At the same time as a die-hard Mates fan, I can’t actually suggest the much-hyped Mates reunion that hit the service then often known as HBO Max in 2021. As a result of the present’s stars and creators refused to do a full-on scripted reboot—at the same time as a one-time deal—the 104-minute particular is generally a rehash of behind-the-scenes anecdotes we’ve heard earlier than, spiced up with just a few high-concept interludes.
The reunion does, nonetheless, have one second I’ve thought of rather a lot previously two years. It comes when Matthew Perry—who performed Chandler Bing, the most important wiseass in a gang of wiseasses—reveals the crippling nervousness he felt even after the present grew to become an infinite, era-defining hit. When he stepped in entrance of Mates’ dwell studio viewers, Perry tells his 5 costars, “I felt like I used to be gonna die in the event that they didn’t chortle. And it’s not wholesome for positive, however I’d typically say a line they usually wouldn’t chortle—and I’d sweat and simply go into convulsions if I didn’t get the chortle I used to be imagined to get. I’d freak out…. I felt like that each single evening.”
The particular cuts away after Perry’s admission, transferring onto happier subjects. I want as an alternative it had taken a beat to actually grapple with what Perry stated, particularly because it’s the one time Mates: The Reunion even obliquely acknowledges Perry’s perilous psychological well being, not to mention his alcoholism and drug dependancy. Looking back, they dangle over Mates like a fog.
Perry died on Saturday on the age of 54. We don’t but know why; in line with reviews he was found unresponsive in a scorching tub, and no illicit medicine had been discovered on the scene. What we do know is that he was such a very good actor—a person who might land a punch line even whereas hid inside a picket field, who might wring hysterics out of one thing as foolish as the best way he growled the title “Jill Goodacre”—that it was attainable to look at 236 episodes of Mates with out perceiving fairly how tortured he was behind the scenes.
Particularly within the present’s early seasons, Chandler may very well be a basket case—“hopeless and awkward and determined for love,” as he put it in a single memorable scene. However at his peak, Perry by no means appeared to interrupt a sweat. Extra so even than his proficient costars, he made comedy appear easy, pure. It’s attainable to think about one other actor efficiently inhabiting clean-freak Monica or good-hearted dim bulb Joey; Chandler, although, is inextricable from the person who performed him.
But there are complete seasons of Mates, Perry as soon as stated, that he couldn’t bear in mind filming. The very best-selling memoir he launched in 2022 is known as Mates, Lovers, and the Large Horrible Factor, a roughly 260-page enlargement of his reunion revelation that lays out simply how laborious and the way lengthy Perry struggled. He stated his illness led him to fifteen rehab stays, 65 detox periods, 14 surgical procedures on his opioid-ravaged physique. “I’ve most likely spent $9 million or one thing making an attempt to get sober,” he instructed The New York Occasions final 12 months. Whereas making TV’s hottest present, Perry was the proverbial duck, showing to glide gracefully as his legs pumped beneath the floor. It might be years earlier than the remainder of us realized simply how frantically they had been transferring.
As elder millennials are wont to do, I’ve watched Mates in its entirety a number of occasions—in TBS reruns, on Netflix, on the DVDs I scored at a 2014 Central Perk pop-up. I began watching the present dwell on NBC after I was too younger to grasp Monica’s affection for the quantity seven or why Ross briefly had a monkey. (To be truthful, David Schwimmer by no means bought that, both.) The 12 months she graduated highschool, my sister, Anni, and I held our collective breath by way of the present’s sequence finale, exhaling solely when Rachel bought off the airplane to Paris.
I beloved Mates, however Anni beloved Mates. She might maintain a complete dialog talking solely in Phoebe Buffay quotes. She put a Joey and Chandler-inspired BarcaLounger in her school dorm room one 12 months, and was devastated when house constraints compelled her to promote it—however not so devastated she didn’t need to make a revenue. “It’s known as capitalism,” she later instructed me over AIM. “Which for the file I don’t imagine in.”
Like Chandler, my sister had a method with one-liners. Like Matthew Perry, she was sensible at hiding her drug dependency, till she wasn’t.
I’ve learn and watched innumerable books and movies and TV exhibits in regards to the opioid disaster within the 15 years since her deadly overdose, as if by finding out laborious sufficient, I could make sense of an unfathomable loss. From Dopesick to Demon Copperhead, I’ve discovered these tales are inclined to comply with the identical sample: A personality will get injured both on the job or whereas enjoying sports activities, then is bamboozled by predatory advertising and marketing and massive pharma reps into taking painkillers they don’t want. Earlier than lengthy, they’re hooked.
I think this narrative persists for 2 causes: as a result of these ways actually did ensnare numerous individuals into opioid dependancy earlier than regulatory our bodies caught on, and since self-evidently tragic victimhood is simple for an viewers to digest. However although Perry says he began taking Vicodin after a jet ski accident, his memoir additionally speaks a unique fact. In Mates, Lovers, and the Large Horrible Factor, he takes sole duty for his issues; he speaks candidly in regards to the deep-seated insecurity that led him to take his first drink at 14, his insatiable starvation for fame and recognition, the relationships he ruined from adolescence on by being egocentric and merciless. (A few of that conduct will be attributed to his drug use, however not all of it.)
