In a sixth-season episode of Pals, contributors of the gang make what they imagine to be a scary discovery: Chandler Bing can’t cry. The revelation comes via a fluke (they’re observing E.T. and, faced with the lovable alien, Chandler’s eyes keep dry). However the scenario, because it so regularly does on Pals, temporarily escalates. Earlier than lengthy, Joey is accusing his easiest good friend of being “lifeless inside of.” Monica is interrogating her husband, trawling for tears. All she succeeds in doing, despite the fact that, is increasing the listing of items that fail to make Chandler neatly up: the sight of a three-legged pet, the demise of Bambi’s mom, the concept of turning into a father.

Chandler, the episode will later expose, is very able to crying. The true punchline of “The One The place Chandler Can’t Cry,” despite the fact that—and the irony—is that Chandler is, in some ways, the emotional anchor of this display. At the floor, he may appear to be the least attractive of the six buddies: professionally solid, financially safe, blandly competent. His defining function is his sarcasm. Had he been portrayed via any other actor, he may have introduced little greater than comedian reduction: Chandler the smart-talker, the clown, the fellow who appears on the global and sees little greater than an never-ending shaggy dog story.

Learn: On Chandler Bing’s task

However Chandler was once performed via Matthew Perry, and the casting made all of the distinction. Perry, who died this weekend on the age of 54, was once as talented a dramatic actor as he was once a comedic one. And he summoned each abilities to create a personality who’s indelible exactly as a result of he’s so a lot more than simply humorous. Perry gave Chandler a top quality this is commonplace amongst actual folks and uncommon amongst sitcom characters: vulnerability.

When Perry was once solid to play Chandler, he was once 24: the youngest member of the Pals ensemble, taking part in the nature who in some ways gave the impression the oldest. When the display’s near-instant luck introduced status, he chafed. Perry spent years preventing dependancy and overcoming it. He advocated on behalf of others who fought the similar battles. That paintings, Perry mentioned closing yr, was once his existence’s proudest success. However it was once paintings that still served the function that earned him his status. Perry put ache into each and every efficiency.

This was once, in its means, radical. Sitcoms, historically, erase the arena’s anxieties whilst they channel them. Their environments are stridently insular; their characters face issues, however infrequently actual precarity. Pals follows that formulation so utterly that it might verge on callousness. Phoebe, the display finds, hung out dwelling on town streets. Her mom took her personal existence. The collection treats the ones main points, for probably the most section, as extensions of Phoebe’s fascinating eccentricity. The characters on Pals get a lot in their mileage from maximalism: They’re better than existence and subsequently secure from the disappointment it might convey.

Apart from, this is, for Chandler. He has been harm—via his folks’ divorce, via loves he has misplaced—and he’s open in regards to the wounds. He had a bohemian adolescence (his mom wrote erotic novels; his father hosted a drag display in Las Vegas). He reacted via turning conformity into an approach to life. He went on to withstand a benchmark of adulthood: the willingness to open himself as much as people.

Pals reached its juggernaut standing throughout the duration when “emotional intelligence” was once remodeling from a coinage right into a cliché. And Chandler embodies the transformation. He’s the display’s maximum conflicted personality as a result of he’s additionally its maximum self-aware. “When my folks were given divorced, that’s after I began the use of humor as a protection mechanism,” Chandler says at one level, and the one factor this is unexpected in regards to the prognosis is its bluntness. Via Perry’s efficiency, finally, audiences already find out about Chandler’s tendency to regard jokes as his defend.

With each and every arch remark and wry smile, with each and every completely timed pause, Perry made Chandler extra difficult, and extra messily human. He translated the previous adage “Comedy is tragedy plus time” into the pert vernaculars of the sitcom. Chandler lives in a perpetual state of misalignment, his inside existence chafing towards his outer instances. He looks as if a company guy however acts like a youngster. He has the overall look of an grownup who has mastered the artwork of adulting. However he’s additionally a man who has selected to furnish his eating space with a foosball desk, who ruins a certified alternative as a result of, when his interviewer mentions “tasks,” he’s not able to stifle his amusement. If Pals is a display about rising up, its hobby is targeted on Chandler: Will he develop up? Can he?

This is why Pals was once in a position to regard Chandler’s tears as a plot level. His skill to cry mattered as a result of Perry made it subject. “It’s about intercourse, love, relationships, careers, a time to your existence when the entirety’s conceivable,” the display’s preliminary pitch promised. Chandler, despite the fact that, is Pals’ maximum acute acknowledgement of the opposite facet of that ensure: Maturity is a gradual act of compromise. To develop up is to acknowledge what number of issues gained’t be conceivable. Chandler spent 10 seasons finding out that. That he laughed as he did so made the lesson much more poignant.