We conclude this column on the personalities of TV series characters based on the MBTI indicator with a true pillar of comedy: Joey Tribbiani of Friends. The star of the Nineties series that never goes out of fashion is part of the last personality of the 16 that we have analyzed (if you want to discover yours, all you have to do is take the test): the Entertainer or ESFP.
There is no other personality among all those we have analyzed so far that can rival the Entertainer in terms of energy and positivity: they are real entertainers, always excited and full of life. Real party animals, together with their fellow Entrepreneurs or ESTPs (can you see them, Tokyo and Joey hanging out together? They would make sparks!).
As their name suggests, Entertainers love to be the center of attention and put on real shows for their friends: it is no coincidence that Joey’s career takes place in the world of acting and his character focuses on the relationship with the other five friends, who see him as the star of the company.
Since they are personalities inclined towards sensoriality, ESFPs are very sensitive to aesthetics: they love to take care of their appearance, they are often elegant and with an unmistakable style. Although it may not seem like it at first glance, Entertainers are born listeners, always ready to lend a hand to their friends, console them and take them out to have fun. Their approach to existence is rather “physical”: they love contact with people, material pleasures, everything they can enjoy in the present. This often makes them, however, irresponsible and careless about aspects of life that require planning: think of when Joey gives up work to continue spending time with friends and partying.
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An attitude that, in fact, often earns him the nickname “eternal child”if not worse: that typical attitude that in Friends he is often criticized by Monica, who as a good ESTJ does not contemplate Joey’s improvisation and partying and not very responsible attitude. For personalities like the Entertainer, in fact, things like planning for the future, responsibilities, duties are boring and unattractive: just like children, they often need someone else to help them complete these tasks (in the case of Joey, just poor Monica, who after all loves to act as “mommy” to the whole group).
Precisely these characteristics can lead them to often live beyond their means, with consequences that in Friends they are often hilarious but can be unpleasant in real life. Being highly social personalities, ESFPs make friends with everyone and form romantic and physical relationships naturally, hungry for life as they are.
Womanizer Joey knows something about this: his relationship with women in Friends it is shown as a sort of extension of the child’s instinct to look for his mother. Joey loves women and respects them, in his own way: his need for contact with femininity has distant origins, having grown up surrounded by women he can say he knows them and is fascinated by them, continuing to feel irremediably attracted to them.
His Don Giovanni instincts and his tendency to avoid responsibilities and live the moment lightly will lead him to make some hilarious mistakes, in Friends: like when, together with his companion Chandler, he loses Ross’s son on a bus because he is too busy flirting with girls.
This impulse to live in the present, to be immersed in sensoriality, can be attributed to Extraverted Feeling (Se), the primary cognitive function of Entertainers. This characteristic leads them to always be hungry for new experiences, especially if they can share them with a partner (often Chandler). More than materialistic, however, ESFPs are eager to appreciate new experiences and give emotions to those with whom they experience them. They are not tied to material goods, rather to the sensations they can experience by engaging in new adventures together with their friends, who can never be missing.
Non-attachment to material possessions does not apply, in Joey’s case, to food, of course. How can we not mention his love for pizza and the “Joey Special” sandwich?
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Il Introverted Feeling (Fi) it is the secondary function of ESFPs. This function allows the Entertainer to develop a personalized vision of the world independent of social conventions, which serves as a basis for making decisions and understanding themselves and others. Entertainers can be really good when it comes to being theatricalin relationships as in friendships: they are exceptional when it comes to lying or spinning far-fetched stories, whether to justify themselves to friends or to impress a girl.
However, beneath its carefree surface, Joey has often shown signs of insecurity and need for affectionover the course of ten seasons of Friends. He often looked to his friends for confirmation of his value as a person. These moments of weakness help make the character deeper and more human. Often, in the course of FriendsJoey’s character will also act as an unwitting Cupid, leading the most iconic couples to form and find each other: like when Monica decides to go to bed with Chandler instead of him or when his flirtation with Rachel makes Ross understand that he is still in love with she.
Il Extroverted Thinking (Te) it is the tertiary function of the ESFP, bringing a breath of “order” to the disorganized mind of an Entertainer. Often these people don’t like studying, but they still manage to get by thanks to their ability to learn through external stimuli. The risk for these personalities, however, is falling into a loop hyperactivity which could lead them to develop attention disorders (Joey could be called ADHD, if we think about it).
Also, fans of Friends they will forgive us, Joey is certainly not the smartest of the six friends in the series: this has nothing to do with the fact that he is the least educated of the group, it is part of a character who bases some of his main characteristics that have made him so popular on naivety and goodness of heart.
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We defined him as an example of a “wise fool”, a narrative archetype present in numerous stories: the typical character who often masks wise words behind tons of nonsense.
The inferior function of ESFPs is Introverted Intuition (Ni), which often makes them unable to make decisions. We have analyzed the trend of the showman of Friends to the “Peter Pan syndrome” in this article, but we reiterate: being eternal children is not a defect tout court, you just need to know how to direct that inexhaustible energy. The fact is that Joey, throughout the duration of Friendsis perhaps the character who evolves the least: he remains true to himself, it’s true, but he also remains stuck in infantile automatisms which in the long run lead him to repeat his character to the point of exhaustion.
Although you often risk falling into the loop of acting without thinking about the consequences, the Entertainer, of which Joey is a perfect example, is one of the best friends anyone could have. Loyal, honest, disinterested and without ulterior motives, always ready to help others, even at the cost of doing something crazy. It’s impossible not to love him, even if you are radically different from him: the attachment and loyalty that he first feels towards his friends will always be repaid.
Among the characters from the TV series that fall within the Entertainer – ESFP personality we remember Rachel Green, Enid Sinclair, Misa Amane, Dandelion, Ygritte, Penny, Jesse Pinkman, Steve Harrington, Nairobi, Homer Simpson.
Giulia Vanda Zennaro