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The One With The Jam

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"The One With The Jam" is the third episode of the third season of Friends, which aired on October 3, 1996. Monica, tired of being upset after breaking up with Richard, decides to start making jam in large quantities.

Plot[]

Monica has decided she needs a project to help her get over Richard, so she decides to make tons of jam (the 'Jam Plan'). When she realizes that she is spending more than she can potentially make by selling the jam, she comes up with a new plan (the 'Baby Plan'). Monica wants to go to the sperm bank in order to get pregnant and have a baby. She searches through potential sperm donors, even coming across Joey, until she finds the one. Everyone disapproves of this plan, but Joey is the one to talk her out of it when he starts depicting her as a married woman with kids, which is what Monica really wants to have.

Jam

Joey eating jam.

After somehow managing to call Janice fat by accident, Chandler goes looking for help from Ross and Rachel. They are willing to help him out, until Chandler asks about the cuddling problem that he has at night, when he cannot sleep comfortably because Janice is cuddled up against him. Rachel says that she and Ross are "cuddly sleepers" and tells him that they cannot help him. Ross, on the other hand, knows exactly what Chandler is experiencing and lets him in on a secret after Rachel has gone to work. He explains how, with Rachel, he waits for her to fall asleep and then hugs her to his chest, and rolls her to the other side of the bed.

Unfortunately, Chandler does not succeed in carrying Ross' solution without rolling Janice off the bed. He also fails to keep his secret from Janice, who tells Rachel, who becomes annoyed at Ross.

Meanwhile, Phoebe is being stalked by a strange man, Malcolm, who thinks that she is her twin sister Ursula. It turns out, that in spite of his restraining order, he is still crazy about Ursula, who went on a date with him and then refused to return his calls. Phoebe helps him get over her, but as she has a crush on him, she starts going out with him instead. Things go well until she is convinced by her friends to follow him to see if he is still following Ursula. He is sad that Phoebe does not trust him and has taken to stalking him, but as it turns out, Malcolm is still stalking Ursula. Understandably, this upsets Phoebe, and she breaks up with him. She does however offer to help him get over Ursula and even suggests he stalk her for a while - which he immediately does.

Cast and Crew[]

Main Cast[]

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

Supporting Cast[]

David Arquette - Malcolm
May Wang - Girl
Maggie Wheeler - Janice
James Michael Tyler - Gunther (uncredited)

Doug Benson- coffee shop customer (uncredited)

Crew[]

Directed By:
Kevin S. Bright

Written By:
Wil Calhoun

Quotes[]

Rachel: What happened to your jam plan?
Monica: I figured out I'd need to charge 17 bucks a jar to just break even. So I've got a new plan now. Babies.
Chandler: Well, you're gonna need much bigger jars.

Trivia[]

  • Joey hurting his arm was not originally part of this episode, but Matt LeBlanc dislocated his shoulder while filming the previous episode, and the injury was written in.
  • This is the final appearance of the subway.
  • When Malcolm and Phoebe meet for the first time, a poster for REM can be seen in the window of the music store. Their song Shiny Happy People was considered as the theme for Friends.
  • Chandler mentions the girl from the xerox place in this episode (the second time he had done so after "The One With The Princess Leia Fantasy"): it is later revealed that her name is Chloe. She will sleep with Ross and cause his breakup with Rachel.
  • David Arquette (Malcolm) was actually Courteney Cox's boyfriend at the time the episode aired. The two would later get married in 1999, which is featured in the opening credits of the season 6 premiere.
  • When Chandler is in bed with Janice, he comments that "you could fit a giant penguin in the bed space". In "The One Where Everybody Finds Out", Joey lets slip about Huggsy his "bedtime penguin pal".
  • Phoebe suggests that Malcolm stalk her by the end of the episode. In the uncut DVD episode, Malcolm can be seen climbing into Monica's balcony from the fire escape, waiting for Phoebe. Monica and Joey tell him that "she [Phoebe]'ll be back by five".
  • Monica looks for sperm donors in this episode. Later in the series she learns she's unable to have children which causes her to turn to adoption, finally adopting twins with her husband Chandler in the series finale.
  • Unlike Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox doesn't share any scenes with her current or former partner, other than the scene when Malcolm climbs the fire escape in the uncut DVD episode. Jennifer shared a few episodes with her by then ex-boyfriend Tate Donovan and one episode with her then husband Brad Pitt.
  • Doug Benson appears as an extra in this episode when Rachel is talking to Janice. He later appears as a student in Joey's acting class and as Tom, a party guest who Danny thinks would be ideal for Rachel. He was also a guest at Barry and Mindy's wedding.
  • Monica suggests to Joey that she will have three children, two girls and a boy. In "The One Where They All Turn Thirty", Rachel also says she wants to have three children. Monica and Chandler adopt twins in the series finale while Rachel has a daughter with Ross later in the series.
  • Phoebe shows the gang Malcolm's night vision goggles. Years later in "The One Where Chandler Gets Caught", Phoebe says she has a pair of these when she and Rachel follow Chandler.
  • In the tag scene, Ross tells Chandler that "women talk". Ross had already told Chandler that women share everything two episodes ago in "The One With The Princess Leia Fantasy", but he is once again angry at Chandler for spilling the beans to Rachel on his hug-and-roll technique, disturbing things for him and Rachel in the bedroom for the second time in a row.
  • The actress Geena Davis mentioned by Monica has been married four times, her third husband being Jeff Goldblum (1987 -1990) who will appear as Leonard Hayes in "The One With The Mugging" (S9E15).
  • In the subway scene, when Phoebe and Malcolm see Ursula, this may be Lisa Kudrow's real-life sister Helene Kudrow.
  • This episode was used as "J is for Jam" in the Nick at Nite Friends A-Z Event (January 2023).

Goofs[]

  • When Ross, Monica and Rachel are discussing her jam, Rachel's arms are folded but when the angle changes, Rachel's hands are on the back of the adjacent chairs.
  • About five minutes into the episode during a conversation between Chandler, Ross, and Rachel in the girls' apartment, a shadow can be seen passing behind the closet door in the back. This happens while the three friends are the only ones in the apartment, meaning that someone else was walking by backstage. (This door was used by crew to access the back of the stage.)
  • When Phoebe is talking to Malcolm for the first time, her hands constantly move places, whenever the shot changes, with no time to do so.
  • In the scene where Ross tells Rachel that they are alone in the apartment, while he is leading her into the living room, the crew lights are visible at the top of the screen.
  • When Rachel and Ross are sitting in the coffeehouse, Ross is supposed to be eating his cake with a spoon but the cake doesn't change appearance at any point, even though one shot shows him digesting some of his cake.
  • When Ross and Rachel swiftly sit up when Chandler enters the scatter cushion is lying down but when Rachel gets up the scatter cushion is upright even though Rachel hadn't moved. In the same scene, Rachel's arms go from by her sides to folded in one shot.
  • When Ross and Rachel are kneeling on the sofa talking to Chandler, Ross talks about "meeting her at baggage claim" and his left shoulder is in front of Rachel's right shoulder but after a quick shot of Chandler who says "that's easy, baggage claim" the shot returns to Ross and Rachel but now Rachel's right shoulder is in front of Ross' shoulder.
  • As Rachel leaves the apartment, Ross stands up and knocks over a scatter cushion. This is clearly still lying down when Ross and Chandler sit down but after Ross moves the cushion from the back of the sofa, it's upright even though Ross never touched it.
  • In the scene where Malcolm is talking to Phoebe in the subway, you can hear him but his lips aren't moving.
  • In the tag scene when Ross hits Chandler with his rolled up magazine, he only folds over one-third of the magazine. When it cuts to him hitting Chandler the shot jumps and the magazine is fully folded over.
  • About 22 minutes in, during the conversation of the sperm donors, the boom mic can be seen multiple times above them.
  • Rachel breaks the fourth wall by glancing directly into the audience just after Monica mentions Geena Davis.
  • In the tag scene, Jennifer Aniston can be seen in the background laughing at Matt LeBlanc's face covered in jam when Ross talks to Chandler.
  • This episode [on DVD] does not feature the executive producer credits at the beginning nor the end.

Photos[]

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 25
Preceded by
"The One Where No One's Ready" 		"The One With The Jam" Followed by
"The One With The Metaphorical Tunnel"
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