Joey Tribbiani - Background

Background

Joey is characterized as a simple-minded but good-natured womanizer who loves food. He particularly loves meatball sub sandwiches. When asked if he would give up sex or food he had trouble deciding and kept blurting out sex or food, eventually yelling "I want girls on bread!". In The One with the Ride Along, he appears to be saving Ross from a putative gunshot, when it was actually his meatball sandwich that he was trying to save; it was just near Ross. He also loves the "Joey Special" — two pizzas. He is something of an idiot savant in general, but capable of good ideas when the situation arises; this is alluded to in the episode "The One Where Ross Dates a Student", when Chandler, referring to Joey, says "A hot girl's at stake and suddenly he's Rain Man" when Joey suggested Ross work out who among his students called him the 'hottie of the paleontology department' by comparing the handwriting of the note to the handwriting in the class essays. In another example, Joey made up an anecdote referred to as the "Europe story" or the "magic story"; apparently, anyone who hears it will immediately want to have sex with the teller. This was proven to be effective in "The One With the Videotape", when it was discovered that Rachel successfully used the story on Ross (although, as Ross was aware of the story beforehand, the mere fact of Rachel using it would have been enough to imply that she was hitting on him). He is also clever at other times, for example, in "The One With Ross’s Teeth", while the other five friends sat around at Central Perk pondering why their bosses don't like them, it was Joey who pointed out, "Maybe it's because you're all sitting around here at 11:30 on a Wednesday."

Joey is extremely promiscuous with women, often relying on his catchphrase pickup line "How you doin'?". In "The One with Monica's Thunder", Chandler asks Joey, "You've had a lot of sex, right?", to which Joey replies, "Today? Some ... not a lot." He sleeps with many of the interns and extras on shows on which he works (Although he was prepared to decline an offer to have sex with a casting agent because he wanted to be cast for his acting skills rather than his sexual performance; his integrity prompted the agent to give him a bigger part than the one he originally auditioned for, but he still slept with her to get it). He has apparently been sexually active for a very long time; he undid a 16-year-old girl's bra when he was nine, slept with his teacher in the seventh grade, and he had a wild spring break when he was 13. However, in the episode "The One with Ross's Sandwich", Chandler and Monica attempted to cover up their fling by claiming Joey was a sex-addict, and Joey was outraged at the accusation. He is very charming to all women but can never seem to get into a committed relationship.

Despite his unintelligent nature, Joey is repeatedly shown as a caring and kindhearted person. He let Rachel live with him when she was fighting with Ross, financially supported Monica and Chandler, and helped Phoebe find work when she was unemployed. He was willing to marry Phoebe or Rachel when he found out that one of them is pregnant. Joey is also the most physically powerful of the group, being able to easily push Ross over a couch with only one hand, and offering to go to the coffee house to intimidate two bullies into leaving Ross and Chandler alone.

He is also shown to be something of a Stephen King fan, stating he reads The Shining over and over again, as well as being a fan of a film adaptation of one of his novels, Cujo. He also became a fan of the classic novel, Little Women after Rachel asked him to read it to see if it was better than The Shining. Joey grew to love the novel and became grief-stricken when one of the main characters was dying. Despite this, later in the series Joey was inconsistently shown to be disdainful of reading.

Joey briefly mentions to the gang that Al Pacino is his idol. In Friends, Joey has the poster for the 1983 Al Pacino film Scarface in his bedroom. The same poster is seen in his house in Joey. He also mentioned that his favorite movies are the Die Hard series.