‘Friends’ TV Show Made Even More Awesome By Matt Leblanc’s Suggestion That Phoebe And Joey Had Been Together All Along
Friends fans would know that the hit TV show’s writers played around with many different couplings throughout the full ten seasons of Friends. In the end, the writers decided to stick with Chandler and Monica as one perfect duo, and in the final episode, finally gave Friends fans what they had been waiting for the entire series: Ross and Rachel together at last. That leave the remaining cast members of the six original Friends: Phoebe and Joey. So why did the show’s most ditzy, lovable characters never get together – especially given that Phoebe was always quite explicit about her feelings for Joey?
As MTV noted, the two characters certainly shared many on-screen kisses throughout the ten seasons of Friends, and it looked to most fans like the writers were setting the storyline up: that Joey and Phoebe would be together at the end.
#18faveFRIENDSmoments Joey’s surprise kiss with Phoebe in The One Where They All Turn Thirty <3 pic.twitter.com/b7SFmWDQ
— Zoë (@AnistonTheroux) September 22, 2012
“@BriLovesFriends: 20 Years Since Joey And Phoebe’s first kiss when she pretended to be Ursula <3 pic.twitter.com/BN0DQZ6ky6” #friends ?
— Sandy López Sugastti (@sandysugastti) September 23, 2014
But, much to the disappointment of Friends fans everywhere, it was not to be. Phoebe ended the show married to Mike, played by Paul Rudd, and Joey remained single, setting the stage for his spin-off show, simply named Joey.
People Magazine ran a story on this very issue, following Lisa Kudrow’s and Matt LeBlanc’s respective Emmy nominations this year.
When asked why Phoebe and Joey were never really a couple on the show, Matt LeBlanc’s answer gave Friends fans something to think about.
“Towards the end we actually pitched the idea that Joey and Phoebe had been having casual sex the entire time. We’d go back and shoot all the historical scenes and just before a moment that everyone recognizes, there’s Joey and Phoebe coming out of a broom closet together. But they were like, ‘Nah.’ “
Wouldn’t that have been an amazing, albeit shocking, revelation at the end of the show!
Cinema Blend had some fantastic ideas for how some of the most famous Friends moments could have been retroactively filmed from another viewpoint to finally reveal that Phoebe and Joey had been together all along.
Remember that episode where Joey won’t give Chandler his couch cushions back, so Chandler takes revenge by hiding all Joey’s clothes, and Joey exacts his own brand of revenge by wearing every item of Chandler’s clothing that he can find?
“Look at me! I’m Chandler! Could I BE wearing any more clothes?”
As Cinema Blend suggested, a simple wink from Phoebe would have given this scene a whole new meaning, and suggested to the audience that she would very soon be peeling off every layer of Chandler’s borrowed clothing from Joey.
Another suggestion involved the famous scene in Vegas after Ross and Rachel drunkenly got married. We all remember Ross and Rachel stumbling out of the shotgun wedding chapel, only to be seen by Chandler and Monica. We never knew where Joey and Phoebe were at that exact moment – what if it was later revealed that they would have finally been caught, had Ross and Rachel not been so drunk as to completely look past them?
The possibilities are endless, and we think it would have made an awesome twist to the final episodes of Friends if the writers had taken Matt LeBlanc suggestions on board.
Let us know in the comments – what famous Friends scene could have been enhanced by including the hint of a Joey/Phoebe romance?
[Photo: Stephen Shugerman / Getty Images]
