Generation Friends

by Saul Austerlitz

  PART III

  • • •

  IT IS A BIG DEAL

  The Show Hits Its Stride (Seasons 4 through 7)

  CHAPTER 12

  LIGHTNING ROUND

  A Look at the Making of an Exemplary Episode

  In 2009, when TV Guide named the one hundred greatest television episodes of all time, it settled on a single Friends episode to inhabit the twenty-first slot: “The One with the Embryos,” from the show’s fourth season. Fanatics might differ about which Friends episode reigns as the series’ all-time best—others might vouch for “The One with the Prom Video” or “The One with All the Poker”—but in its belly laughs and its bursts of emotion, in its skillful intermingling of divergent plotlines, and in its surprise denouement, “The One with the Embryos” serves as a template for all that Friends did best.

  Producing a television show sometimes required adjusting to real-world circumstances. Friends’ characters were played by actors who lived lives off the set that had to be accommodated, hidden, or transformed. When it came to the fourth season of Friends, the tricky encumbrance that the show’s writers had to somehow wrestle with was that Lisa Kudrow was pregnant. Some shows had attempted to cover up their star’s real-life pregnancy with loose clothing and a sudden interest in carrying around bowling balls and dictionaries (as Friends itself would do, after a fashion, with Courteney Cox in its tenth season). Others chose to make their characters pregnant as well.

  Kudrow’s pregnancy was an opportunity, and a dare. Phoebe was by far the most outrageous of the Friends characters and invited the possibility of more unusual circumstances than other characters could have. Phoebe had already discovered a thumb in her can of soda, demonstrated her skepticism about the theory of evolution to Ross, and once whistled at a man and accidentally sent him into a coma. She had been temporarily haunted by the soul of an elderly Jewish woman named Mrs. Adelman.

  Phoebe was the receptacle for many of Friends’ quirkiest impulses, extending the range of the show’s comic abilities. She was gleefully, willfully obtuse at times, quizzing Pretenders lead singer Chrissie Hynde about her knowledge of chords or stalking her stalker. She was also demonstrably kind in a fashion not regularly granted to the other characters, giving a homeless woman $1,000 and gently informing Rachel that her boyfriend Paolo had made a pass at her.

  The writers often enjoyed writing for Phoebe most, as she required the least tethering to demonstrable reality. Kudrow’s daffy sensibility made it seem as if she were laughing at a joke that only she had heard. She appeared to exist on a notably different frequency than her friends, one that the writers frequently turned to as a counterpoint to the more emotionally nuanced existences of the other characters. By the fourth season, Phoebe was past due for her own emotional plotline.

  Early in the season, writers began batting around ideas, and the suggestion bubbled up that Phoebe might serve as a surrogate for her brother, Frank Jr. (Giovanni Ribisi, who had also starred in Crane and Kauffman’s Family Album), and his middle-aged wife, Alice (Debra Jo Rupp). But might Phoebe have more than one baby? Could she have twins? Could she have quintuplets?

  Some writers were arguing that Phoebe could have eight babies and that an instant brood in her belly might make for a hilariously over-the-top plotline. Others insisted that eight was far too many and that the story needed to be tempered so as to avoid being too physically dangerous or too unbelievable. They eventually settled on three as the right number—ludicrous enough to be funny but not stretching the bounds of credulity.

  Writer Jill Condon was in the shower one morning, pondering the story, when she had a brainstorm: Phoebe should talk to the embryos. She should hold the petri dish with the embryos and implore them to hold on for her brother and sister-in-law’s sake. There was never any guarantee, on a show as team-written as Friends, that any idea would make it into the script, but as soon as Condon thought of it, she was confident that, unless she was wildly wrong, this moment was likely to make it onto television. It was just what the episode needed. Sure enough, when Condon pitched the idea to the room, David Crane responded enthusiastically: “Let’s definitely put that in.”

  The sentiment in the writers’ room was that so overtly sentimental a story needed a more straightforward, comedic B-plot. Seth Kurland emerged with the idea of pitting the remaining characters against each other in a trivia contest, inspired by some screenwriter friends, including future Kiss Kiss Bang Bang director Shane Black, who had held a similar competition, which they called the Pad O’ Jeopardy, in their apartment, dubbed the Pad O’ Guys. Given how extensively the Friends characters were invested in each other’s lives, wouldn’t it be funny to see what they did and did not know about each other?

  The writers determined that it would work best as a male vs. female competition, with each team trying to stump the other with the hardest questions they could come up with about their friends. But what could they bet that would provide significant enough stakes to care about? Someone proposed Monica and Rachel betting their apartment on the outcome of the contest, and a quiet moan rippled through the room. This was a flagrant instance of “schmuck bait” storytelling at its most obvious.

  “Schmuck bait” was something that tempted the more gullible members of the audience with the promise of enormous changes that more discerning watchers would instantly realize could never actually happen. Schmuck-bait storytelling was a prime example of the kind of lazy, clichéd, corner-cutting work Friends eschewed. The writers agreed that they were all better than that.

  Then David Crane piped up: “Let’s just keep the guys in the girls’ apartment.” And what had been a tremor of dissatisfaction over bland writing transformed into excitement over a genuine surprise in the works. Condon believed that one of the greatest pleasures television could deliver was a plot development that viewers did not see coming. Very early in the process of writing “The One with the Embryos” (which Crane would later wish he had called “The One with the Contest”), almost the entire writing staff got caught up in the joy of planning a well-executed twist. The girls were going to lose their apartment. Marta Kauffman never bought it, arguing that it stretched the bounds of credulity, but allowed everyone to carry on nonetheless.

  “The One with the Embryos” wound up being one of the fastest Friends episodes to come together, and, according to Andrew Reich, one of the most enjoyable. “Embryos” departs from Friends orthodoxy by eschewing the traditional A-B-C story split; this episode has no C plotline, toggling between only two stories. After a late-night disruption courtesy of Joey and Chandler’s chick (“The vet seems to think that she’s becoming a rooster. We’re getting a second opinion”), the boys gather in Monica and Rachel’s apartment the next day and take in the lay of the land.

  Joey instantly knows that Monica is wearing her “old-lady underpants” because today is laundry day. Chandler tops him, pointing to Monica and noting that she prefers to eat Tic Tacs in even numbers (a habit that actually belonged to Condon’s father) and revealing that Rachel’s grocery bag contains a half-eaten box of cookies. Chandler bets the girls $10 that he and Joey can guess all five of the other items in Rachel’s bag. They easily rattle off the first four (apples, tortilla chips, diet soda, yogurt), then are stymied by the fifth.

  Chandler whispers urgently in Joey’s ear, who shakes his head fiercely: “No, no—not for like another two weeks.” Joey, a savant of women’s bodies, finds that his wisdom extends to knowledge of their menstrual cycles, but this wicked joke also reveals something about the intense awareness of each other’s lives that is the bread and butter of Friends. The secret of Friends is that, ultimately, there are no secrets. Everything eventually sees the light, including what day Rachel is due to have her period. They agree to hold a competition, with Ross as host and quizmaster, and $100 now on the line.

  In the next scene, Phoebe is in the doctor’s office, where she is surprised to discover that she is h
aving five embryos implanted simultaneously. Frank Jr. and Alice are using all their savings on this one round of implantation, and Phoebe realizes the stakes for her brother.

  The remaining friends sit around at home with dreamy looks, taking in the idea of Phoebe’s carrying a baby, before jumping up excitedly when Ross makes his announcement: “The test is ready.” There will be ten questions for each team, broken down into four categories: Fears and Pet Peeves, Ancient History, Literature, and It’s All Relative. The early questions are handled with flair. Monica’s pet peeve is animals dressed as humans, and Chandler is scared by Michael Flatley. (“His legs flail about as if independent from his body,” Chandler moans.)

  Ross asks Monica and Rachel what name appears on the address label of Joey and Chandler’s TV Guide. Rachel leaps up and says it’s Chandler’s magazine, only to be corrected by Ross. The TV Guide is addressed, he tells her, to Chanandler Bong. Monica, intense as ever, turns to Rachel with displeasure: “Rachel, use your head.” Chandler gently corrects Ross, telling him that the TV Guide is actually addressed to “Miss Chanandler Bong.”

  Phoebe is back with the embryos and greets them politely, waving at their petri dish: “I’m hoping to be your uterus for the next nine months.” She decides to give them a pep talk before they are inserted into her: “We’re doing this for Frank and Alice, who you know—you’ve been there! You know, they want you so much, so when you guys get in there, really grab on.” It is a surprisingly emotional moment, with Kudrow, dressed in a hospital gown, shot from above to emphasize her heavy eyelids and the creases lining her forehead. There are laughs in this sequence, but we feel Phoebe’s emotion here, her desire to come through for her family in a moment of need.

  During the writing process for the episode, Condon obsessively labored over Phoebe’s speech to the embryos and felt like she never got it quite right. Once she brought her script back to the room, Crane took a look at the speech and, along with Wil Calhoun, one of the few writers with children, began searching for a more emotional tenor. Condon was still worrying over the sequence and approached Crane. Would it be all right, she wondered, if she took another crack at Phoebe’s dialogue? It still was not quite the moment she had envisioned in her mind when the initial burst of inspiration had struck in the shower. Crane agreed, and Condon was moved by his remarkable generosity. He was the boss, but he would never be the one to say that once his golden hands had touched a scene, it was perfect. If someone was volunteering to work even harder on a scene to get it right, Crane would gladly accept their labor.

  Back in the apartment, after the name of Chandler’s father’s all-male burlesque show comes up (Viva Las Gaygas), Ross announces, with the appropriate ring of fervor, the commencement of “the Lightning Round.” (He has even made small lightning bolts on his notecards.) The intensity has been cranked up a notch, with Monica telling the boys, “You guys are dead. I am so good at lightning rounds.” Chandler has been inspired to compete as well and rouses himself from his usual slumber of apathy to form a solid comeback: “I majored in lightning rounds.”

  “Wanna bet?” Monica asks. “I’m so confused as to what we’ve been doing so far,” Chandler cracks, but Monica has a bigger pot in mind. Ross, playing the unctuous game-show host, if only in his mind, restates every offer and counteroffer in a hushed tone. When Monica suggests that the boys get rid of the rooster if they win, Rachel is intrigued by the stakes: “Ooh, that’s interesting.” Rachel then proceeds to up the stakes, wanting the duck thrown in as well (“He gets the other one all riled up”). Chandler accepts, suggesting that if he and Joey win, they get Monica and Rachel’s apartment. Monica is at her best when she is at her most crazed, and Cox demonstrates the control freak’s buried desire to throw caution to the wind. Risk is her drug.

  The trivia game demonstrates Ross’s sustained attention to the pasts and foibles of his friends that aligns with the show’s. Friends is a show about loyalty. “The One with the Embryos” is so successful because it is, among other things, a demonstration of that loyalty and that deep knowledge. It was also an opportunity for the audience to insert themselves into the action. The audience was committed to Friends like the show’s characters were committed to each other, and the characters’ impressive familiarity with the mundane details of each other’s lives was a symbolic stand-in for the audience’s bottomless interest in accruing that same knowledge.

  Fans hungered to know as much about Friends’ characters as they did, and the brief lightning-round peek into the secrets of their lives was profoundly pleasurable not just because it was funny, but because it satiated the audience’s cravings. We, too, wanted to know that Rachel claimed her favorite movie was Dangerous Liaisons when it was really Weekend at Bernie’s, or that Monica’s nickname had once been Big Fat Goalie, or the precise number of differing categories of towels Monica had. (Joey and Chandler begin listing some of them—Everyday Use, Fancy, Guest, Fancy Guest—before Joey correctly blurts out “eleven.”)

  Joey and Chandler acquit themselves well, and it is now Rachel and Monica’s turn to answer questions. They know that Joey’s imaginary friend was Maurice the space cowboy but are unaware that Chandler was nineteen when he first touched a woman’s breast. They are en route to victory when Ross stumps them with a hilariously basic question: “What is Chandler Bing’s job?” Amy Toomin and Condon’s script brilliantly plays off a latent ambiguity in the show, in which we occasionally see Chandler at work but rarely understand what he is actually doing, beyond its being some fatally bland white-collar drudgery. We, too, cannot really say what it is that Chandler does for a living, and the surprise question is a reminder that the show does not care all that much, either.

  Rachel and Monica freeze, then clutch at each other. “Oh gosh,” Rachel moans, “it has something to do with numbers.”

  “And processing!” Monica shouts.

  “And he carries a briefcase,” Rachel unhelpfully adds. Ross jumps in to tell them that they need this answer or they will lose the game.

  “It has something to do with—transponding,” says Monica, circling her hands around an invisible globe.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” Rachel leaps and points in Chandler’s direction. “He’s a transpond—transpondster!”

  Aniston’s bobble on the final word underscores the ludicrousness of the moment, in which Rachel has convinced herself her friend has a job she struggles to even pronounce. Monica swivels in her direction, stunned and appalled: “That’s not even a word!” Ross’s game clock lets out a tinny beep, and Monica releases a primal howl of shock and dismay. Meanwhile, Joey and Chandler leap into the air with delight, their impulsive bet paying off in a fashion they could never have conceived of.

  Monica is sure she can salvage the situation and offers to go double-or-nothing. Chandler responds with fake politesse, quietly telling her, “I would never bet this apartment. It’s too nice.” Rachel declares that she refuses to move, and Monica berates her, telling her that their loss is entirely her fault. (Needless to say, Monica could not come up with Chandler’s job title, either.) “That is a boys’ apartment,” Rachel complains about her proposed new home. “It’s dirty and it smells!”

  For Friends, the differing plots were meant to not merely exist in parallel with each other but intersect, and occasionally echo, each other. Phoebe appears in the next scene, lying upside down in one of Monica and Rachel’s chairs (“I’m going to let gravity do its job”) and strumming a guitar as she sings to the embryos inside her: “Are you in there, little fetus? In nine months will you come greet us? I will buy you some Adidas.”

  Frank Jr. and Alice come over with a dubious gift of a lollipop and a home-pregnancy test, and Alice, in true teacher fashion, makes a corny joke out of asking if Phoebe is in the mood to take a one-question exam. Phoebe reluctantly agrees, and disappears into the bathroom as the apartment argument flares up once more.

  In one of the most iconic moments of Frie
nds’ ten-year run, destined to be repeated in practically every future montage sequence for the show, Chandler is wheeled in riding Joey’s dog sculpture, a slacker monarch wielding a sandwich as his scepter. Jill Condon was fixated on the horrifying ceramic dog that Joey had purchased for his short-lived uptown apartment in “The One Where Eddie Moves In” and that had been rescued by Ross when the repo men had arrived to take it away. It was the ideal symbol of the boys’ tacky sensibility and precisely the kind of piece that would upend Monica’s tasteful décor. What if Chandler came into his new apartment riding the ceramic dog? Assistant director Ben Weiss placed the dog on a dolly and had it rolled into the apartment.

  Writing for television meant imagining words and actions that would be carried out by actors. The results were rarely as viscerally satisfying as the pleasure of solving a narrative problem. But in this case, when Condon stood on the set and watched the door to the apartment open and Matthew Perry fling his arms wide with glee, she felt a rush of satisfaction. This was every bit as good as she had hoped it would be.

  “You are mean boys who are just being mean!” Rachel childishly grouses at Chandler’s lavish display of triumph. Chandler continues to milk the situation for every ounce of aggravation he can, mock-pleading with everyone: “Would you all stop yelling in our apartment? You are ruining moving day for us.” That Chandler is eating a sandwich as he speaks undercuts his authority, and also emphasizes the extent to which this entire apartment switch is a marvelous lark for the boys at the same time that it is a life-changing catastrophe for Rachel and Monica.