R.I.P. Matthew Perry

[Franz Ferdinand]

I couldn't care less about Friends but he was always a treat when he popped up for Aaron Sorkin - his Emmy-nominated guest turns in "The West Wing" and of course the single-season cult show "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip". Really tragic to see him go like this considering how hard he struggled for most of his time in the spotlight.

[Sabin]

We're twenty years out from the Friends series finale but every appearance from Matthew Perry in the last couple of years has been shocking. Fair enough, we're talking about a man with a pretty horrific addiction history and near-death health scares but I couldn't help but think we weren't going to have him around for much longer. I didn't think it would be this soon. He also gave me the impression of someone who was in a relative bubble. Who writes a book in 2020 and thinks "Hey, let's make a joke about Keanu Reeves being a shitty actor!" Nobody's thought that about Reeves since the 1990's.

I'm still pretty moved by Perry's passing. Friends was a pretty formative show for me in high school, and I got into it right around the time where Chandler became one of the great "Lovable Loser" archetypes in television. It's hard to write a good Lovable Loser character (look at Ted Mosby) but Chandler arguably got the most evolving spotlight on the series (from quippy single loser to happily married father) and I think it's because his humor was so transparently a defense mechanism (from his bad childhood; a poorly-aged gag that I still love). He thinks the universe is against him and in typical sitcom limbo fashion, he's not wrong. Anyway, I think he got the best stories and his episodes with Kathy, whom he developed feelings for behind Joey's back has always been one of my favorites among any sitcom. I probably developed some wrong ideas about love from that one.

Although Perry worked somewhat consistently until 2017, it always felt like he was just porting Chandler into a new location. Lots of broad comedies. Lots of failed new series. And yet a la William Goldman, if I'm to choose where to leave Matthew Perry, I have noting but options. Do I leave him with Joey watching Baywatch in those Laz-E-Boys? Do I leave him running around with Monica in secret? Do I leave him with Janice, one of the all-time-bad girlfriends? Or in a box saying goodbye to Kathy? Instead, I leave him pining after supermodel Jill Goodacre in the ATM Vestibule during the blackout episode. Not a failure, not a victory, but another one of life's complicated purgatories that you play again and again in your head, wondering what else you could have done, and if it was ever real in the first place.

I have no idea if Perry could ever appreciate the amount of happiness he brought to other people in his life.

[danfrank]

I was into my 30s by the time Friends came on the air, so I was not one of those people who came of age with it. I watched it often enough, though, because it was just a very entertaining ensemble piece. Chandler Bing was a very funny and indelible character, and though Matthew Perry did other work, Friends will be the legacy he leaves. No small accomplishment.

Clearly the mounds of money from Friends did not buy him happiness. Addiction is just a sad thing. I hope he at least found some bit of happiness or peace along the way. His Chandler Bing brought joy to millions.

Rest in Peace

[Sabin]

The internet now breaks. Major death. Seemed inevitable but I'm pretty bummed out.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ports.html