Friends’ Massive Joey Change Stopped The Show Getting Canceled After Season 1

One crucial change to the character of Joey Tribbiani early on in Friends saved the hit sitcom in the long run. Friends ran for ten seasons from 1994 to 2004 and remains one of the most famous and successful sitcoms of all time. Its focus on six different types of 20-somethings trying to navigate life together made the premise especially relatable to its audience. One of the more popular of the titular friends is Joey, played by Matt LeBlanc.

In the beginning of Friends, Joey is introduced as a suave aspiring actor from a big Italian-American family. He is a chronic womanizer whose charm and good looks make him a hit with the ladies. Due to the nature of his unstable career choice, Joey doesn’t have a steady stream of income and regularly struggles with money. He also loves to eat and famously “doesn’t share food.” Joey was such a fan-favorite that he even got his own Friends spinoff called Joey, though it was short-lived due to poor ratings. However, if it hadn’t been for one crucial change, Joey may not have been such a beloved character on Friends.

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Joey Was Originally Very Different In Friends

Joey was not nearly as dumb in the first season of Friends

In the very first episode of Friends, Joey is portrayed as a flirtatious and shallow ladies’ man. He was never meant to be any sort of intellectual, but he doesn’t come across as unintelligent. However, after the first few episodes of Friends, Joey Tribbiani becomes a lot more noticeably dumb. He often misinterprets the joke or misses the point of it entirely. He’ll also pretend to understand what’s going on in a scene when he clearly has no idea. His obliviousness, harmless ignorance, and lack of common knowledge quickly become core parts of his character.

Joey becoming dumber on Friends was actually a deliberate choice, according to James Burrows, a frequent director of early Friends episodes, including the pilot. Burrows revealed in his book, James Burrows: Five Decades of Stories from the Legendary Director of Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Will & Grace, and More, that Friends co-creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman began to “dumb down” Matthew LeBlanc’s Joey because of something the director pointed out about the character. “Joey and Chandler were too similar,” Burrows recalled in his book, and “in Joey’s original incarnation, he was too smart.” To prevent Joey and Chandler from “play[ing] in each other’s wheelhouse” on Friends, Crane and Kauffman began writing Joey differently. His character became a lot less intelligent, especially in contrast to Chandler, who would often be the one to point out Joey’s stupidity.

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Joey’s Original Character Would’ve Killed The Chemistry That Made Friends Great

It was important that the characters weren’t too similar to one another

Burrows definitely had a point about Joey’s original characterization being too similar to Chandler’s. While Chandler was always more sarcastic and self-deprecating than Joey, there wasn’t enough distinction between Joey and Chandler’s personalities compared to the other four leads. It makes sense for them to be similar since they’re best friends and roommates, but in a sitcom, the main characters have to be different from each other in order for the comedic dynamic to work, especially in a group of six friends.

If the writers had kept Joey the way he was in the pilot, the core gang’s chemistry on Friends would’ve been off. It was crucial that each of the six Friends characters were different enough from each other while still having enough in common to be realistically so close. If Joey were too much like Chandler, some of their best moments, both as a duo and independently, would never have existed. Chandler wouldn’t have been able to playfully take advantage of Joey’s naïveté or make sarcastic remarks about his mild idiocy, and Joey wouldn’t have tickled audiences with his childlike understanding of basic concepts and consistent lack of comprehension.

How Changing Joey’s Character Saved Friends (& Kept It Running For 10 Years)

Joey getting dumber helped balance out the show

Thankfully, Joey’s character was changed early enough in the series that Friends could still go on to be a massive success and run for ten seasons. His overall lower intelligence than his friends made Joey an integral part of the group and balanced out their dynamic, which played a key role in the series’ maintaining longevity even long after Friends wrapped. Without distinct, personalized approaches to each of the six main characters, the comedy of Friends wouldn’t have worked, and the sitcom would have ended a lot sooner than it did.