“Friends” was far and away one of the best shows of the ’90s, but Matthew Perry wished it’d been slightly less appreciated. The late actor, who played sarcastic Chandler Bing for 10 seasons, explained in a 1997 Entertainment Weekly interview: He thought the show lost a special quality once it became a pop culture sensation.
“In the beginning, the series was about six loserish people who hung out and talked about their lives,” Perry said. “They weren’t famous, they weren’t hairstyles or the covers of magazines. They weren’t a phenomenon. I’d love to see us get back to that original idea of six people, just hanging out.” The period of the show Perry talked about was short-lived: “Friends” was a phenomenon as early as Season 2’s “The One After the Superbowl.” That episode raked in nearly 53 million viewers in one of the best post-Super Bowl sitcom performances ever.
Even before that, the show was routinely getting 20+ million viewers a week; in Season 1, much of that was attributed to the show airing directly after “Seinfeld,” but after the Super Bowl episode, it was clear “Friends” was bringing in viewers all on its own.
The first season contained Matthew Perry’s favorite Friends episode
It’s easy to see why Matthew Perry loved the first season of “Friends.” The characters were more grounded, they had more relatable financial concerns, and there was a general cozy, relaxed atmosphere the later seasons lacked. Season 1 spent more time simply letting the characters enjoy each other’s company.
Perry’s favorite episode of “Friends” in its pre-phenomenon days was its seventh-ever episode, “The One With The Blackout.” In this episode, ranked by TVLine as one of Perry’s funniest episodes on the show, Chandler is trapped in a room with a model and struggling to think of how to woo her.
Chandler spends much of the episode physically isolated from the other characters, which meant that, outside of his scenes, Perry was able to sit back on set and watch the other five actors interact without him. “These five great actors doing ensemble work that was amazing,” Perry told People. “This was the first time I realized, ‘Gee, this is really clicking.'”
