9 This is not a literal transcription of what Spanier said, but rather a paraphrase, based on his recollections.
Part Three
Transparency
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.
2.
To test this idea about the transparency of Friends, I contacted a psychologist named Jennifer Fugate, who teaches at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Fugate is an expert in FACS, which stands for Facial Action Coding System.1 In FACS, every one of the forty-three distinctive muscle movements in the face is assigned a number, called an “action unit.” People like Fugate who are trained in FACS can then look at someone’s facial expressions and score them, just as a musician can listen to a piece of music and translate it into a series of notes on the page.
So, for example, take a look at this photo:
That’s called a Pan-Am smile—the kind of smile a flight attendant gives you when he or she is trying to be polite. When you give that kind of smile, you pull up the corners of your lips, using what’s called the zygomaticus major muscle, but leave the rest of your face impassive. That’s why the smile looks fake: It’s a smile without any kind of facial elaboration. In the FACS, the Pan-Am smile using the zygomaticus major is scored as AU 12.
Now take a look at this:
This is what’s called a Duchenne smile. It’s what a genuine smile looks like. In technical terms, it’s AU 12 plus AU 6—meaning that it is a facial movement involving the outer portion of the orbicularis oculi muscle, raising the cheeks and creating those telltale crow’s-feet around the eyes.
FACS is an extraordinarily sophisticated tool. It involves cataloging—in exacting detail—thousands of muscular movements, some of which may appear on the face for no more than a fraction of a second. The FACS manual is over five hundred pages long. If Fugate had done a FACS analysis of the entire “Girl Who Hits Joey” episode, it would have taken her days, so I asked her to focus just on that opening scene: Ross sees Chandler and Rachel embracing, then rushes over in anger.
Here’s what she found.
When Ross looks through the cracked door and sees his sister in a romantic embrace with his best friend, his face shows action units 10 + 16 + 25 + 26: That’s the upper-lip raiser (levator labii superioris, caput infraorbitalis), the lower-lip depressor (depressor labii), parted lips (depressor labii, relaxed mentalis or orbicularis oris), and jaw drop (relaxed temporal and internal pterygoid).
In the FACS system, muscular movements are also given an intensity measure from A to E, with A being mildest and E strongest. All of Ross’s four muscle movements, in that moment, are Es. If you go back and watch that Friends episode, and freeze the screen at the moment when Ross looks through the door frame, you’ll see exactly what the FACS coders are describing. He has an unmistakable look on his face of anger and disgust.
Ross then rushes into Monica’s apartment. The tension in the scene is accelerating, and so are Ross’s emotions. Now his face reads: 4C + 5D + 7C + 10E + 16E + 25E + 26E. Again, four Es!
“[AU] 4 is a brow-lowerer,” Fugate explains.
That’s what you do when you furrow your brow. Seven is an eye squint. It’s called “lid-tightener.” He’s kind of scowling and closing his eyes at the same time, so that’s a stereotypic anger. Then the 10 in this case is very classic for disgust. You kind of lift your upper lip, not really moving the nose, but it gives the appearance that the nose is being turned up. The 16 sometimes happens with that. That’s a lower-lip depressor. That’s when you push your bottom lip down so that you can see your bottom teeth.
Monica, at the door, tries to pretend nothing is amiss. She smiles at her brother. But it’s a Pan-Am smile, not a Duchenne smile: some 12 and the barest, least-plausible whisper of 6.
Ross chases Chandler around the kitchen table. Chandler hides behind Monica, and as Ross approaches, he says: “Look, we’re not just messing around. I love her. OK? I’m in love with her.”
Then Monica reaches and takes Ross’s hand. “I’m so sorry that you had to find out this way. I’m sorry. But it’s true, I love him too.”