The One With All the Writing Advice by Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant & Smarter Artist

Author:Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant & Smarter Artist [Platt, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sterling & Stone
Published: 2016-11-01T07:00:00+00:00

JOEY AND CHANDLER

IT’S OKAY TO PUT TWO straight guys in a loving relationship. And Friends showed us exactly how it’s done. If you’re mapping out your world, considering the men and women who should be forming relationships (and then perhaps being progressive enough to add a male-male or a female-female couple), don’t forget that you can also add a bromance.

Strong, platonic friendships like Joey and Chandler’s can add a totally different dynamic to your story. Done right, they act as an anchor, giving readers a core of stability as other elements within your story change.

Of the one-on-one friendships within the larger group, we’d argue that Joey and Chandler’s is definitely strongest. Monica and Rachel are good friends, but it’s not quite the same. Joey and Chandler share a special bond. They’re like brothers in a way that Monica and Rachel aren’t quite like sisters.

The writers didn’t miss any of this. Once they’d established Joey and Chandler as characters and it became apparent just how deeply linked these two heterosexual guys were, the gay-couple references abounded. When Joey gets his own apartment and psycho Eddie moves in with Chandler, Joey returns to give us an old love versus new love scene where Joey demands to know whose morning eggs are better. Their move-out is treated like a breakup, and the move-back-in is treated like a make-up. And in between, we get all the discomfort of a shattered love: Chandler won’t call; Joey won’t call; they both sit in front of the TV wishing the other were beside them. Then there’s that scene where Chandler watches the rain and Joey watches his rain sculpture and in the background we hear “All By Myself.” Joey even makes that dubious remark: “We’re not Bert and Ernie.”

All of that is done for laughs, but the core of their friendship is true and applicable to any kind of storytelling. Our culture has a reticence for men showing each other affection, but Joey and Chandler’s relationship stomps all over it. They’re BFFs in the truest sense. Over and over we see that when a choice must be made between the Joey/Chandler friendship and anything else, the friendship always wins.

When Chandler inadvertently craps all over “Joey’s big break” in the Vegas episodes, he spends forever trying to show Joey that he’s sorry and atone for his lack of faith.

When Joey gets himself locked in the entertainment center and the apartment is subsequently robbed, all Joey can think of is how he can make it up to his best friend.

When Chandler kisses Kathy, he makes up for it by going into the box … silent to the point of letting her walk away forever if that’s what will repair his relationship with Joey.

Chandler paying for everything early in their friendship. Joey’s constant parade of terrible acting gigs and Chandler’s unending support. It just goes on and on.

Joey and Chandler are such an excellent example for storytellers because theirs is such a pure bond. In that way, they’re more instructive to watch than Ross and Rachel, who form the series’s central anchor.

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