Friends gave proper closure to its main characters in its final season, but Joey’s future was left somewhat open, and it was addressed in the spinoff series Joey – but why was he the only one in the group to get his own TV show? Although the 1990s saw a variety of sitcoms that went on to become classics, few have had the same impact as Friends. Created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, Friends premiered on NBC in 1994 and lived on for a total of 10 seasons, coming to an end in 2004. Friends left the audience with a bunch of memorable jokes, moments, and characters, as well as with a spinoff series that, sadly, wasn’t as successful as the original series.
Friends took viewers to New York City to meet a group of six young adults who did their best every day to balance their social, personal, and professional lives, all while dealing with everything adulthood threw their way. Over the course of 10 seasons, viewers saw Monica, Chandler, Phoebe, Joey, Rachel, and Ross go from struggling young adults trying to find their path in life, to them finally settling down and forming their own families… except for Joey (Matt LeBlanc). Joey Tribbiani was the womanizer of the group and also the stereotypical dim-witted character with a good heart who always looked after his friends, and while he went through different situations (from hilarious to more serious ones) throughout Friends, by the end of the series he hadn’t changed much.
By the end of Friends, Monica and Chandler were moving to their own house with their newborn twins, Rachel and Ross got back together (and they already had a daughter together), and Phoebe married Mike (Paul Rudd), with whom she finally had the family she never had when she was a kid. Meanwhile, Joey continued dating different women and was the only single one at the end of Friends, but his story continued in the spinoff series Joey. Unfortunately, Joey didn’t have the quality and impact of Friends, but raised the question of why he was the only one to get a spinoff – and as it turns out, Joey getting his own show wasn’t the original plan.
In an interview with Metro in 2018, Friends producer Kevin S. Bright revealed that Joey wasn’t the first option for a spinoff series, and at the top of the list was Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel. One of the most popular characters in Friends was Rachel and with good reason: not only did Aniston win over the hearts of viewers with her performance and became one of the biggest stars of the 1990s, but Friends also put her at the front and center from the very beginning. However, a Rachel spinoff series never happened because Aniston was more interested in movie roles. Their second option was a Monica and Chandler TV series, but Bright explained that, while Courteney Cox and Matthew Perry were “grateful for doing the show, they didn’t want to play those parts anymore”. Matt LeBlanc, however, loved Joey and was up for continuing playing him, so he got his own spinoff series.
Joey followed the title character as he moved to Los Angeles to continue his acting career, and by the end of the series, he settled down with Alex (Andrea Anders), bringing his story to a proper end. As for why Joey didn’t succeed like Friends did, Bright explained it was because the show presented a different Joey fans weren’t familiar with, so it didn’t connect with the audience. It’s hard to say if a Rachel or Monica and Chandler spinoff series would have worked out better than Joey did or they would have also flopped, and fans have chosen to stay with the finale of Friends and disregard the events of Joey.