The Last Sadness of Joey Tribbiani
I’m Joey. I’m disgusting.
When Friends begins, Joey Tribbiani would best be described as a “himbo,” aka, a male bimbo: gorgeous and utterly clueless.
He does things like change his stage name to Joseph Stalin and confuse the adage “the point is moot” with “the point is ‘moo’ ” … because, he reasons, it’s you know, like, what a cow would say.
It’s easy to see how Joey was modeled after ‘70s John Travolta—a real New York guy. He’s the only son in a large Italian family of protective sisters; he grows up with the swagger of a neighborhood Romeo. He could have been a king and stayed close to his roots, but instead, Joey left Queens for Manhattan.
By contrast, Ross, Monica, Chandler and Rachel come from privileged backgrounds outside the city. They’re college-educated and had financially (if not emotionally) stable upbringings.
On the other end of the spectrum, Phoebe was at one point unhoused, and like Joey, she didn’t go to college or have a traditional career. She is a “free spirit” and is portrayed as clueless. But coming from a broken family, being estranged from her twin sister, and often going against the law to survive, Phoebe’s journey to her friend group could not have been easy in 1980s New York City.
Joey has a hedonistic zest for life. He makes enough money as an actor to afford the rent (?). Although sometimes he ends up doing undesirable gigs like modeling for STD prevention public service announcements.
He loves food. All food. Especially sandwiches. But Joey’s defining characteristics is that it only takes three words for him to seduce any woman: How you doin’?
He could have been a king and stayed close to his roots, but instead, Joey left Queens for Manhattan.
We’re meant to laugh at the revolving door to his bedroom. Isn’t it funny that this guy has slept with every waitress, actress, model, and female bartender in the five boroughs? Hilarious!
Sitcoms love to conveniently compartmentalize. Oh yeah, he seduces women, but that’s only one part of his personality. The rest of the time, he’s a respectful (even bashful) platonic friend to Rachel, Phoebe and Monica.
How then is he able to bang girls left and right with no consideration at all for their feelings? They’re not his “friends” I guess.
Please don’t get me wrong. I love Joey—and in the realm of sitcom fantasy I’m able to overlook a lot of fictitious bad behavior. But the real Joey Tribbiani is another story.
For starters, let’s talk about the physical grossness. The real-life Joey is dealing with body fluids all the time. Just imagine being Joey’s latest sexual conquest and realizing he probably hasn’t washed the sheets and there’s likely still the last girl’s hair in the sink as you glimpse used condoms in the trash.
That’s not even to mention the risk of STDs. How often is Joey going to the clinic? Does he use his charisma and charm to convince his partners to have unprotected sex?
In real life, it’s highly likely that Joey would have a cast of repeat sexual partners in addition to whoever he’s pursuing as girlfriend material.
Maybe he has three or five or seven women on rotation, and he calls them when he feels like it, and doesn’t call them when he doesn’t. He’s honest with them. If women keep falling for it every time he asks how they’re doin’, then who’s fault is that?
The thing about Joey is that he doesn’t have to be clever or mysterious. He lays it all out on the table: He wants sex and he holds the power to direct his gaze on whomever he pleases.
But in real life, some of those women’s feelings are bound to get hurt. Some of them are going to confuse Joey’s attention for love, no matter what he says. And those women might do things like show up announced, call repeatedly, follow him, stalk him.
When you’re playing fast and loose with women’s hearts, be warned that they can sometimes do “crazy” things. And the rest of the Friends would have to constantly deal with these scorned women too. Every time they went to Central Perk there might be one of Joey’s old conquests who he keeps stringing along.
If women keep falling for it every time he asks how they’re doin’, then who’s fault is that?
It's one thing for Joey’s many sexual partners to not get what they want, but when Joey doesn’t get what he wants—for example when his girlfriend Kathy falls in love with Chandler—he is distraught.
The deciding factor was when Joey gave her a first edition copy of The Velveteen Rabbit, her favorite book, but then said, “This is ‘cuz I know you like rabbits and I know you like cheese.”
Up until a certain age, Joey’s chiseled jawline is enough, but once adulthood settles in, his lack of intellectual dimension is harder for mature women.
What if Joey never meets anyone? Does he slowly become that fifty-something guy living across the hall wearing Hawaiian shirts and trying to party with the young kids? Does Joey become Mr. Furley from Three’s Company?
Joey needs his friends. And when he starts to change and grow out of this sex-crazed phase, then it will be his nonsexual characteristics that make us love him. Even though it can be entertaining or exciting to have a friend like Joey (or to be a Joey), there is a limit.
Season 5, Episode 8: “The One with the Thanksgiving Flashbacks,” opens with the gang saying what they’re thankful for, and Joey at first says thoughtfully that he loves the beautiful fall they’ve been having.
When the gang is like, “Aw, that’s so sweet,” he then elaborates that he loves how the beautiful fall breezes blow women’s skirts up. And oh yeah, he continues, “I’m also thankful for thongs. It’s not so much an underpant as a feat of engineering. It’s amazing how much they can do with so little material.”
As viewers, we’re thankful when they change the subject. In real life, if I had a friend who was constantly saying things like this, objectifying women and making light of it, I wouldn’t be guffawing with laughter like the studio audience; I’d be rolling my eyes the way the other Friends do.
But if they’re so sick of it, maybe it’s time they had an honest conversation with Joey about it? Instead, it’s just … that’s Joey. Always saying skeezy things about women. Oh well.
They go around the circle telling stories about their worst Thanksgivings. For Chandler, it’s his dad’s coming out as gay and having an affair with the “houseboy.” But Phoebe retorts with: “Oh, did the little rich boy have a problem with his butler? Yes, mine’s worse!”
We think she’s going to tell us a down-and-dirty story from her rough days on the streets, but instead she describes being a nurse during the Civil War in 1862 and having her arm blown off while trying to save a patient.
“In this life, Phoebe,” Ross clarifies.
When Joey says he doesn’t have any past life memories, Phoebe replies, “Of course you don’t, sweetie. You’re brand new.”
All of this is to drive home Joey’s other main characteristic: He’s dumb. So dumb that the gang reminisces about the time a few years earlier when he got a turkey stuck on his head because he was trying to scare Chandler but only succeeded in getting his “head up a dead animal,” as Phoebe points out.
“Was this supposed to be funny?” Monica asks when she catches him.
“No, it was supposed to be scary,” Phoebe clarifies.
At the end of the Thanksgiving episode, Monica sticks her head up her own turkey as a way to apologize to Chandler, but in a full-circle moment, Joey comes bounding up around the corner only to scream in fright when he sees her. What goes around comes around.
My favorite Joey episode of all time is Season 5, Episode 9: “The One with Ross’s Sandwich.” After Joey has found out that Monica and Chandler are sleeping together, they beg him not to tell the group. So for a while, Joey has to cover when clues to their relationship arise.
When a pair of Chandler’s underwear is found in Monica and Rachel’s couch cushions, Joey has to lie and say, “I’m Joey. I’m disgusting. I take my underwear off in other people’s homes.”
If they’re lucky, the Joey Tribbianis of the world may reach a turning point and get real “happy endings” instead of the other kind.
Maybe Joey Tribbiani will have daughters who will put him in touch with his feminine side. Or maybe that’s the role that Phoebe, Monica and Rachel played: They humanized women for him. Suddenly, women weren’t just objects to be used and thrown away, but they were humans he cared about.
The real Joey Tribbiani will only find love when he’s willing to see beyond sexual conquest and discover platonic intimacy. Does that mean he never has sex again? Of course not. It just means that he’s no longer using sex as a fight-or-flight mechanism.
He’s able to achieve greater satisfaction than ever before in his romantic relationships when he is also engaged in nonromantic connections to people of all ages and genders. When he stops seeking that thrill all the time, his nervous system can relax. He can heal. He can cease chasing after everyone else’s power and focus on his own.
