How Sets From the Forgotten ‘Friends’ Spinoff, 'Joey,' Wound Up Saving Lives
Where Matt LeBlanc once sat, medics now attend to CPR dummies. An exclusive, never-before-seen look at the ‘Joey’ set's new life as an EMS training center.
It’s an age-old question that once puzzled philosophers, ranking up there with “Where do we go when we die?” and “Do all dogs go to heaven?” — When a TV show goes off the air, what happens to the sets?
In most cases, they wind up back in the production company’s storage for use on future series, if not junked altogether. Other times, they’re auctioned off, collected by preservationists, or—in the case of the most esteemed shows—enshrined in museums.
But Joey, the Friends spinoff, was no esteemed show. Sure, I have my thoughts about the short straw that the honestly passable sitcom’s legacy drew, but the fact remains that when the show ceased production in 2006, few would have been clamoring to get their hands on Joey Tribbiani’s Los Angeles apartment walls and furniture. That makes it all the more remarkable that the set wound up serving a greater purpose than any kept in a museum. It wound up saving lives.
Friends fans—or, I guess, viewers who came into Joey cold, which is funny to think about—were first introduced to Joey’s Hollywood “crib” (as we would have said in 2004) in the series premiere of the spinoff. Joey’s sister Gina (Drea de Matteo) had found the place for him ahead of his move to sunny L.A. to further his acting career, and the former New Yorker immediately fell in love with the space.
“I love it,” Joey tells Gina.
“Good, because if you didn’t, I was gonna lie and tell you Tom Cruise used to live here,” she quips back.
Cue that classic Joey density: “Tom Cruise lived here?!”
Though it would go through decor and furniture changes, the apartment set would remain the sitcom’s de facto home base for both seasons. (Yes, there were two seasons.) In the middle of season 2—spoiler alert!—Joey moves into a mansion befitting his newfound television stardom, but a fire soon forces him to return to his old digs.
So how did his home wind up in Charlotte, North Carolina?
In 2006, Joey was one of several defunct Warner Bros. Television productions whose sets were donated to North Carolina’s Mecklenburg EMS Agency. Known today as Medic, North Carolina’s busiest emergency medical service system used the sets to build out a situational training facility. The “first-of-its-kind” Emergency Medical Education and Simulation Center, a press release explained, would offer EMS trainees the most advanced immersive training in the country through the use of robotic patients, audio and video backdrops, and lifelike sets—within which they’d have to perform simulated rescue operations amidst realistic scenarios that evolve in real time.
In Mecklenburg EMS’ facility, patients could be transported from home to hospital, as the soundstage also included a simulated hospital emergency department. Elsewhere, a working ambulance was turned into a stationary motion simulator that mimicked all kinds of emergency transport scenarios.
Resurrected on the agency’s soundstage, Joey Tribbiani’s Hollywood living room became a living room in the North Carolina facility. The donation, facilitated by Time Warner Cable’s Charlotte division, also included sets from the sitcoms Four Kings (NBC), Twins (The WB), and Freddie (ABC)—all of which, like Joey, were canceled in May 2006.
Oh, and it was all filmed. “To put the experiences to optimal use, each session is videotaped by multiple cameras operated from a control center,” the 2006 press release revealed, “allowing participants to immediately review and critique their performance with instructors.”
That’s right: Joey’s series finale wasn’t the last time that Joey Tribbiani’s home was preserved on tape. So now sitcom philosophers can ponder a new question: Are the faux medical scenarios that happened on the Joey set part of Friends canon? Was Joey’s would-be third season effectively a bunch of medical emergency storylines?
In any case, photos and videos of the Joey set in its new home were never publicized… until now. With the permission of Medic/Mecklenburg EMS, I’m pleased to share some here for the first time.
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Joey in Charlotte: The Photos
In the simulation center, the apartment’s layout takes a different shape. The walls seem to have been built upon the facility’s existing floor, and even repainted. But the fireplace is unmistakable.
Let’s compare. The apartment as seen in Joey…
…and as seen in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2006:
The set’s exteriors were used as well. Here’s the set as seen in Joey…
…and the set in the training center.
For good measure, here’s a shot of a medical dummy’s legs poking out of Joey’s doorframe while Joey plays on a television set in the background.
Another fireplace appears to have been placed among another show’s living room set. (Joey’s neighbors in the apartment complex had similar interiors; at least two of those units appeared onscreen during the series’ run.)
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Video: The Joey set in action
And now, without further ado, never-before-seen footage of Joey season 3 the Joey set in action as an emergency response training center. The video, used internally at the EMS agency, was filmed circa 2006.
According to Medic/Mecklenburg EMS Agency, things have changed with the facility’s Joey setup over the years, but at least some of it still remains in use.
After Joey was canceled in 2006, the last eight episodes never aired on American television. They lived only on international DVD box sets until Warner Bros. TV released them on the Friends YouTube channel over the last few weeks.
But in all this time, Joey’s apartment has lived on in Charlotte, serving a greater good.
Special thanks to Medic/Mecklenburg EMS for digging up this footage, and of course, for all their impressive work from simulations to real life. Go give ‘em a follow on Instagram!
For more than you ever wanted to know about Joey, check out the FAQ I wrote within this piece…
…and an even deeper dive I just dug up from a decade ago.
Now, for kicks, here’s Joey saying goodbye to his apartment before his ill-fated move.