12 Years On, Friends Creator Explains Why Joey And Monica Didn't Hook Up

And why Rachel was ALWAYS getting off that plane.

Over a decade later and we're still obsessing over Rachel getting off that plane, Monica and Chandler getting it together and the sad, sad, sadness that Pheebs and Joey never gave it a go. Now Friends creator David Crane has told TODAY that all the pairings happened for a reason. D'awww.

“Ross had to end up with Rachel,” he said.

“It’s ‘Friends’! If you’ve seen the pilot, that’s the show. If we had delivered anything else, I think people would have been really unsatisfied.

In the eighth season where you had the Joey/Rachel storyline, part of what was great about it was that it was so wrong. They weren’t meant to be together. They loved each other; they were great friends. And it really showed a wonderful deeper side to Joey, in particular, but at the end of the day, it’s Ross and Rachel. As he says, ‘It’s you, Rach.’ That’s the show!”

The finale could NOT let down viewers who'd been invested in the show for a decade.

“We talked about ‘Oh, Ross and Rachel don’t quite get together or maybe we imply that they will down the road,’” he said.

“But you know what? People have hung in there for 10 years waiting for this moment. Give it to them. The goal was to do it in a way that you didn’t see where we were going, and it was kind of surprising, all the airport stuff.”

“I think Joey was a really good guy,” added Crane, who with partner Jeffrey Klarik created Showtime’s Episodes, starring Matt LeBlanc.

“It was interesting because when (Joey) was first conceived, he was a ladies’ man. But with the three women, he never hit on any of the women around him. They were his friends and he was their big brother. And his heart was always in the right place.”

The WHOLE WORLD was gunning for a cheeky fling between Phoebe and Joey but they knew that was just too easy:

“At that point when we even considered it, Monica was with Chandler and we were like ‘Well, that’s too tidy. Stop it,’” he said.

And it wasn't all planned out for Mon and the Chan Chan man...

It was actually Joey who was meant to snag her (remember the lemonade scene?!):

“When we were originally conceiving the show, we actually thought that Monica and Joey might become a thing and then we cast it, and just went ‘that’s not the right energy’ because now they’re faces and they’re people,” said Crane, who explained that Monica’s character was supposed to be tougher.

“Janeane Garofalo was sort of a prototype.”

“Witty and sarcastic and biting,” Klarik added. “And so that was a nice idea to have that dynamic with the ladies’ man and this tough chick.”

But that all changed once they settled on Courteney and Matty. “They both became softer and realer,” Crane said.

Amazing Joey Facts You Need To Read:

20 Joey Tribbiani Facts That Are So Far Past The Line, The Line Is A Dot To Them

'You can't just give up, is that what a dinosaur would do?'
1 of 20In ‘The One With Ross’ Wedding’, Joey and Chandler were originally going to visit McDonald’s - but the scene was replaced with Joey ‘going into the map’

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2 of 20Unsurprisingly, Joey dated the most people across the ten series. He had 17 girlfriends (OK, flings), while Phoebe had 16.
3 of 20Before appearing in Friends, Matt LeBlanc was a carpenter.
4 of 20During his best man speech at Ross and Emily’s wedding rehearsal dinner, Joey says “I first met Ross in this coffee house back home...”, but we learned in The One With The Flashback that Joey met Ross in a bar.
5 of 20Before the show had been cast, Monica and Joey were intended to be the central couple.
6 of 20It is revealed in The One After “I Do” that Joey has tiny feet, which he is secretive and defensive about.
7 of 20He is a big Stephen King fan, having read The Shining several times, as well as being a fan of the film adaptation of one of King’s novels, Cujo.
8 of 20Joey’s stage work includes a play about trolls, roles in Pinocchio and Macbeth, the lead part in Freud! a musical about psychoanalysis and a part in ‘Boxing Day’, a conventional drama that turns into a sci-fi story.
9 of 20Joey has worked as a waiter in Central Perk, at a Christmas tree farm, played Santa Claus and a Christmas elf, worked as a tour guide at the Museum of Natural History and has given out perfume samples to customers at a department store.
10 of 20Joey has the poster for the 1983 Al Pacino film Scarface in his bedroom and the same poster is seen in his house in Joey.
11 of 20Joey’s sexual adventures include undoing a 16-year-old girl’s bra when he was nine, sleeping with his teacher in the seventh grade, and having a “wild spring break” when he was 13.
12 of 20Chandler didn’t like Joey the best when he held roommate interviews. Mr. Heckles lied to the guy Chandler picked, meaning Chandler had to go with his second choice - Joey.
13 of 20Joey is Phoebe’s best male friend; they have dinner together once a month to talk about the rest of the group.
14 of 20Joey’s the least mature of the group. He enjoys playing video games and foosball, “exclusively” reads comics, plays with a hockey puck, a scooter, a pile of boxes and bubble wrap and even sleeps with a toy penguin named Huggsy.
15 of 20The encyclopedia Joey buys in “The One With The Cuffs” teaches him about everything beginning with the letter ‘V’, specifically vomit, Mount Vesuvius, volcanoes, vivisection, the vas deferens, and the Vietnam War.
16 of 20As a child, Joey had an invisible friend named Maurice, who was a space cowboy.
17 of 20Joey plays Dr. Drake Ramoray in a fictional version of the NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives (1965). In real life, Jennifer Aniston’s father, John Aniston, played ‘Victor Kiriakis’ on the real Days of Our Lives.
18 of 20Joey has seven sisters, Mary Theresa, Mary Angela (with whom Chandler fooled around at Joey’s birthday party), Dina, Gina, Tina, Veronica, and Cookie.
19 of 20A ton of Joey’s acting projects ended badly. Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E. was cancelled, his big role in Law & Order was as a corpse in a body bag and the big movie he’s cast in (‘Shutter Speed’) is shut down. He got fired from a Burger King commercial, too.
20 of 20Joey wasn’t written as a dim character. Matt LeBlanc suggested it.

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