Article

Addiction

Culture

Film & TV

14 November 2023

5 min read

The death of Chandler Bing

The death of Friends star Matthew Perry still resonates even after the celebrity news cycle has moved on. Comedy writer James Cary contemplates how endings are written.

James Cary

James is a writer of sit coms for TV and radio.

Actor Matthew Perry looks formally away, with a US flag in the background

A 2012 portrait of Matthew Perry at the launch of a drug control initiative.

Office of National Drug Control Policy, via Wikimedia Commons.

How do you end a sitcom?

That’s not a joke. For those of us who write sitcoms, it’s a practical question. Every episode needs an ending. These days, every season needs an ending. And then the whole thing needs some kind of grand finale as the characters ride off into the sunset.

A sitcom ending should be both surprising but also retrospectively inevitable. That’s what I tell aspiring sitcom writers. The ending of a sitcom shouldn’t be a nasty shock. Nor is it just the moment where the episode runs out of time or story.

Casablanca is one of the all-time great endings. Rick tells Isla to get on that plane, and there’s the business with Lazlo, Strasser and ‘the usual suspects’. I’ve read that the writing of the ending came fairly late in the day. The Motion Picture Production Code forbade showing a woman leaving her husband for another man. This seems restrictive but in our hearts we want to believe that Rick would do the decent thing.

From the very first scene of the very first episode, it was clear that the planets had aligned for this actor, this show and the viewing public. Everybody loved Chandler.

When it comes down to it, our hearts yearn for a happy ending. And if not happy, bittersweet. But mostly sweet.

The ending of Matthew Perry, star of one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, is both surprising and inevitable. No one expected him to die at the age of 54. But given his problems with addiction, it is not as shocking as it might be.

Perry confessed one of his greatest addictions, along with painkillers and alcohol, was to be the funniest. He needed to hear those laughs. In the HBO Max Friends reunion special, he said “To me, I felt like I was going to die if they didn't laugh,” he said. All comedians feel this but it seems that Perry felt it especially acutely. When co-star Matt LeBlanc recalled tripping over his mark and everyone on set laughed, Perry had to jump in. “Because I was like, ‘Somebody's getting a laugh, I can't handle it — I need to get a laugh, too.’”

No wonder Matthew Perry was so funny as Chandler Bing. He was so determined to be the funniest. And he was. From the very first scene of the very first episode, it was clear that the planets had aligned for this actor, this show and the viewing public. Everybody loved Chandler.

For most people, the death of Matthew Perry was the death of Chandler Bing. And we just weren’t prepared for that.

It was a dream character to play: a young man in his twenties who is funny because, well, he is really funny. Being funny is his thing. It’s to cover his cowardice, but he is the funny guy. Ross is the nerd. Joey is the ladies' man. Rachel is the princess. Phoebe is cooky. Monica is uptight. And Chander is the comedian whose lines were being written, rewritten and perfected by a battery of writers who are among the funniest people in the English-speaking world.

But Perry still had to deliver those lines, on cue in the right order, no matter what else was going on in his life. And a lot was going on. But he coped. He was just so funny. The only evidence of his personal demons on screen was his weight loss and weight gain. He was a consistently excellent performer. In an earlier era, when more mainstream romantic comedy movies were made, Perry might have given Cary Grant a run for his money. And then maybe Alfred Hitchcock may have given him a new lease of life.

But I don’t think Perry has been so mourned because of his talent, and that he was taken from us before his time. He wasn’t a River Phoenix or a Heath Ledger whose death meant we have been denied some truly great films they would surely have made. (Personally I feel that way about Victoria Wood who died aged 62 and had at least two more truly great works in her).

For most people, the death of Matthew Perry was the death of Chandler Bing. And we just weren’t prepared for that.

Life isn’t scripted. At least not by us. Sitcoms resemble real life. But our lives are messier, and more complicated. Our jokes aren’t as funny. And sometimes it’s just tragic.

Matthew Perry simply was Chandler from Friends. “I’ve said this for a long time: When I die, I don’t want ‘Friends’ to be the first thing that’s mentioned,” he said. It’s not hard to imagine Chandler making a joke out of that. One can also imagine Perry’s character saying, “I always figured I’d die alone. In a hot tub. Whoa, did I just say that out loud?’ And the audience would laugh because in the Friends-world, those writers have handed Chandler a happy ending: a life with Monica and their children, away from Manhattan, but forever connected to their lifelong friends, Ross, Joey, Phoebe and Rachel.

Life isn’t scripted. At least not by us. Sitcoms resemble real life. But our lives are messier, and more complicated. Our jokes aren’t as funny. And sometimes it’s just tragic. The Chandler Bings don’t get the Monicas and the happily ever afters. Sometimes the Chandler Bings die young and alone. And no-one laughs.

But the real human Perry did what one senses the fictional Chandler Bing would not or could not do: turn to God for help. A year before his death, he wrote in his memoir that at his lowest ebb, he experienced God’s presence and love, saying that “for the first time in my life, I felt OK. I felt safe, taken care of. Decades of struggling with God, and wrestling with life, and sadness, all was being washed away, like a river of pain gone into oblivion.”

Maybe it sounds cliched. But for those of us with a Christian faith, what he experienced is not a surprise but a wonderful reality.

Article

Assisted dying

Comment

Culture

Politics

3 December 2024

5 min read

The assisted dying debate revealed the real role of Parliament

MPs from areas where people are vulnerable and at risk were more sensitive to the dangers.

M. Ciftci

Mehmet Ciftci has a PhD in political theology from the University of Oxford. His research focuses on bioethics, faith and politics.

An MP stands and speaks in a parliamentary debate.

MP Diane Abbott speaks in the debate.

Parliament TV.

What would be the effect of allowing assisted suicide for those ‘people who lack agency, the people who know what it is to be excluded from power and to have decisions made for them’, asked Danny Kruger MP, as he wrapped up his speech? ‘What are the safeguards for them? Let me tell the House: we are the safeguard—this place; this Parliament; you and me. We are the people who protect the most vulnerable in society from harm, yet we stand on the brink of abandoning that role.’

His words capture an important aspect of Friday’s debate: what is the point of Parliament? Do MPs meet to turn public opinion polls into policies? If the majority are in favour of something, do MPs have nothing left to do but to follow the public and sort out the fine details? We might instinctively say ‘Yes!’ It seems right and democratic to treat those whom we elect as people we select and send to do our bidding. And the polls do seem to show the majority of people supporting assisted suicide, at least in principle – although there are good reasons to be sceptical about those figures and about the conclusions drawn from them.

But there are numerous times when the majority are known to be in favour of something but politicians refuse to endorse it. Polls repeatedly show that a majority are in favour of reintroducing the death penalty. Why might it be right for MPs sometimes to ignore what the purported majority thinks and to use their own judgement?

Because Parliament is not just a debating chamber.

An older way of referring to it was to call it the ‘High Court of Parliament’ because ‘parliament, classically, was where individuals could seek the redress of grievances through their representatives,’ as law lecturer Dr Robert Craig writes. It performed its function admirably in response to the Horizon scandal: a legitimate grievance was brought to its attention, and it responded to redress the wrongs done to the sub-postmasters by passing a law to ‘overturn a series of judgments that could only have been obtained, and were only obtained, by a toxic, captured and wilfully blind corporate culture’.

Friday’s debate featured many MPs who understood what they were there to do. They acknowledged the ‘terrible plight of the people who are begging us for this new law’ as Danny Kruger said. But they also spoke up for those who were in danger of being harmed and wronged by the bill: the disabled and the dying, and all the vulnerable who were not there to speak on their own behalf.

Many echoed the concerns expressed by Diane Abbott about coercion: ‘Robust safeguards for the sick and dying are vital to protect them from predatory relatives, to protect them from the state and, above all, to protect them from themselves. There will be those who say to themselves that they do not want to be a burden. … Others will worry about assets they had hoped to leave for their grandchildren being eroded by the cost of care. There will even be a handful who will think they should not be taking up a hospital bed.’ And evidence of coercion is hard to find and trace: ‘Coercion in the family context can be about not what you say but what you do not say—the long, meaningful pause.’

An analysis shared on X by law lecturer Philip Murray found an association between the level of deprivation in a constituency and how likely a Labour MP was to vote against the bill. He also shared figures showing that 2/3 of MPs from ethnic minorities voted against it. In other words, MPs from areas where people are vulnerable and at risk were more sensitive to the dangers of helping people to kill themselves.

The second reading of the bill on Friday was a crucial moment for them to decide whether the bill would fix an injustice or whether it would itself cause harm.

But it seems that many MPs did not appreciate what the debate was about or what they had gathered to do. Layla Moran MP said: ‘The media are asking all of us, “Are you for or against the Bill?”, but I urge hon. Members to think about the question differently. The question I will be answering today is, “Do I want to keep talking about the issues in the Bill?”’ But James Cleverly MP intervened: “she is misrepresenting what we are doing at this point. We are speaking about the specifics of this Bill: this is not a general debate or a theoretical discussion, but about the specifics of the Bill.” He was right to be impatient. Unlike the Oxford Union, the vote has consequences. Parliamentarians are not there merely to debate. As the term ‘High Court of Parliament’ suggests, when MPs (either on their own initiative or as a government) propose bills, what they are often doing is conveying a plea to redress some grievance, and their debates are to decide whether to respond by making laws to grant justice to the wronged.

The second reading of the bill on Friday was a crucial moment for them to decide whether the bill would fix an injustice or whether it would itself cause harm, because the scrutiny that the bill will undergo in the following stages is not likely to be as rigorous as with government bills. As a Private Member’s Bill, the assisted dying proposal is free to be scrutinised by a committee selected by the MP who has proposed the bill, i.e. Kim Leadbeater. When the bill reaches the stage for a final vote in the Commons at the third reading, no further amendments can be made and the time for debate is likely to be short.

It is rare but bills are sometimes defeated at the third reading. With eighteen abstentions on Friday and at least thirty-six MPs claiming they might change their minds later, there is still hope.

Each sitting of the Commons begins every day with a prayer by the Speaker’s Chaplain, who prays that MPs ‘may they never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals but laying aside all private interests and prejudices, keep in mind their responsibility to seek to improve the condition of all mankind.’

We can only hope and pray that at their next opportunity, MP will consider this bill in light of their responsibilities as the country’s High Court, charged with protecting the most vulnerable in society from harm.