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"The One With The Boobies" is the thirteenth episode of the first season of Friends, which aired on January 19, 1995. In it, Joey's dad comes to visit and reveals a shocking truth while Chandler accidentally sees Rachel naked, and she tries to take revenge and Phoebe begins dating a therapist that begins to analyze everyone in the group.

Plot[]

Chandler accidentally sees Rachel wandering around topless after her shower, an accident which makes Rachel distance herself from Chandler. The friends point out that the whole thing is an "eye-for-an-eye" situation which they believe Chandler can and has to resolve by showing her his penis, which he refuses to do.

Joey gets a visit from his dad, who's in town on business. Joey intercepts a telephone conversation he believed his dad was having with his mother, and finds out about his father's mistress, Ronni Rapalono. Ronni meets Joey on her way to meet his dad, and Joey does all he can to prevent them from having sex. Joey's mother then shows up to confess how she knows of the affair. She also admits to Joey that she guess she's okay with it, since Joey Sr. is treating her better out of guilt. Joey can do nothing except make his peace with the whole thing, albeit grudgingly. His affection for his mother is too much to show the slightest inclination to support his dad's affair.

Phoebe has a new boyfriend, a psychiatrist named Roger who is initially bemused by the quirky personalities of the friends. Over time, though, he eventually antagonizes them by displaying his analytical ability to correctly guess unpleasant facts about their backgrounds and lives, even when he hasn't actually been asked to demonstrate it at all. The friends come to see this, and tell Phoebe they hate him. She, too, eventually realizes he is actually a rather unpleasant person who enjoys psychological power over other people, and Phoebe breaks up with him.

Chandler's initial peep on Rachel leads to a series of people trying to even the score by seeing their peeper nude. Each time, the wrong person is seen - Rachel, looking for Chandler, glimpses Joey; Joey, looking for Rachel, walks in on Monica; and Monica, looking for Joey, gets a glimpse of Joey's dad.

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[]

Robert Costanzo - Joey Tribbiani Sr.
Lee Garlington - Ronni Rapalono
Fisher Stevens - Roger
Brenda Vaccaro - Gloria Tribbiani

Crew[]

Directed By:
Alan Myerson

Written By:
Alexa Junge

Quotes[]

  • Chandler: I'd like to believe that when the right woman comes along, you'll have the courage—and the guts—to say, "No thanks, I'm married."
  • Phoebe: It's my friends. They have a liking problem...with you...in that, um, they don't.
  • Gloria Tribbiani: Your father is no James Bond. You should've heard this guy's excuses. "I'm sleeping over at my accountant's". What is that?
  • Joey: He's gonna keep cheating on my Ma, like she wanted. My Ma's gonna keep pretending she doesn't know, even though she does. And my little sister, Tina, can't see her husband anymore 'cause he's got a restraining order... which has nothing to do with anything, except, I found out today.
  • Joey: I've been thinking... you know about how I'm seeing girls on top of girls.
    Chandler: Are they end-to-end, or tall, like pancakes?
  • Roger: Only child right? Parents divorced before you hit puberty?
    Chandler: Uh huh how did you know that?
    Roger: It's textbook.

Trivia[]

General[]

  • The fact that Chandler uses humor as a defense mechanism, is referred to for the first time in this episode.
  • This is the first time when it is mentioned Joey usually sleeps without his underwear, a running gag in the series.
  • This is the first episode where Rachel and Chandler have their own storyline where it is mentioned in the title; the same thing would happen in "The One With The Cuffs" (S4E3) and "The One With All The Cheesecakes" (S7E11).
  • In this episode, Chandler suggests to Joey "I'd like to believe that when the right woman comes along, you'll have the courage and the guts to say, "No thanks, I'm married". After then, in "The One With Christmas In Tulsa" (S9E10) Chandler says "No thanks, I'm married" to reject Wendy, the woman who hits on him in his office.
  • With one appearance in this episode, Joey's parents have made the least appearances on the show out of all the other friends' parents:
  • Mr. Tribbiani asks Phoebe what happened with the "Puppet Guy". He is referring to an ex-boyfriend of Phoebe's, who is expanded upon in later episodes by the friends.
  • Monica had already seen Joey naked the day he moved in, this is revealed in the episode "The One With The Flashback".
  • Rachel and the other girls (and Ross) will finally be able to see Chandler's private parts in "The One Where Chandler Crosses The Line" (S4E7).
  • Rachel and Ross will both see Joey naked (off-screen) as they comment in "The One With The Blind Dates" about Joey not being naked on the fifth day that Rachel has moved back in.
  • Mrs. Tribbiani mentions the singer Sting when she's talking to Joey. Sting's former band The Police provide the backing track to the images of Joey's VD posters in "The One Where Underdog Gets Away". Furthermore Sting's wife Trudie Styler appears later in the series.
  • Mrs Tribbiani lovingly calls Joey "cookie". She has a daughter, Joey's sister, actually named Cookie.
  • In the closing credits scene, when Joey enters the bathroom, the door of the closet is open and there are clothes neatly hanging there. The same shot of the neatly hanging clothes was also seen in the previous episode when Rachel breaks up with Paolo. This closet is featured in "The One With The Secret Closet" when Chandler and Joey try to open the door locked by Monica.
  • Joey will finally see Rachel's uncovered breast in "The One Where No One Proposes" while she tries to breastfeed, and he will look away rather embarrassed.
  • Ross and Rachel will see each other naked when they sleep together in "The One Where Ross And Rachel... You Know". Monica and Chandler see each other naked when they go to bed together in "The One With Ross' Wedding, Part 2".
  • Rachel comments that in two or three years they will turn into their parents. Rachel and Ross actually become parents in just over 7 years time, and 3 years later Monica and Chandler eventually adopt kids of their own after two years of trying for a baby in the series finale, during which Phoebe and her new husband Mike Hannigan also discuss having children of their own.
  • The music playing during the scene transition from Joey learning of his dad's affair and the gang in Monica's apartment is unique to this episode on the show; a longer version of this piece of music was only used in 1997 by Microsoft in a 50-second commercial for their software suite, Microsoft Home Essentials 98.
    • Later in 1995, Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry would star in a video guide to Microsoft's then-upcoming operating system, Windows 95, which was released on August 24, 1995, just over seven months after this episode aired on NBC.
  • This episode was used as "N is for New York" in the Nick at Nite Friends A-Z Event (January 2023).

Goofs[]

  • In the start of the episode we see Rachel rubbing her hair with the towel, and when Chandler jumps you can see Rachel in the bottom of the screen without any towel around her head area.
  • When Joey's dad enters the apartment to find that Ronni has come to give him his "good hair", Joey closes the door behind him, and you can see it closed in a couple more shots. Then, when Ronni suggests leaving and then says, "Where am I gonna stay, here?", the camera angle changes to Joey and the door is suddenly still open, and he closes it again.
  • When Joey's dad sees Ross he asks, "how's the wife?" but Joey found out that Carol was a lesbian shortly after he first met Ross, which was revealed in "The One With The Flashback" (S3E6).
    • Considering the Tribbianis' demonstrated intellectual abilities, it is possible that Joey's father merely remembered learning that Ross had a wife without remembering the context of their relationship.
  • Despite catching a glimpse of her breasts in this episode, Chandler later asks Joey what Rachel's breasts looked like when he caught her breastfeeding in "The One Where No One Proposes" (S9E1), although this may be attributed to the length of time that elapsed between now and then.
  • The arrangement of Joey and Chandler's bathroom changes. In this episode the shower is opposite the door, but in other episodes, the sink is opposite the door. It is likely that this was to facilitate the filming of the scene where Monica walks in on Joey's dad showering.
  • Joey's dad asks who Roger is but doesn't ask about Rachel, despite them having never met before. Although they may have already met before, if he came to visit his son since Rachel moved in (off-screen).
  • When Gloria enters the apartment, she puts her purse on the counter. In a shot from another angle her purse and its straps are in a different position.
  • When Joey's dad enters the apartment, Joey closes the door but when Ronni and his dad say they'll go to a hotel, the doors still open and Joey closes it.
  • When Phoebe enters the apartment to tell the gang that she'd broken up with Roger, Rachel has a plate on her lap, then after Phoebe's first line, just a tissue but in the next shot from a different angle the plate is back on Rachel's lap.
  • When Mr. Tribbiani says he'll be in town a couple of days, the captions on the Complete First Season say 2 days.
  • When Phoebe is in the coffeehouse with her boyfriend, admitting that her friends don't like him, you can see that her scrunchie is down at first. But later, you can see the scrunchie up in the ponytail, and then when the camera angle changes, down again.
  • There is someone visible on the left side of the couch when Joey's Mom enters.
  • When Roger is talking about Chandler at the Coffee Shop, When Chandler says "Huh", Roger is seen moving his hand (with a cookie in it) to his mouth but when the camera cuts to a scene showing Roger, his hand with the cookie is in front of his knee with no time to move.

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 Dozen Lasagnas"
"The One With The Boobies" Followed by
"The One With The Candy Hearts"