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"The One With Barry and Mindy's Wedding" is the second season finale of Friends, which aired on NBC on May 16, 1996. In this episode, Rachel is a bridesmaid at her ex-fiance's wedding. Monica and Richard's relationship is jeopardized when the subject of children arises.

Plot[]

Rachel reluctantly agrees to be maid of honor at her ex-fiancé Barry's wedding to her friend Mindy, but steals the couple's thunder when she walks up the aisle with her butt showing because of her dress. She is even angrier to find out that when she dumped Barry at the altar, his parents told everyone that she ran away because she was insane because she had syphilis. Ross tries fixing this at the reception but fails. Rachel is about to leave, but doesn't when Barry implies that there is a betting pool on when she would leave. She tells Barry that she promised herself she'd make it through at least one of his weddings. Rachel and Ross sing Copacabana at the wedding, a song she was unable to perform at high school.

Joey auditions for Warren Beatty's new movie, and is told that he's a good actor but is bad at kissing. As Joey's role involved kissing another guy, he seeks help from Chandler and Ross, who refuse to help him. Eventually, Ross, out of guilt, sucks it up and kisses Joey, who reveals that the audition is over and he didn't get the part.

Chandler is excited about a mystery girl he has been chatting with on the Internet until he learns that she's married. Phoebe convinces him to go meet her in spite of this, so he asks the girl to meet him at the coffeehouse. Everyone, including himself, is shocked that the mystery girl is Janice. She and Chandler kiss.

Monica asks Richard about their future plans. Richard sees them in France, a happy couple without kids. Monica, however, is keen on having children of her own, but doesn't pursue the subject as she fears it would become uncomfortable. At Barry and Mindy's wedding, she and Richard tackle the subject again; however, neither of them has shifted position from before. While dancing, Richard offers to have kids with Monica if he has to. This, unfortunately, is not good enough for Monica, as she wants to have a baby with someone who genuinely wants to have children. The two break up.

Cast and Crew[]

Main Cast[]

Jennifer Aniston - Rachel Greene
Courteney Cox - Monica Geller
Lisa Kudrow - Phoebe Buffay
Matt LeBlanc - Joey Tribbiani
Matthew Perry - Chandler Bing
David Schwimmer - Ross Geller

Supporting Cast[]

Jackie Bright - Mr. Weinberg
Fritzi Burr - Mrs. Weinberg
Jana Marie Hupp - Mindy
Tom Selleck - Dr. Richard Burke
Peter Spears - Joel
Mindy Sterling - Wedding Planner
Maggie Wheeler - Janice
Mitchell Whitfield - Barry Farber

Doug Benson - wedding guest (uncredited)

Crew[]

Directed By:
Michael Lembeck

Written By:
Ira Ungerleider & Brown Mandell

Quotes[]

  • Phoebe: You don't get chances like this all the time! If you don't meet her you'll be kicking yourself when you're 80 which is hard to do and that's how you break a hip.
  • Rachel: Tonight, all I wanted was to make it through this evening with a little bit of grace and dignity. I guess we can all agree that's not gonna happen.
  • Chandler (seeing Rachel in in her pink bridesmaid dress with a hat on): I'm sorry, we don't have your sheep.

Reception[]

TheTVCritic.org ranked this as the best episode that "Friends" ever produced.[1]

Trivia[]

  • The sub-plot where Joey has to kiss a man was originally intended to be a story about Joey auditioning for the role of an uncircumcised man. The rest of the group would then come up with various ways of making him look the part. Network censors felt that this sub-plot would have been tasteless, and recommended changing it.
  • Mindy is played by a different actress, Jana Marie Hupp, than in "The One With The Evil Orthodontist", where she's played by Jennifer Grey. This also happened with the character of Carol, where Jane Sibbett replaced Anita Barone (seen only in "The One With The Sonogram At The End") in "The One Where Underdog Gets Away".
  • The lead singer and the band in Barry and Mindy's wedding also perform in Chandler and Monica's wedding.
  • The song Rachel sings, Copacabana, was most famously sung by Barry Manilow.
  • The music which plays when Rachel heads into the wedding room is from Ina Kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart.
  • This is the final episode with The Rachel hair.
  • Unusually there's no cliffhanger ending with this seasons finale. This is the only time this occurs. (Although Chandler kissing Janice could be construed as a cliffhanger of sorts.)
  • This marks the start of Chandler's relationship with Janice which lasts until Joey sees her kissing her ex-husband in "The One With The Race Car Bed".
  • This episode shows the second male on male kiss in the series, Joey having kissed Chandler on the lips in "The One With The Monkey". The first (and second) full on-screen female on female kiss occur in "The One With Rachel's Big Kiss" when Melissa and then Phoebe kiss Rachel. However Monica and Rachel kiss off-screen to get their apartment back in "The One With All The Haste".
  • Rachel tells Ross that she panicked after seeing the bathroom window from which she escaped her wedding. Coincidentally, in two years time Rachel will be with Ross when Emily also flees through a bathroom window ("The One After Ross Says Rachel").
  • Rachel compares her dress to "something you drink when you're nauseous". She is referring to Pepto Bismol which is the same shade of pink as her dress. Ross actually drinks this directly from the bottle during the episode "The One With The Kips" when he's trying to tell Rachel he can't see her anymore.
  • Two of the guests at the wedding are Mr. and Mrs. Weinberg. In "The One With The Cuffs", Monica mentions Dr. Weinberg.  
  • Chandler joking "We don't have your sheep" is a reference to "Little Bo-Peep", a popular English language nursery rhyme. In children's books Bo-Peep is often depicted with a hat and a pink dress.
    • In "The One Where No One's Ready", when Ross and Rachel are arguing (off screen) about what she's going to wear, Rachel exits the bedroom and comments that a dress Ross picked out was a Halloween costume from a year she dressed up as Little Bo-Peep. Immediately after she tells Chandler she wants the inflatable sheep back.
  • The song being performed prior to the best man's speech is The Girl From Ipanema which was originally composed in 1962 in Brazil with Portuguese lyrics.
  • The music being performed after Monica and Richard decide to break up is the 1926 George and Ira Gershwin composition Someone To Watch Over Me. Written especially for Gertrude Lawrence for the musical Oh Kay! , it has been covered by numerous artists including Barbra Streisand, ex-wife of Elliott Gould, in 1965 and Sting in 1987 from the film of the same name.

Goofs[]

  • There is no good reason why Monica and Richard would go to Barry and Mindy's wedding because Monica and Barry never met each other when Rachel was with him. It is possible that their families know each other. (By this logic Monica should have been invited to Rachel and Barry's wedding however it is made clear in The Pilot that she wasn't).
  • The way Ross holds the newspaper in the scene when Janice enters the coffeehouse changes between shots.
  • In the coffeehouse, when Monica says "Maybe you're not used to kissing men", Chandler's legs are crossed, but from a different angle they are spread and his foot is on the table, then in the next shot they are instantly crossed again.
    • Later in that scene, when Chandler says "And I'll be using his dead body as a shield", Rachel's hands are on the back of the couch. The shot angle changes and Rachel is standing with arms crossed.
  • After Mindy tells Ross and Rachel that everybody thinks Rachel had Syphilis, Barry comments "What were they gonna say, you didn't love me anymore?" When the shot then changes to Rachel's expression, Barry's head and mouth movements clearly show that he is delivering a line, but there is no audio from him.
  • Mindy turns to look at the Best Man (that uses his old speech) 3 times in 3 different shots
  • When Pheobe says, "Like you never talk about that," Monica is standing in a different spot than she was standing earlier.

References[]

External links[]

Episode Navigation[]

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Preceded by
"The One With The Chicken Pox"
"The One With Barry and Mindy's Wedding" Followed by
"The One With The Princess Leia Fantasy"

References[]

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