"We should really learn how to play the real way."
"I like our way."
Friends’ Phoebe and Joey are each other’s special favorites
“If I gotta turn on the charm tomorrow,
I'm not wasting any more of it on you guys.
Oh, actually I got some saved for you, Pheebs”
“But you know what, when the revolution comes,
I will have to destroy you all.
Not you, Joey.”
They have a natural chemistry, find each other attractive,
and are on the same mental wavelength
“I found my identical hand twin!”
“Oh, you're so lucky!”
So why is it that while the four other members
of the friend group pair off, we never get to see Phoey
-- or Joebe --
become an epic love story?
“You know, Monica and Chandler are married.
Ross and Rachel are having a baby.
Maybe you and I should do something.”
“All in good time, my love."
The show uses Phoebe and Joey to present a counterpoint
to the idea that cross-gender friendship is nothing more
than a prologue to romance.
These besties exemplify
the charms of keeping it platonic.
“Are you asking me to have a ‘frienaissance’?”
“Sure?”
“Alright, although I don't think we really need one baby,
I never stopped loving you”
So here’s our take on how Phoey prove
that friendship is true love by another name.
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Five years before Friends premiered, When Harry Met Sally asked
whether men and women could be “just friends.”
“Men and women can't be friends, ‘cause the sex part always
gets in the way” And its verdict?
“I came here tonight because when you realize you want to
Spend the rest of your life with someone, you want
the rest of your life to start as soon as possible”
Even before Harry and Sally, the romance-with-friends was
in the 80s zeitgeist.
In John Hughes’ original screenplay for Pretty in Pink,
Molly Ringwald’s Andie ended up with her
Best friend Duckie
“God, I woulda died for you."
When this did poorly with test audiences,
the movie was rewritten to pair Andie with
popular guy Blane, but Hughes wasn’t happy about this.
So he wrote 1987’s Some Kind of Wonderful,
which had essentially the same story,
just with swapped genders and the happily ever after
for the best-friends-in-love
“I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, well you’re stupid.
I always knew you were stupid."
Since the 80s, countless movies
and TV shows have come to the same conclusion:
that if a straight man and woman start off
with a close platonic bond, it will inevitably blossom
into romance.
"I mean I'm sitting here with my best friend
in the world and my palms are sweating.
I've known you forever, but I feel like
I'm seeing you for the first time tonight."
Friends itself gave us two iconic examples of this.
The show used both couples to underline that
a great friendship is the foundation of an
out-of-this-world romance.
“I turned to a friend for comfort.
And instead,
I found everything that I'd ever been looking for
my whole life.”
"I mean, do you think you can ever have both?
Someone who's like, who's like, your best friend, but also
can make your toes curl.”
But at the same time, others have critiqued
the expectation that opposite-sex best friends
were meant to be lovers.
In My Best Friend’s Wedding, Julia Roberts’ character
is almost like a viewer who’s seen When Harry Met Sally
too many times.
“Choose me.
Marry me.
Let me make you happy."
But her assumption that she and her male bestie
must be made-for-each-other is wrong.
“Michael's chasing Kimmy."
"Yes!"
"You're chasing Michael."
"Yes!"
"Who's chasing you?
Nobody.
Get it?”
“There's your answer: Kimmy."
"No!"
"Yes!
Jules, you are not the one!"
Likewise, in Grey’s Anatomy, best friends Izzie and George
sleep together and think they’re in love --
only for them to realize they have zero chemistry.
“The sex.
With Izzie.
Horrible”
So if you buy into what rom-coms tell you
and leap to the conclusion that you must be in love
with your best friend, you could end up doing
irreparable damage to a treasured relationship
that’s already perfect as it is.
“It's like we're not us anymore.
Everything used to be so easy.
Critiques like these expose a problem with the
loving-your-friend trope: it belittles opposite-sex
friendship, turning it into nothing more than prelude to romance.
We can see this in the idea of the “Friend Zone,”
which Friends itself helped popularize when Joey
described Ross’ Season One situation with Rachel:
“You waited too long to make your move
and now you're in the friend zone."
The Friend Zone is not somewhere you want to stay--
it’s a purgatory that the friend with feelings
hopes to move beyond, once the friend
who doesn’t have feelings (yet) realizes what they’ve
been overlooking or repressing.
“I'm laying the groundwork.
Yeah, I mean, every day
I get a little bit closer To uh--"
"Priesthood!”
Countless friendship-romances pay lip service to not wanting
to wreck a friendship.
“I'm just worried about what it might do
to our friendship.”
“I know."
Generally, though, this is just a fear to be overcome.
The conversation underlines how much they care,
but the suggestion is they’d be crazy or cowardly
to turn down a shot at true love, for a lesser connection.
“Well, I think it's safe to say our friendship is
effectively ruined.”
“Eh, we weren't that close anyway.”
The fear of ruining the friendship also
comes up when Monica is under the impression
that Joey has a crush on Phoebe.
“Is it something you'd be interested in?"
“Oh, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.”
But for Phoey, this is a legitimate fear.
“No, I can't.
We're friends.
No!
Oh, no.
I don't want to risk what we have."
Being “just friends” is often framed as
a negative compromise, when it’s not working out
to be more.
"I don’t want to be just friends anymore."
The phrase “more than friends” contains in it our society’s
value judgment that romantic love is more
than friend love.
“I think he's more than my friend.
You're my boyfriend, right?”
But Phoebe and Joey show us that friendship
can also be a conscious choice and a preferable
alternative to dating.
A platonic connection could mean so much to you
that you care more about protecting it than starting
an impulsive romance with that person.
And even if male-female friendships are still
the exception rather than the rule,
more of us should take inspiration from Phoey.
Studies have shown that cross-gender friendship
for kids helps them avoid the pressure to conform
to rigid, stereotypical gender roles.
Going back to When Harry Met Sally,
Harry’s stance that men and women can’t be friends has one big caveat.
“No man can be friends with a woman
That he finds attractive."
This missing element of physical attraction
explains many other onscreen male-female friendships
that do work so well-- whether the lack of a spark
is due to sexual orientation:
“I thought it was my naked body that
did nothing for you!”
“It didn't!
It still doesn't!”
obvious incompatibility: “Ron?
What are you doing
at a city council meeting?
Are you lost?
Are you hurt?”
Or just not being each other’s type:
“Our relationship is purely platonic,
if Plato had an elderly, shut-in aunt.”
“You know what Plato did have?
A gay relationship with Socrates.”
“Lemon, the only way you're like Socrates
is you have the body hair of a Greek man."
But what makes Phoebe and Joey an interesting
case study is that they are attracted to each other
on some level.
“When I first met you, you know what I said
to Chandler?
I said, ‘Excellent butt, great rack.’”
“I think that you don't expect someone so hot
to be so sweet.”
In season one, Joey falls head over heels for
Phoebe’s identical twin Ursula,
with an intensity he almost never shows for a woman.
“I like her.
She's different.
There's something about her--”
“That you like.
We get it.
You like her.
Great.”
This storyline suggests that the only thing
stopping him from feeling this way
about Phoebe is that she’s too familiar.
“Phoebe’s Phoebe.
Ursula’s hot.”
When Phoebe pretends to be Ursula, Joey remarks,
“You have never looked so beautiful.”
which implies that
(when you remove the considerations holding him back)
he finds Phoebe even more appealing than her twin.
“Wow, you look… stop-eatin’-hot!”
We also see Phoebe and Joey kiss multiple times
and this is not how most of us behave with our friends.
“That's one thing you can cross off your list.”
“Oh, yeah."
Ultimately the show even hints that
--in some buried way-- Phoey are truly in love.
"What if I marry Ross?
Or Joey?”
“You wouldn't."
Why, then, don’t they act on their feelings?
“How you doin?"
To begin with, their very closeness itself may put Joey off.
The rare times he gets passionate about a woman,
it’s generally because he can’t have her
--as we see from his flings with Ursula and the actress Kate
"When we're on stage, I get to kiss her and touch her.
But then, she goes home with the director
and it's like somebody's ripping out my heart."
He considers both of the other women
in their friend-group as romantic partners,
but note the timing: he dreams about Monica
when she’s in a secure intimate partnership
with Chandler, and he falls for Rachel when she’s pregnant
with Ross’ baby.
His mind will allow him to see them in this light
only when they’re unavailable due to an emotional tie to
one of his closest male friends.
“There's this woman that I like a lot.
But, uh, it can't happen”
Meanwhile, he never seriously entertains going for it
with Phoebe -- and maybe that’s precisely because there’s
A good chance she’d be willing to give it a shot.
“Crushes happen all the time.
I've had them for all you guys.
Except for Ross and Chandler”
Joey is a notorious ladies’ man,
“How you doin’?”
but he seems to place women he really cares about
in an idealized, desexualized category.
His Catholic upbringing, and a childhood surrounded
by sisters he felt a duty to protect,
have given him an internalized madonna/whore complex--
which splits his affection from his sexual feelings.
He doesn’t attach feelings to the women he wants to sleep with,
while he views female friends and family members as higher beings,
too good for sex.
“You can't be pregnant.
Because... you have to have sex
to get pregnant.”
When the friends bring home Ursula’s porn video
believing it stars Phoebe, Joey is adamant that
seeing his friend this way would be the ultimate disrespect.
“This is wrong, you guys!
Phoebe's our friend!
I'm not gonna watch it.”
So we shouldn’t be surprised that -- at the end of the series --
he’s the only friend who hasn’t found a committed, long-term
relationship that integrates both love and desire.
“We'd have an apartment over the garage where
Joey could grow old."
We see similar behaviors in another TV ladies’ man--
Mad Men’s Don Draper.
For him, sex and emotional connection
are also very much an either/or-- and just like with Phoebe and Joey,
Don’s refusal to cross a physical line with
his mentee Peggy is framed as proof
of his deep love and respect for her.
“It's not because you aren't attractive.
I have to keep rules about work.
I have to."
The biggest reason that Phoebe and Joey never
sleep together, though, is more inspirational.
They choose their friendship over a potential love affair.
This is made explicit when Ursula is blowing Joey off,
and Phoebe pretends to be her twin to
let him down gently:
"Then yeah, it's 'cause of Phoebe.
So you know, it's either her or me.”
“Then, uh, then I'm sorry.”
Joey has no doubts about picking his friend
over the hot lover who looks just like her.
And he stands by this friendship-first principle,
as we see when his girlfriend Janine
hates Monica and Chandler.
“If you guys are gonna be fighting all the time,
I don't think we can be together.
It just can't work, okay?
It can't.”
and when he decides that he and Rachel
don’t work as a couple they’re too good as friends.
"Well, how come Monica and Chandler could do it?"
"I guess they weren't as good friends as we are."
What’s great about Phoebe and Joey together
is that their lack of a sexual relationship
never feels like a loss.
They embody the romance of friendship--
a theme that’s at the heart of this show.
Phoey do things usually reserved for romance like
have date nights.
“I have dinner plans with Joey.
We get together about
once a month to discuss the rest of you guys."
And think about the future.
“If neither of you are married by 40,
you're gonna marry Joey?”
“Yep.
We shook on it.
But believe me, that is not how
he wanted to seal the deal.”
When Phoebe is pregnant, and Joey goes vegetarian
to balance out her meat cravings,
“No extra animals would die.
You'd be eating my animals.”
“Joey, I can't believe you'd do that for me.”
he’s acting like a spouse who wants to support his wife.
And when Joey fails to see that their “friend dates”
should be treated with the same respect
as regular ones,
“You can cancel plans with friends if
there's a possibility for sex.”
An outraged Phoebe makes him see why
this is so important.
“When we make plans, I expect you to show up.
I can't just be a way to kill time
till you meet someone better.”
It’s also symbolic that while Joey isn’t
interested in dating Phoebe himself,
he sets her up with her future husband Mike.
He’s also the one to officiate her wedding.
“I hope you know how much you mean to me.”
So Joey is responsible for bringing a true romantic
love into Phoebe’s life.
As friends who are attracted but don’t date,
Phoey are a seriously rare specimen in Film & TV
(so you can see why Harry thought he had a point).
One of the few other believable examples
can be found in another popular 90s sitcom.
Seinfeld’s Jerry and Elaine have dated in the past,
but they legitimately found they like each other more as friends.
"Your standards are too high."
I went out with you."
"That’s because my standards are too low."
Despite the scarcity of Phoey-like couples,
many of the best (completely non-sexual)
male-female friendships onscreen are also
unconventional love stories about platonic soulmates.
It’s refreshing to watch two people who truly adore
each other and want to spend time together
without it being about sex.
“Why would anybody ever eat anything besides breakfast food?”
“People are idiots, Leslie."
And the nuance to the way these pairs
defy traditional categorization reflects the wide range
of relationships that exist in real life.
“Obviously, our relationship, however you define it,
Mentor/mentee--" "Sister-ployee/work oracle--”
“--Is more interesting than some dating scenario.
And obviously, to ruin what we have with a tawdry,
yet expert sexual encounter would've been a mistake.”
Matt LeBlanc revealed that he and Lisa Kudrow
actually pitched the idea that their characters
had been friends with benefits all along,
but the show creators weren’t interested.
“You think we should hook up?”
“Oh, we do.
But not just yet.”
Keeping Phoebe and Joey as -- not “just friends” but
purely friends -- was a conscious choice
that validated the show’s central thesis:
that friends are the true loves of our lives.
“I’ve always felt that you and I have
a special bond.”
The other four main characters showcase why it's amazing
to be in a relationship that’s built on friendship,
but Phoey are the important flipside of that.
A man and a woman can be soulmates
without being lovers, and this friendship plays
a crucial, permanent role in their lives.
“None of you will get to live with me in my
hand-shaped mansion.
Except you Pheebs,
you can live in the thumb.”
In the end, these two not getting together
is what saves Friends from dividing its central six
into three neat pairs, and ultimately reinforcing
the cliché that friendship is no more than a transitional
stage on the road to marriage.
So while Phoey (or Joebe) shippers might pine for what could have been,
the truth is all along this really was
the central, defining love story of the show.
“Boyfriends and girlfriends are gonna come and go, but this is for life.”
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