The 'Friends' Episode Matthew Perry Considered His Favorite

Matthew Perry's Friends character, Chandler Bing, was well-known for his quips, quick wit, and endless ability to cut through any awkward or intense situation with a (often sardonic) one-liner. As he himself once put it, "I'm not great at the advice. Can I interest you in a sarcastic comment?" Despite playing the show's quickest, wittiest, and sharpest-talking character, Perry once admitted that the one episode he considered his favorite out of all ten seasons was one in which he barely spoke on screen at all.

Chandler's Silent Episode

"The One With The Blackout" was the seventh episode of the debut season of Friends, first broadcast on November 3, 1994. In the episode, New York is hit by a blackout midway through Phoebe's musical set at Central Perk, leading her, Ross, and Joey to retreat back to Monica and Rachel's apartment for the evening to wait for the power to come back on. Chandler, meanwhile, becomes stranded in a bank's ATM vestibule (or "maybe it's an atrium?") when the blackout shuts off the bank's automatic doors, leaving him trapped inside. Stranded alongside him, though, is noted Victoria's Secret model Jill Goodacre.

Chandler tries to play it cool throughout the unexpected meet-cute scenario, but needless to say things don't quite go to plan. As the episode plays out, he somehow manages to follow up the most awkward reply to an offer of gum imaginable by ending up with someone else's gum in his mouth, and requiring the Heimlich maneuver to save his life. Throughout it all, though, a voiceover relates Chandler's inner thoughts, leaving Perry, who had prerecorded them all, to silently react to it all on screen. "The interesting thing about that episode was I didn't speak much," he quipped in a 2004 interview with Entertainment Weekly magazine.

Watching the Magic Happen

It's not only the intriguing style of storytelling and ingenious use of a voiceover that made the episode Perry's favorite, however. In the same interview, he went on to explain that as his scenes were all separate from the rest of the cast, he could spend much of the filming watching his five castmates perform in a single setting, with each character bouncing off one another. "I was also able to watch the other three-quarters of the show, which was these five great actors doing ensemble work that was amazing," he explained in the interview. And just a handful of episodes into the show’s first season, he went on, "This was the first time I realized, 'Gee, this is really clicking.'"

And nor was Perry alone in singling out the blackout episode as his favorite of all 236 episodes across the show's entire run. The clever single-setting structure, the use of voiceover in Chandler's scenes, and the continuation of the soap-opera-like storyline of Ross and Rachel's burgeoning relationship (Ross infamously attempts to tell Rachel that he has feelings for her but is interrupted at the last minute) have long made "The One With The Blackout" a firm favorite among fans and critics alike.

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