In season one of Friends Joey Tribbiani was a whole lot different than he was as the series progresed. For one thing he was a total hound dog, and wasn’t afraid to just go after any woman he was attracted to. He was also kind of an idiot, but thankfully throughout the duration of the show he developed along with the others. In truth he came in more as he was when he guest-starred on Married With Children as Vinnie, a monumental moron that had the morals of an alley cat and the libido of a teenager. That’s what made him an entertaining character to start with, but eventually he had to change.
Throughout the length of the show the lot of them grew, matured, and became much more well-rounded individuals that were easier to relate to and became less like caricatures of people and more like real people. Perhaps age had something to do with as Matt LeBlanc isn’t a simpleton and plays an intelligent man in films rather easily. He still has the braggadocio that seems to come so easily to his character but at the same time he’s not the bumbler that he’s appeared to be in his earlier days. I and many other others understand full well that he’s never really been as shallow or as moronic as Joey but he played the part so well that I get the feeling that some folks might have figured that he was a lucky stiff that somehow fell into acting.
According his biography he’s a high school graduate but if he attended college after there’s not a lot of description about it. But the odds are good that he didn’t just fall into acting, since the chance of that is so monumentally low and has been for a while. To get and keep the part of Joey for 12 years he would have had to been on the ball constantly and in character quite often so that he could impress the right people. So in order to be professional he had to act like a dunderhead for about 12 years, that’s kind of ironic. It’s also brilliant however since so many people loved Joey on Friends that he was one of the most irreplaceable faces on TV for a long time. I think more people could have ditched Monica than they could have done without Joey, mostly because he was a moron, but an endearing moron that everybody just seemed to like.
Ever wonder why we like those characters that are essentially some of the dumbest in creation? There’s a lot of theories to this but my own personal favorite is that we somehow feel superior to them since we tend to know more about the world and what goes on in it than the character ever will. Imagine how silly that sounds now that you really think about it, and then imagine how much sillier it sounds when you compare Joey in season 1 to Joey in the final season, when he’s finally grown as a person.
Follow Us
