“We are all so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew,” learn a joint assertion written in the wake of Matthew Perry’s dying final weekend by Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc. “We were more than just castmates. We are a family. There is so much to say, but right now we’re going to take a moment to grieve and process this unfathomable loss.”
The dying of Matthew Perry, at 54, who was discovered unresponsive in a scorching tub at residence in Los Angeles, was the unhappy end result of a troubled life. As he revealed in a memoir printed final 12 months, he was alcoholic from the age of 14, had attended 6,000 AA conferences and couldn’t bear in mind entire seasons of his TV profession owing to his addictions to drink and opioid prescription capsules.
Despite his private historical past, nevertheless, his portrayal of Chandler Bing on Friends was an expression of younger maturity to which many would aspire. As the snarky roommate of the sweeter, dumber Joey, Chandler was proof that you may be obnoxious, single, professionally profitable (he claimed a daily wage from someplace) and nonetheless be loveable. Chandler’s world-weary rumpledness was all the time outdated by his goofy lust for all times.
Friends, which launched in 1994 on community tv in the US, was the apotheosis of the friends-can-be-your-family second, during which the gang of twentysomethings was being culturally fetishised. Friends, with its six kidult members navigating early profession setbacks and romantic disappointments, was the most profitable expression of a style which advised the brutalities of grownup life could be forever cushioned by distinctive platonic bonds. Friends got here after a raft of movies — The Big Chill, St Elmo’s Fire and so forth — during which these new friendships had been enshrined. Seinfeld, with its identical New York apartment-life dynamic, was already midway via its nine-year lifespan: one other comedy during which the highs of romance or skilled accomplishment had been all the time handled as inferior to having lunch along with your finest buddy.
In the UK, Richard Curtis’s first blockbuster comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral set one other template for the identical six-plus-person, tight-knit squad: however the place the Friends had been healthful, articulate and nicely coiffured, its British equivalents had been stammering, extra sloppy than snappy dressers and invariably Oxbridge-educated toffs.
As an adolescent, learning at college in the mid-Nineteen Nineties, being half of a gang took on a tiresome urgency. Having a nest of besties round you was half of an undergraduate ritual during which you tried to construct an alternate kin. “Where are my Peter’s Friends?” my school flatmate would say plaintively, referring to the 1992 movie directed by Kenneth Branagh during which a bunch of friends collect 10 years after commencement, starring Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.
We lived in the neurotic grip of the conviction that, except we established a core group of buddies in our early twenties, we’d die depressing, bitter and alone. The phenomenon was exemplified by the burgeoning brunch tradition during which it was modern to go and sit on monumental leather-based sofas, drink Bloody Marys and flop dietary supplements between one’s friends. Sex and the City (which arrived in 1998) then shifted this aspiration to women-only gaggles, cosmopolitans and one-night stands. The style provided countless permutations of the principle that you may’t select your loved ones however you possibly can curate your friends.
Created in the period during which Post-it notes and answerphones may nonetheless be used as main plot factors, it now appears the relic of a bygone age. The fetishisation of the friendship group mirrored a altering tradition during which folks remained single for a lot longer, and shared properties with different singles owing to escalating rental prices. Friends was the excellent fiction for younger individuals who lacked course: look, it reassured us, nobody has a plan.
Its best fiction, nevertheless, was the assumption that one’s friends are forged in aspic, and {that a} tight-knit group of strangers can ever be an alternative to a household. The friendships that one clings to in a single’s twenties should essentially evolve: finest friends marry companions who don’t such as you, they transfer too distant for brunches, are struck by sickness, or are required to look after precise household as an alternative. The possessiveness and exclusivism that govern {our relationships} as younger adults turn into eroded as time passes and different, extra environment friendly assist teams begin to emerge. Our friendship teams turn into school-parent networks, dog-walking quartets, colleagues and, more and more, strangers you don’t a lot know however with whom you share a bizarre intimacy on Instagram.
Matthew Perry was an icon of congeniality for tens of millions: preliminary postmortem outcomes have discovered the trigger of dying “inconclusive”, and whereas he was beloved, he was finally alone. Even the tightest and most familial friendships provide scant safety from the vicissitudes of life. Friendship is a state of interplay, of being curious — it’s not a quantity round a settee, or a members’ membership to which one will get a lifetime go. Besides, in the occasion of an actual emergency, you almost certainly received’t want the individual with whom you shared a dorm in school, however the neighbour with whom it’s possible you’ll or could not have exchanged names.
Email Jo at jo.ellison@ft.com
