. Whoa, did I just say that out loud?’ And the audience would laugh because in the Friends-world, those writers have handed Chandler a happy ending: a life with Monica and their children, away from Manhattan, but forever connected to their lifelong friends, Ross, Joey, Phoebe and Rachel.

Life isn’t scripted. At least not by us. Sitcoms resemble real life. But our lives are messier, and more complicated. Our jokes aren’t as funny. And sometimes it’s just tragic. The Chandler Bings don’t get the Monicas and the happily ever afters. Sometimes the Chandler Bings die young and alone. And no-one laughs.

But the real human Perry did what one senses the fictional Chandler Bing would not or could not do: turn to God for help. A year before his death, he wrote in his memoir that at his lowest ebb, he experienced God’s presence and love, saying that “for the first time in my life, I felt OK. I felt safe, taken care of. Decades of struggling with God, and wrestling with life, and sadness, all was being washed away, like a river of pain gone into oblivion.”

Maybe it sounds cliched. But for those of us with a Christian faith, what he experienced is not a surprise but a wonderful reality.

Review

Community

Culture

Music

6 September 2024

4 min read

Oasis: If feuding brothers can get together again, maybe the country can too

Some might say Liam and Noel Gallagher’s reunion is reminiscent of Joseph, Prince of Egypt.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Two middle age rock star brothers pose for the camera in a black and white picture

Any dream will do.

Liamgallagher.com.

Get updates

There’s a man with a black rainhat and jacket on the stage swearing at over 50,000 teenagers. It’s Liam Gallagher, the lead singer of Oasis, that iconic 90s rock band. He’s singing his way through the entire Definitely Maybe album to mark the 30-year anniversary of its release. Somehow, these 50,000 teenagers know all the words, as they sing along on a warm summer evening for their rite of passage that is the Reading Festival.

I feel strangely alone in the crowd. I remember where I was when the album was first released - nobody around me was even born then. On the stage, Liam too is strangely alone. For 15 years he’s been estranged from his brother Noel – the song-writing genius behind all of Oasis’ greatest hits. He’s in a reflective mood as he sings ‘Live Forever’:

“Maybe I will never be, all the things that Ii want to be, now is not the time to cry, now’s the time to find out why”

(Live Forever)

This lyric has aged well. Back when Liam was 21 years old, about to be biggest band in the world, about to see their album become the fastest selling debut album of all time, he wasn’t seriously considering the question.

Back then, fame didn’t seem to suit him. He famously ditched a huge US tour with the band, when he was about to board the plane from Heathrow. He stubbornly refused to go on stage for the MTV unplugged concert at the Royal Festival Hall despite a packed-out audience and a full orchestra on the stage. Maybe it was youth. Maybe it was anxiety. Maybe it was some illegal substance.

Even now, at Reading, with rumours rife of a reunion tour, Liam seems a little vulnerable. He delivers a brilliant vocal performance to a huge crowd, but his hat covers most of his face for the entire concert. He mentions that he had thought the young people getting their GCSEs might have let their academic excellence go to their heads, but they turned out to be “alright” after all. And then, with more swearing, more swaggering guitar chords and more defiant sneering vocals, there comes more vulnerability:

Their song brought the country together in a pledge of hope. While terrible things are going on around us in our world, we need all the togetherness and hope we can get.

“All this confusion, nothings the same to me, I can’t tell you the way I feel, because the way I feel is oh so new to me”

(Columbia)

Liam dedicates “Half a World Away” to his brother Noel, and then the promise of something more… “27/08/2024 8am” is revealed on the huge screen. Is there going to be more to the Oasis story? Could the feuding brothers have buried the hatchet? Have they listened to their own lyric – don’t look back in anger – and decided to drop the bitterness and animosity and find a new way forward?

I wonder how the reconciliation happened. I like to imagine it was like Joseph, Prince of Egypt and wearer of coat-of-many-colours, finding himself face-to-face with the brother who tried to murder him all those years earlier, and privately breaking down in tears before declaring “God meant it for good”.

I like to imagine it was like Joseph’s father Jacob, Patriarch of Israel and hot-headed runaway, returning to his twin brother Esau after two decades of separation, praying he would be received favourably, and overwhelmed when his prayer was answered.

‘Some might say’, excuse the pun, that the timing of this impossible reconciliation is less to do with making peace and more to do with making money. The Gallagher brothers have both been through costly divorces. Perhaps they have seen the appetite for megatours as demonstrated by Taylor Swift’s Era’s extravaganza.

A few days later there is controversy brewing around dynamic pricing which is adding to the rumours of extortionate profiteering. Presale tickets initially range from £73 to £205, with standing tickets priced around £150. Then resale prices skyrocket, with some tickets listed for as much as £6,000—approximately 40 times the original price. It remains uncertain how much of these profits Oasis directly receives.

And then there is the timing. Next year the ownership of the Oasis back-catalogue reverts back to Noel. Only a few months ago Queen sold the rights to their back-catalogue to Sony Music in a record-breaking $1.27 billion, surpassing previous deals such as Bruce Springsteen's sale for $500 million. A sell-out tour will go a long way to upping the value of the Oasis catalogue.

Whatever the motivations, whoever is profiting, and however genuine the reconciliation, the reforming of Oasis, in my eyes, is a great moment for our country. I’ll never forget the woman who spontaneously sang “Don’t Look Back in Anger” after the minute’s silence to remember the 22 Ariana Grande fans killed at the Manchester Arena terrorist attack in 2017. While Noel and Liam were still feuding, their song brought the country together in a pledge of hope. While terrible things are going on around us in our world, we need all the togetherness and hope we can get.