Page 69 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

CHAPTER SIX

The Friends Fallacy

1.

By its fifth season, Friends was well on its way to becoming one of the most successful television
shows of all time. It was one of the first great “hang-out comedies.” Six friends—Monica, Rachel,
Phoebe, Joey, Chandler, and Ross—live in a chaotic jumble in downtown Manhattan, couple and
decouple, flirt and fight but mostly just talk, endlessly and hilariously.
The season begins with Ross getting married to a non-Friends outsider. By midseason the
relationship will be over, and by season’s end he will be back in the arms of Rachel. Phoebe gives
birth to triplets and takes up with a police officer. And, most consequentially, Monica and Chandler
fall in love—a development that creates an immediate problem, because Monica is Ross’s sister and
Chandler is Ross’s best friend, and neither of them has the courage to tell Ross what is happening.
At the beginning of episode fifteen—titled “The One with the Girl Who Hits Joey”—Chandler
and Monica’s subterfuge falls apart. Ross looks out his window at the apartment across the way and
spots his sister Monica in a romantic embrace with Chandler. He’s thunderstruck. He runs to
Monica’s apartment and tries to barge in, but the chain is on her door. So he sticks his face into the
six-inch gap.
“Chandler! Chandler! I saw what you were doing through the window. I saw what you were
doing to my sister, now get out here!”
Chandler, alarmed, tries to escape out the window. Monica holds him back. “I can handle Ross,”
she tells him. She opens the door to her brother. “Hey, Ross. What’s up, bro?”
Ross runs inside, lunges at Chandler, and starts to chase him around the kitchen table, shouting:
“What the hell are you doing?!”
Chandler hides behind Monica. Joey and Rachel rush in.
Rachel: Hey, what’s going on?
Chandler: Well, I think—I think—Ross knows about me and Monica.
Joey: Dude, he’s right there.

Ross: I thought you were my best friend! This is my sister! My best friend, and my sister! I
cannot believe this.
Did you follow all that? A standard Friends season had so many twists and turns of plot—and
variations of narrative and emotion—that it seems as though viewers would need a flowchart to
make sure they didn’t lose their way. In reality, however, nothing could be further from the truth. If
you’ve ever watched an episode of Friends, you’ll know that it is almost impossible to get confused.
The show is crystal clear. How clear? I think you can probably follow along even if you turn off the
sound.
The second of the puzzles that began this book was the bail problem. How is it that judges do a
worse job of evaluating defendants than a computer program, even though judges know a lot more
about defendants than the computer does? This section of Talking to Strangers is an attempt to
answer that puzzle, beginning with the peculiar fact of how transparent television shows such as
Friends are.