That Gay Episode: ‘Friends’ Sidestepped Diversity By Making Chandler Straight

My life would have been completely different if Chandler Bing had been gay.

That may sound preposterous, but could it be any truer? Friends, which hit right as I entered middle school, was my first exposure to a gay relationship. Carol Willick and Susan Bunch caused quite a stir in my Southern Baptist household, causing Friends to be banned for a few months between 1994 and 1995 before my parents were assured that the lesbians weren’t in every episode (sigh). This sitcom showed me what an edited-for-mid-’90s-primetime gay relationship looked like, but I didn’t see myself in Carol or Susan. I was a self-deprecating jokester in my teenage years. I saw myself in Chandler, meaning I related to the character everyone thought was gay but actually wasn’t. I related to Chandler’s gay panic fiercely throughout middle and high school, and I held up Chandler’s straightness as the reason why I wasn’t gay. Everyone on Friends was wrong about him, so they were wrong about me too! So when I say my life would have been totally different if Matthew Perry had played the first lead gay character on TV three years before Ellen, I have the memories of a deeply closeted teenager to back it up.

The question of Chandler’s sexuality first arose very early in Friends’ run, in season one’s “The One Where Nana Dies Twice.” Like Mary Tyler Moore’s Gay Episode “My Brother’s Keeper,” this Friends episode was written by a woman (Marta Kauffman) and a gay man (David Crane). The episode’s A-plot concerns the death (and death again) of Ross and Monica’s grandmother. The B-plot follows Chandler’s existential crisis after his co-worker mistakenly tries to set him up with a guy. The episode begins with a scene at Chandler’s super corporate office, where he works as a transponster concerned about the WENUS or something. His never-seen-again co-worker Shelly offers to set Chandler up with someone, saying, “He’s cute, he’s funny…”

The moment has the same flow as the exchange between Rhoda and Phyllis in The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s gay episode, except that exchange—from 1973—had much less gay panic. Chandler’s stunned reaction alerts Shelly to her mistake, and then, dying of embarrassment, she offers to go flush herself down a toilet. This sets the tone for the whole episode: there’s nothing wrong with being gay, but being mistaken for being gay is a massive offense punishable by extreme swirly. This exchange sets Chandler on a path of self-discovery, one that immediately stalls out and leaves him doing circles in a no homo cul-de-sac for nine seasons.

I’m not saying this response doesn’t ring true for the ’90s. It does, and I know that because I lived out this exact plot when I was a freshman in high school. I know I asked Chandler’s question (“What do you think it is about me?”) at many a lunch table back in 1998. Chandler’s response feels dated now, especially for a reasonably affluent, twenty-something guy living and working in New York City—particularly one with, as we later find out, a parent that is either a drag queen, crossdresser, or transwoman. I find it hard to imagine this exchange taking place today and resulting in a mortified person slowly backing out of a break room.

Chandler spends the episode trying to figure out what it is that makes him seem so… you know. This episode refrains from even using the word “gay” until eight minutes in when Joey rips that bandaid off. The gayness is implied, even in the scene where Chandler asks his friends if they thought that when they first met him. Monica, Rachel, and Phoebe all say they did (this will be contradicted years later when flashbacks reveal that Monica wanted to give Chandler her “flower” back when he was in college). None of them can pin down what it is about Chandler. He’s smart and funny, but so is Ross and no one thought he was gay. Monica sums it up best:

I mean, they’re right. Chandler does have a quality. He is smart, well-dressed (as far as the zoot-suited mid-’90s go), and unleashes zingers like a sardonic Gen X Paul Lynde. Matthew Perry’s performance just has a quality. Since Chandler stayed straight, the show got to do all the gay jokes without having to commit to actual gay representation. Instead of having Chandler reflect inward and question his perception of himself in this episode, he…fixates on his hair. Is it his hair?

The closest Chandler comes to pinpointing his dominant gay gene is when, after seeing the rest of the friends in formal attire for nana’s funeral, he says, “Don’t we look nice all dressed up?” After a beat, he says to himself, “It’s stuff like that, isn’t it?” In high school, I said that six-word phrase every single time I caught myself instinctively doing something “gay.” I said it when I was alone, I said it in front of friends, I said it in front of people that didn’t obsessively make labels for their Friends VHS tapes like I did. I spent my teen years trying to figure out why people thought I was gay. Wait…huh…obsessively recording every episode of Friends and making labels for the VHS tapes? It’s stuff like that, isn’t it?

During the wake, Ross takes four muscle relaxers to help with the back injury he suffered in the A-plot, and then steps on Chandler’s game. While Mr. Bing’s flirting with a girl (at a wake, but whatever), a slurring Ross stumbles over to Chandler, hugs the crap out of him, and blurts out:

This kills the Chan-man’s momentum, and the woman turns to her friend and says, “You were right.”

The episode concludes with Chandler coming face-to-face with the guy Shelly wanted to hook him up with: Financial Services Lowell. Chandler clears up anything Lowell might have heard from Shelly, and Lowell (played by straight actor Stuart Fratkin) says that he tried to tell Shelly that she was wrong. Lowell lessens Chandler’s gay panic by telling him that gay people have a “kind of…radar”—not “gaydar” for some bewildering reason—and that, on behalf of his “people,” Chandler does not have a “quality.” Lowell, apparently the gay community’s ambassador to Friends, is never seen again.

That’s the end of this episode, but it’s not the end of this whole thing. Gay panic becomes a go-to theme for Friends time and time again. Chandler makes fun of anything Ross and Joey do that’s even remotely feminine (like carrying a bag!) while the show heightens Chandler’s stereotypical gayness (He admits a guy smells incredible! He owns multiple copies of the Annie soundtrack! He’s familiar with the musical Oklahoma!). There are multiple times where Monica, Chandler’s wife, reacts to something he says by saying a biting variation of, “Are you telling me you’re gay?” It’s really rough, and it all starts in this episode.

“The One Where Nana Dies Twice” isn’t a bad episode and Chandler’s B-plot doesn’t really age that poorly. Chandler’s hysteria is a little cringe-worthy, but I see truth in it. The problem is knowing what this leads to and realizing what it could have led to. It could have led to Chandler actually coming out and breaking down TV barriers. Instead, it kicked off a regrettable strain of aggressive homophobia in an otherwise brilliant sitcom. It also feels personal to me because, since Chandler no homo’d his way through ten seasons, I didn’t see my gay experience reflected on television before coming out. I’ll never know what would have happened if my legit sitcom hero had come out of the closet on a week-by-week basis while I was in middle school. Would it have opened up my eyes to my own “quality” years earlier? Instead, Chandler kept playing it straight—and so did I.

Watch "The One Where Nana Dies Twice" Episode Of Friends On Netflix