Joey Tribbiani

Joey Tribbiani
File:Joeyftribbiani.jpg
First appearance	The Pilot (Friends)
Last appearance	Joey and the Wedding (Joey)
Created by	David Crane
Portrayed by	Matt LeBlanc
In-universe information
Alias	Ken Adams Joseph "Joe" Stalin Holden McGroin J-Bird Big Daddy Dragon Bert
Gender	Male
Occupation	actor, former waiter at Central Perk
Family	Joey, Sr. (father) Gloria (mother) "Nonnie" (grandmother) Unnamed (grandmother) Michael (nephew) Gina (sister) Tina (sister) Dina (sister) Mary-Angela (sister) Mary-Therese (sister) Veronica (sister) Cookie (sister)
Spouse	none

Joseph "Joey" Francis Tribbiani, Jr. (born January 9, 1968) is a fictional character on the popular US television sitcom Friends (1994–2004), and the title character in the spin-off, Joey (2004-2006), and is played by Matt LeBlanc.

Background

Joey comes from an Italian American family of 8 children, of which he is the only male. He is one of the few "Friends" that made (relatively) few moves of home, having only changed apartments four times in the series: once, when he and Chandler moved into what is usually Monica's apartment after winning it from her in a game in "The One with the Embryos" and then moved back with Chandler into his own apartment; another time, he moved to his own lavish apartment away from Chandler, with whom the psychotic Eddie moved in, but shortly moved back afterwards. Joey is a "stereotypical" actor: oversexed, under-educated and constantly looking for work. He was ordained a minister in The One with the Truth About London, and officiated at both Monica and Chandler and Phoebe and Mike's weddings. It is revealed in The One After "I Do" that Joey has size seven feet.

Career

Joey has a career in acting. He briefly mentions to the gang that Al Pacino is his idol. Joey also has the 1983 Scarface poster in his apartment room which featured Al Pacino. He also pursued modeling at one point. It was successful until he learned his latest picture was that for a health safety poster advertising VD. The poster was shown all over the city, including the scoreboard at Madison Square Garden and led to him being briefly ostracized by his friends, and even his whole family. His character is known for his simple-mindedness, trouble with understanding negative criticism of his acting (even once believing a description of his performance as "abysmal" was positive), love of food (particularly meatballs sub sandwiches and the world's famous Joey's Special... two pizzas) and success with women, which generated the popular catchphrase "How you doin'?" (his pickup line). However, he is something of an idiot savant in matters of romance. This is directly alluded to in the episode "The One Where Ross Dates a Student", when Chandler, referring to Joey, says "A hot girl's at stake and suddenly he's Rain Man." In another example, Joey made up an anecdote that Chandler and Monica referred to as the Europe story; apparently, anyone who hears it will immediately want to have sex with the teller. ("The One with the Videotape")

His roles varied from doctor to headshot in the above-mentioned public health poster for VD and even being a one time butt double. Joey's most famous acting role (and longest lasting) was as Dr. Drake Ramoray on the serial drama Days of Our Lives. However, when he claimed in an interview that he wrote many of his own lines, the writers of the show became annoyed and killed him off a few episodes later (he fell down an elevator shaft). His character later returned to Days of Our Lives in a bizarre plot line which resurrected him. In Season 7, he was up for a Soapie for Best Returning Male Character. He lost, so he tried to steal one. Joey's agent was Estelle Leonard.

In the spin-off series, Joey, it is revealed that Joey died again on Days of Our Lives when a nurse stabbed him while he was operating on her husband ("Joey and the Wrong Name"). He won a Daytime Soap Award for "Best Death Scene".

Joey was also employed (briefly) at Central Perk as a waiter. Facing a dry spell in his career as an actor, Joey was persuaded by Gunther to take a job serving coffee. At first Joey tried to hide the fact of his new job from his friends, but they eventually figured it out. He did not like the work but, true to his nature, soon found a way to use his position to meet and ingratiate himself to attractive women by giving them free food, a practice to which Gunther quickly put a stop. He didn't take his job very seriously and spent a lot of his working hours sitting and talking to his friends. Eventually he was fired for closing the coffee house in the middle of the day to go to an audition while Gunther was running a personal errand. Rachel later persuaded Gunther to give Joey back his job, but once he found more steady acting jobs he eventually just stopped showing up. His absence was barely noticed.

Another one of Joey's careers when he was low on money was a sperm donor. He was donating for an experiment a hospital was having and as payment at the end of 2 weeks the hospital would give any donors a 700 dollar check. This was later mentioned when Monica was trying to get over her break up with Richard Burke. She decide she wanted a baby so she was looking for sperm donors and realized that one of the applicants was Joey.

Relationships

Joey famously shared an apartment with his best friend Chandler Bing. Their adventures included losing Ross's baby son on a bus, Chandler's dismay at Joey building an entertainment centre which was so big it covered both of their doors (during the construction of which Joey cut Chandler's door in half with a circular saw, which was not fixed for years), buying a chick and a duck (affectionately named 'The Chick and The Duck'), replacing their dining table with a foosball table, spending hours watching Baywatch and Chandler living in a box to prove how much their friendship means to him. A long-running gag depicted Joey and Chandler occasionally fighting with each other like an old married couple, with Chandler often assuming the wife role while Joey assumed the husband role, suggesting homosexual undertones in their friendship (this eventually ended when Chandler became permanently paired with Monica). The two "broke up" temporarily after Joey found success as Dr. Drake Ramoray, but soon moved back in together (after fooling the psychopathic replacement roommate Eddie into believing he had never lived with Chandler). In the final episode, Monica destroyed the foosball table (when the two couldn't bring themselves to do it to release the trapped Chick Jr. and Duck Jr.), before Chandler moved to the New York suburbs to begin their new family. However, Chandler and Monica made it clear that their new home would have a specially designated "Joey room".

When Chandler moved out to pursue a relationship with Monica, Joey was joined by Janine (Elle MacPherson). He formed a stronger bond with Rachel Green during her pregnancy by Ross Geller. He eventually fell in love with Rachel and dated her for a time; however, nothing came of it and the two returned to being just good friends. By the series' finale, Rachel and Ross resumed their romance.

Joey is perhaps the most loyal of the friends. As he said in The One with the Jellyfish, "If I had to, I'd pee on any one of you!", referring to the awkward act of urinating on a jellyfish wound to subside pain (although he actually could not urinate on Monica's wound, due to getting "stage fright"). In one episode, when Joey believed Phoebe to be pregnant, he proposed marriage, claiming the world is too scary for a single mother alone. However, when it was revealed that it was in fact Rachel who was pregnant, Joey proposed to Rachel, making the exact same speech and demanding the ring back from Phoebe. He also offered to stand up for Ross and Chandler when they were being bullied at Central Perk, and he allowed Monica to hire and fire him so as to prove to her employees that she was not a pushover. When he discovered that Monica and Chandler had developed a romantic relationship and they learned about it, he agreed to keep it a secret until the two were ready to reveal it to the rest of their group (although he was not above humiliating Monica by covering her and Chandler's affair up with the statement that he himself had slept with her in London). He also called Chandler moments after suspecting Monica of having an affair with a mystery male he had heard in her apartment (who in fact turned out to be Chandler. "I told you you shouldn't have married someone so much hotter than you!"). He is also the only one that knew that Chandler is afraid of dogs (Chandler then says it to the other Friends and Joey warns him not to do it, because they were going to get mad) and that Ross doesn't like ice cream.

It is implied in the series that the other Friends think that Joey is immature, and Chandler even claims that he is responsible for Joey's well-being.

Joey's relationships with the other Friends have always been very friendly. He is best friends with Chandler, and Ross is a close second, if not tied. Rachel and the other women on the show have been the object of many unintentionally sexist comments on Joey's behalf, especially Monica. Chandler once put it, "Your long-standing offer to have sex with my wife is much appreciated." This statement fairly accurately summarizes his behavior around most women. Notwithstanding this apparent boorishness, however, he always enjoyed a close relationship with Monica, Rachel and Phoebe.

Ironically, in the end of the series, Joey was the only Friend that ended up without a lover or a spouse (Ross and Rachel, Monica and Chandler, Phoebe and Mike), as he is the one that dated most women. He also is the only one to end up without any kind of children (Ross had Ben and Emma, Rachel had Emma, Phoebe had the triplets and Chandler and Monica had the adopted twins). Although in some times Joey had shown not to like children (when Rachel was going to say to Emma's father she was pregnant, she asked Joey how would he react if a girl told him he was going to have a baby, and he got really scared and started asking "Someone called? Was she blond and short?"), he also says he likes them and once he told he wanted to call his kid "The Hulk".

Joey has a close relationship with Rachel, also having been attracted to her twice in the series. Once his affection was unreturned in Season 8, once they actually dated in a later season. In many ways, Joey and Rachel are rather similar, both interested in material things, Joey a ladies' man and Rachel the 'guy magnet' of the three female Friends.

Joey has a close relationship with Phoebe. When she was a surrogate mother for her brother's triplets, he offered to eat no meat until the babies were born (Vegetarian Phoebe craved meat and he suggested that if he was a vegetarian, she "would be eating his animals, and no other animals would have to die"). Also, when the Friends realize that the group may have to split up, Phoebe and Rachel conspired to form a separate group by themselves, but Phoebe insists that Joey come to their new group as well. Phoebe's loyalty is proved again in "The One in Vegas, Part One", when she states that she could live in Las Vegas, since it has everything she needs, "Including Joey!" He in turn invites her to live in the thumb of his hand mansion in "The One in Vegas, Part Two". Phoebe also once says to her friends, "When the Revolution comes, I'll have to kill you all." After a moment's pause, she adds, "Not you, Joey." He seems very pleased about this. The two also try to meet once a month for dinner in order to discuss the other Friends.

• Ex-Girlfriends: Angela Del Vecchio, Kate Miller, Ginger, Erika, Ursula Pamela Buffay, Katie, Charlie Wheeler, Janine Lecroix, Rachel Green

Age

Joey's age is not consistently treated. In "The One with the Birth", which aired on May 11, 1995, Joey says he is 25. In "The One Where Joey Moves Out", which aired less than a year later in February, 1996, Joey says he is 28. The latter would put his birth in 1967 or early 1968, which allows him to be older than Chandler, which he must be if the events in "The One Where They All Turn Thirty" are correct. In "The One With Russ", which aired in January, 1996, Joey says he has been acting for 10 years. This is consistent with birth in 1967 or 1968, assuming he began his acting career at about age 18. In "The One with Joey's Fridge", Joey refers to his activities during spring break in 1981 and Monica comments "You were 13", likewise consistent. In "The One With Ross's New Girlfriend", Joey, confused about whether Franky the tailor did Joey's first suit when he was 15 or 16, asks, "All right, when was 1990?" Joey can't have been 15 or 16 in 1990 and be 28 in 1996. In "The One With The Red Sweater" (2001) Chandler says that Joey is 32, which would put Joey's year of birth at 1969. In "The One with Monica's Thunder" (2000), Rachel says Joey is 31. By the first season of Joey, Michael reveals that Joey is 35.

Post-Friends

After the 2003/2004 final season of Friends, Joey Tribbiani became the main character of Joey, a spin-off TV series, where he moved to L.A. to polish his acting career. His sister Gina and her son Michael were two other central characters of the show. Gina is a straightforward woman who proudly dresses in revealing clothing. Michael is a shy science major at Cal Tech who is not good at socializing with women. Joey becomes good friends with an attractive female attorney named Alex, who, along with her husband, a travelling musician named Eric, is Joey's landlord. Joey hires a new agent named Bobbie Morgenstern, who is herself rather boorish, and not very sympathetic to Joey. Michael, wanting to get out on his own away from his mother, moves in with Joey, though Gina is still a frequent presence at Joey and Michael's apartment (still appearing to do Michael's laundry, for example).

Lucy Liu eventually joins the cast as the executive producer of Deep Powder. Joey also begins a romantic relationship with a neighboring photographer named Sarah (Madchen Amick), his first ongoing relationship that lasts more than one episode since his fling with Janine on Friends. This too, however, ends when Sarah leaves Joey for her new job in Washington.

Following Sarah's departure, Alex separates from Eric and finds solace in the arms of Joey, but this too does not last.

Then, after being killed off Deep Powder, for being too demanding, because he thought "America loves me" Joey got his first real big break on the blockbuster movie Captured.

He later buys a house that burns down and sees his sister reunited with the father of her child. As the series ends he is in a committed relationship with Alex and watches his sister marry the father of her child creating a new family.

Joey's final line was, to Alex, "There it is, you did it!"