Conflicts between Joey and Chandler have long been a boon for Friends: from one-off stories (“The One with Ross’s Wedding”) to longer, overarching storylines (take your pick – my favorite may be “The One with Chandler in a Box”), Friends gets almost as much mileage out of their fights, as it does from their iconic moments of male friendship. “The One with Joey’s Big Break”, Friends‘s unexpectedly melodramatic penultimate episode, goes back to that well once again – except this time, it presents Joey as the heart of the story, rather than Chandler, which in theory could make for a more interesting, dynamic exploration into Joey’s emotions; unfortunately, Joey’s role in the story of “The One with Joey’s Big Break” is routinely backgrounded in favor of two funnier, though much less entertaining, stories for Rachel and Phoebe.
Joey’s career is consistently a missed opportunity for levity on Friends – after some nascent attempts to explore the intracacies of Joey’s personal and professional lives in episodes like season one’s “The One with the Butt” or season three’s “The One with the Screamer”), the series mostly steps back to make his career successes and pitfalls nothing but punchlines. “The One with Joey’s Big Break”, which sees Joey travel from NY to Vegas (in a taxi once driven by Phoebe’s grandmother) for a movie role Estelle found him. The slow reveal of Joey’s “big break” and the conflict it causes with Chandler is easily the episode’s strongest material, first goaded the audience into Joey’s excitement around his new opportunity, then slowly breaking that down as the episode reveals the role is in an underfunded indie movie, where he has no actual salary (but 1% of gross receipt!) – or work to do, it turns out, when he arrives on set just in the nick of time to see the entire film set shut down.
It’s a compelling story, one that offers a different kind of challenge for Joey – problem is, he spends most of his time offscreen driving to Vegas alone, the perspective of “Joey’s Big Break” shifting back to the group in New York, rather than spend any kind of extended time with Joey to see what hilarities (or profundities) he may have experienced on his presumably week-long drive into the Nevada desert. Instead, he’s distinctly kept off screen until the final seconds, when Friends reveals that Joey’s secretly take a job at one of the Vegas casinos as a gladiator, posing with kids and families in photos and trying to ignore the shame and defeat he’s clearly feeling.
When Joey hangs up the phone with Monica and Friends pulls out to reveal him working in the casino, it’s easy to wonder why Friends didn’t focus more on his story in this episode. The rest of the episode involves two plots designed to go precisely nowhere; Phoebe being mad at Ross for a reason she can’t remember (turns out it’s not even him at all), and Rachel being a baby about putting eye drops in her eye. While these stories are particularly well-executed renditions of the ever-familiar Friends narrative hamster wheel, they take a lot of gravity and energy away from Joey’s story, which begins with a compelling bit of conflict with Chandler, and has ballooned into a full-blown identity crisis for Joey by the end of the episode, isolated from the group and broke with no way to get himself back to New York, either with his finances or dignity intact.
Obviously, Friends couldn’t spend its entire 22-minute running time on that single story (though it would’ve given Friends the opportunity to tell a road trip story, which could’ve been a lot of fun); however, the other two stories don’t offer anything of value to justify the space they take up, and the volume with which they are delivered, in “The One with Joey’s Big Break”. At least there’s some justification for Monica’s obsession on being Rachel’s caretaker/mother in this episode – after all, it’s in Monica’s nature to be unsettlingly dedicated to something – because without that, there’s just Phoebe spending the entire episode mad at Ross for something he didn’t say.
Scenes of Ross begging a bitchy Phoebe to explain herself are certainly amusing, but they feel out of place in an episode with funnier, better things to do with its time – at least Monica and Rachel’s story leads to some great moments of physical comedy, and plays directly into pieces of their characters that play well off each other. With Ross and Phoebe, that balance can’t be achieved, because it relies almost completely on Phoebe just being ditzy and bitchy for no reason, turning Ross into the pandering, whiny version of himself nobody wants to hear from. The result is just strange, a conflict that dissolves the instant Phoebe realizes the incident occurred in her dream; while it’s not a complete whiff of a throwaway side plot, it forces its characters into uncomfortable boxes, all for a story that ultimately just pulls gravity away from the much more interesting story unfolding with Joey a few thousand miles from Central Perk.
At least “The One with Joey’s Big Break” ends itself in an interesting place for a character whose internal dialogue and feelings is so often backgrounded on Friends; Joey’s latest professional failure coming on the heels of his fight with Chandler, who reveals during a round of the question/answer game Joey learned from Phoebe that he doesn’t think this movie will be his big break (leading him to be left on the George Washington bridge), gives this story a bit of an existential undercurrent that the series so often never feels. As the movie set breaks down and circles around Joey, Friends even briefly dips its toes into surrealistic imagery; it’s a light touch, and supports a story often too far into the background to really develop and mature into a three-dimensional inner conflict, but it’s a striking image, especially when paired with the dramatic zoom out to reveal Joey’s fate at the end of the episode.
The end of “The One with Joey’s Big Break” is also a bit unique for Friends, who usually weren’t into penultimate episode reveals or particularly dramatic turns, save for season one’s “The One with the Birth”; those episodes were usually for celebrity cameos. like Charlie Sheen in season two’s “The One with the Chicken Pox” or Robin Williams and Billy Crystal in season three’s “The One with the Ultimate Fighting Championship”. Here, Friends opts for something more dynamic and dramatic – something it really hadn’t done before, and something it would distinctly never do again (at least in quite the same fashion). With Joey isolated in Las Vegas, ashamed and broke, Friends really pushes itself, however briefly, into a much darker emotional realm, albeit one focused inward in a way Friends often didn’t even entertain.
Regardless of intent or future execution, it works really well as a cliffhanger to an otherwise mixed episode, recentering itself on its most lovable character with yet another professional disappointment (even more impressive is that this one doesn’t feel repetitive; at this point, not much has gone right for Joey’s career, if we’re being honest). And it gives season five, which has mostly coasted on the vibes of Monica and Chandler’s growing relationship and Ross’s growing emotional instability as the main drivers of both narrative and emotion. Thanks to that, “The One with Joey’s Big Break” is not only one of the better episodes of season five, but arguably the most effective penultimate episode of any post-season one entry.
Other thoughts/observations:
- Chandler says “all I ever hear is Richard, Richard, Richard” when his name is briefly brought up. Just putting a pin in that for next season, no particular reason why.
- Monica yelling at Chandler to clean up the mess on the kitchen floor Rachel made is such a good, specific little couples moment between them.
- Ahhh, planning out interstate trips with a map. It used to be a thing we had to do!
- Joey asking Ross whether he’d rather sleep with Monica or Rachel still makes me laugh so hard. So well delivered by LeBlanc.
- Also loved Joey’s reaction to hearing he’s not only driving Phoebe’s grandmother’s car, but he’s traveling with her ashes.
- a great ending bit, with everyone springing into action simultaneously to get Rachel’s eye drops in. “We’ll see you in about 3-4 hours!”
- Up next: Friends does another destination finale with the two-part “The One in Vegas”.
