'Friends' Fans Will Get Why LeBlanc Chose Phoebe

Apparently Lady Gaga is aiming for sainthood. The Joanne singer performed a gracious service to humanity that will be recorded in history books for time immemorial while on The Late Late Show With James Corden on Tuesday night. Why? She asked Matt LeBlanc to pick between Friends ' Monica and Rachel. No, really. The question wasn't much more specific than that: "Who would you rather, Monica or Rachel?" I guess the unspoken implication is who LeBlanc would like to enjoy a physical coupling with, so to speak. And guess what? He chose a curve ball of an answer: Phoebe. Actually, though, true fans shouldn't be too surprised.

Sure, LeBlanc's fictional counterpart, Joey, declared his love for Rachel Green in Season 8, so you may have thought he'd pick Rachel. But if you're a ride-or-die Friends fan, you'll be chuckling at all those losers shouting, "Rachel! Rachel!" at their television screens. After all, you know better. You've zipped through your mental archive and already located the episode that suggests that Joey and Phoebe were made for each other. You know, the episode that Vulture pointed out foreshadows this choice: Season 6, Episode 25 "The One With the Proposal: Part 2."

In case you need a refresher, that's the episode where Chandler's plan to propose to Monica gets Rachel thinking. She suggests to Phoebe that maybe they should find friends who could be their romantic backups, just in case they wind up 40 and still single. In that case, they can marry their backups. Phoebe doesn't give Rachel quite the reaction she expected: Phoebe's already thought this whole thing through and has her backup in place. Her backup is, of course, Joey. Sure, this seems less significant when Rachel later uncovers that Phoebe has also backed up her backup by proposing the same plan to Ross. But when Ross and Joey discover they're both her backup, Rachel and Phoebe suggest they draw lots. It'll be completely random and fair.

The twist here? When Rachel draws Joey (meaning Phoebe and Ross are paired together), they decide they need to swap and Joey agrees with this. He knows, deep down, he's better suited for Phoebe.

Besides that example, this isn't the first time that fans learned that LeBlanc wanted Phoebe and Joey to hook up. In a 2015 interview with People, he said,

"Towards the end we actually pitched the idea that Joey and Phoebe had been having casual sex the entire time. We’d go back and shoot all the historical scenes and just before a moment that everyone recognizes, there’s Joey and Phoebe coming out of a broom closet together. But they were like, ‘Nah.’"

With one casual word, they broke fans' hearts. How could you do this, Friends screenwriters? If there's one hookup that LeBlanc and the world agree about, it's Phoebe and Joey. So here's hoping when the inevitable reunion comes out (c'mon, literally every other '90s entertainment property on the planet has gotten one), the screenwriters will grant this wish.

Images: CBS; Giphy