"How you doin'?"
Joey Tribbiani is a child in a man’s body.
"You're a man-child!"
And because of that,
he embodies the stage of life that Friends is capturing --
that time when the world views you as an adult,
but you still kind of feel like a kid,
when having fun with friends is a top priority
and you’re not tied down with major responsibilities.
It’s like Joey's meant to live in this twilight zone
between adolescence and adulthood forever.
"'Sup with the whack PlayStation, 'sup?"
You might say that of all the friends,
this character most embodies the philosophy of the show,
which we discussed in our Romance of Friendship video --
the idea that friendships are the great romances of our lives.
“Is this friendship?
I think so!”
For Joey this is most literally true,
because his friends are the only partners he ends up with.
In many ways,
youthful, never-changing Joey is the true heart of the show,
reflecting the deeper message and moment of life
that Friends is all about.
“Look at me!
I’m Chandler!
Could I be wearing any more clothes?”
“What happened?”
“Aw, man, he promised he wouldn’t take the chairs!”
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Joey’s simple way of seeing things usually comes across as stupidity.
"But it hurts my Joey’s apple!"
"Okay, for the last time.
It's not named after each individual man."
But he also takes us by surprise with wisdom from the heart.
“You have a fear of commitment, so I say you go in there
and you be the most committed guy there ever was.”
In this way, Joey fits the “wise fool” archetype --
“You've always looked out for me and shared your wisdom.”
“I am pretty wisdomous.”
which you can also see in a show like Cheers.
"You can't crawl in bed with a pizza.
Well, maybe you could, but a-a pizza can't keep you warm.
Oh, maybe it could, but you can't kiss a pizza.
Your lips would get--"
"Coach, we get the point."
The fool in literature often speaks words of wisdom,
disguised as silliness or nonsense.
“Thou shouldst not have been old until thou wast wise.”
“You can’t just give up!
Is that what a dinosaur would do?”
As the wise fool,
Joey's able to get at deep truths about what his friends are feeling.
"The big question is -- does he like you?
Right?
Because if he doesn't like you, it's all a moo point."
"Huh.
A moo point?"
"Yeah, it's like a cow's opinion.
You know, it just doesn't matter.
It's moo."
Time and time again, he has a sixth sense for when they need uplifting,
knows just the right heartfelt gesture to offer
and tells them what they need to hear even if they don’t always want to.
“They have a kid together, you know?
They're like--they're like a family.
And if, I don't know, there's a chance they can make that work,
I know I wouldn't want to be the guy who stood in the way of that.”
Watching Joey is like watching a child try to function in the adult world.
“Now that you told me I can’t have her it makes me want her even more.”
“What are you, a child?”
“Yes!”
He has a refreshing lack of self-consciousness.
When it comes to just pure and simple hanging out,
he’s probably the most fun, easy friend to be around.
"[Evil laughs]"
But on the downside, Joey’s simplistic understanding of things
maybe explains why -- especially looking back today --
he comes across as pretty sleazy in his dealings with women.
“You think I’m just gonna sleep with her
and never call her again and things are gonna get uncomfortable?
Yeah, that sounds about right.”
In the Friends era, Joey’s womanizing was presented as funny --
and even enviable.
“Hey that was nice of you guys to back off
and let Joey get the girl for once.”
-- but this is one of the aspects of the show
that has aged poorly,
"Hey listen.
Can you do me a favor?
When she comes out, could you just mention
that I'm not looking for a serious relationship?
That'll be great."
and in today’s world, it doesn’t really fly
to just dismiss all this with the excuse
that he doesn’t know any better.
"I went with a guy who lives in this building
and it didn't end very well."
"That wouldn't by any chance be Joey Tribbiani?"
"[Gasp] Yes!"
"Of course it was."
So in some ways,
Joey’s child nature makes him super special,
charming and intoxicating to people around him.
"Remember when you were a kid
and your mom dropped you off at the movies
with a jar of jam and a spoon?"
"You’re so pretty."
While in others, it makes him dysfunctional,
"Can I just stop you there for a second?
When people do this [air quotes] I don’t really know what that means."
dependent on others to care for him,
"Here's the phone bill."
"Oh my God!"
"That's our phone number."
and hopelessly insensitive.
“So do you have any moves?”
“No, no, I'm just myself, and if they don't like me for--
I'm sorry, I couldn't even get through that.”
Joey is the Casanova of Friends.
"How you doin'?"
So it’s interesting
that while all his friends find lasting love,
Joey never really has a long-term relationship.
Instead of finding love himself,
Joey acts as a kind of inadvertent Cupid.
He's the accidental matchmaker of Friends.
He’s responsible for Monica and Chandler getting together in London,
because Monica was actually looking for Joey
before she gave up and slept with Chandler instead.
He’s the one who introduces Phoebe to her future husband Mike.
"Mike!"
"Yeah?"
"Okay!"
And he officiates the weddings of both Monica and Chandler
“I do.”
“Yeah you do!”
and Phoebe and Mike.
“And I know I speak for everyone here when I wish them a lifetime of happiness.”
Joey also gives pep talks to Ross about going after Rachel.
"For what it's worth,
with Rachel I don’t think you’ll ever be just 'anybody.'"
"Hey, there you go!"
"'Thanks!'"
And even Joey’s brief romance with Rachel
ultimately helps bring Rachel and Ross back together,
because it reveals to Ross that he’s very much not over Rachel.
“Of course you're not fine.
You're --
you're Ross and Rachel.”
Joey’s not actively trying to bring these people together,
but it makes sense that he’s behind so many romances.
Joey genuinely seems to care more about his friends finding love,
than experiencing it himself.
“I've been with my share of women.
In fact, I've been with a lot of people's share of women.
But the point is I've never felt about anyone
the way Ross felt about you.”
Maybe he just doesn’t have the need for long-term monogamy that the others do.
"I don't cheat!
That's not me!
I'm not Joey!"
"Whoa!
Yeah, okay."
This lover of women isn’t particularly interested in finding a woman.
"What are you talking about?
One woman?
That's like saying there's only one flavor of ice cream for you.
Let me tell you something, Ross.
There's lots of flavors out there."
There are a couple of times we see him express strong feelings --
"But then she goes home with the director
and it's like somebody's ripping out my heart!"
"I think I'm falling in love with you."
but even in these cases,
he’s probably more into the idea of being in love,
and it doesn't last all that long.
he isn’t suited for what a long-term romance actually entails.
In Season ten, he goes out with Phoebe’s friend
and considers it a deal breaker
that she eats some of the food off his plate.
“Joey doesn’t share food!”
This pet peeve is presented as a joke,
"You are beautiful, you know that?"
"That is so sweet!
[Laughs]"
but we might feel sorry for Joey that, even well into his thirties,
he can’t share a plate of food with a girl.
And other Joey behaviors played for laughs --
"I know Emma wants it,
but he's mine, and I need him.
She's being unreasonable."
tell us he's far from ready for the responsibilities
of being a mature partner or family man.
"Look!"
"That's a pig."
"I know, I know, but look at the knobs on it!"
So what does it mean that Joey’s the heart of Friends?
“You cry every time somebody talks about Titanic.”
“Those two had only each other!”
He the sweetheart of the show
“I just think that you don't expect someone so hot to be so sweet.”
and the loving spirit of this group.
You could argue that Joey’s the embodiment of friend love itself.
His love has a powerful simplicity and innocence about it --
it’s not encumbered by jealousy or trust issues
or desires for a life plan.
He represents a platonic devotion that’s rare and special.
"That's right, I stepped up!
She's my friend, and she needed help!
If I had to, I'll pee on anyone of you."
Ultimately, Joey doesn’t need a partner
because he’s fulfilled by the love of his friends.
In later seasons when he does feel a longing for a relationship,
it’s no coincidence that he first dreams about dating Monica
and then feels something for Rachel.
Clearly, any romance he’d want would have to be built on friendship.
“I don't think it's just about just getting a girlfriend, you know?
I mean yeah, I could get a girlfriend.
Yeah, we could sit in a chair and do crossword puzzles.
But you know, are we ever gonna have the closeness like you guys have?”
Joey’s friends find that sometimes
it’s worth risking friendship for the possibility of love.
“Well, I think it's safe to say that our friendship is effectively ruined.”
“Eh, we weren't that close anyway.”
But for Joey, the platonic bond is more important.
“They mean so much to me They're like my family, you know?
If you guys are gonna be fighting all the time,
I just--I don't think we can be together.”
He’s willing to not act on his feelings for Rachel
because he doesn’t want to hurt Ross.
And eventually Joey and Rachel decide
that their friendship is truly too good to become something else anyway.
“Well, how come Monica and Chandler could do it?”
“I guess they weren't as good friends as we are.”
Joey may not be able to manage his friends’ lives like a Monica,
but it’s hard to imagine a friend with a heart more in the right place.
He’s 100% there -- in love with his friends.
“He cannot do this to Phoebe!
This guy’s going to get the butt-kicking of a lifetime.”
And of course, Joey’s bromance with Chandler
is a contender for the most moving love story in the show.
Joey and Chandler are a true team through their twenties,
supporting each other, blowing off steam together,
and acting as the main players in each other’s lives
through this formative period.
And even as they develop more separate lives,
"I get my own room?"
"You don't think we'd buy a house and not have a Joey room, do you?"
Above all, Joey only wants the best for his best friend.
“Before with the wishbone, I-I didn’t wish we’d win the lottery,
I wished you’d get the job.”
We see the other friends change dramatically over the years.
But Joey doesn’t have this will to change.
And in the series finale he’s still the same single guy
living in the same apartment as when we first met him.
And the short-lived spin-off Joey pretty much confirms this --
Joey’s life continues to be about his friendships, family,
and chasing both acting gigs and women.
Joey’s stasis might seem a little sad.
But the positive spin on all this is
that Joey hasn’t changed because he’s never felt a need to.
His friends overthink things, struggle with insecurities,
or feel dissatisfied with the direction of their lives.
And these neuroses are what lead them to push themselves and grow.
Joey’s not self-reflective.
He’s already confident and happy with himself
when we meet him.
And who’s to say that he needs to have a wife or a family
to be fulfilled in his life?
Going back to our wise fool in stories,
the fool is often looked down on by society
because he doesn’t care to understand or conform to social norms.
And that’s the case with Joey, too.
“Now, just because you don’t understand something
doesn't make it wrong.”
He just doesn’t have any use for those automatic assumptions
about what you’re supposed to do with your life,
simply because it’s what everybody does.
Joey tunes that out and listens instead to what actually feels right for him.
“How can you not care?”
“Like this.”
And that’s perhaps the best wisdom any of us can take from his example.
Friends ended with the close
of what was probably the defining period of Joey’s life --
the era he spent with his best friends, the great loves of his life,
and years later it’s still a comfort to think of him not ever changing,
a kind of human time capsule who’ll always be there for you.
"Exactly!
Unisex!"
"Maybe you need sex.
I had sex a couple of days ago."
"Oh, no, Joey.
U-N-I-Sex."
"Well, I ain't gonna say no to that."
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