"The One Hundredth" is the third episode of the fifth season of Friends, the hundredth episode in total. It aired on NBC on October 8, 1998. Phoebe has finally gone into labor and her friends rush her to the hospital.
Plot
Monica and Chandler arrive much later than everyone else.
Phoebe, Rachel, Joey, and Ross arrive at the hospital, where Phoebe tells the nurse at the desk that she’s in labor. The nurse asks which of the two men present is the father, but Phoebe tells her the father is her brother. Rachel says she is really going to miss watching Phoebe freak people out like that. Joey has a video camera and is making a video for the babies to look at some day. He asks Phoebe if there’s anything she’d like to say to the triplets before it all starts, and she begs them not to hurt her.
Monica and Chandler arrive, quite awhile after everyone else. The others don’t understand what took them so long; their cabs left at the same time. Monica and Chandler obviously made a romantic pit stop, but they try to cover their tracks by saying that Monica had to go back to the apartment because she forgot her jacket. This might’ve worked, except Monica still isn’t wearing a jacket.
In the delivery room.
In Phoebe’s hospital room, Ross and Rachel enter with bad news: Phoebe’s doctor fell and hit her head in the shower, so she won’t make it to the birth. Phoebe is upset, but Rachel assures her that the replacement doc is wonderful, and head of the department. Phoebe is distracted by her first contraction, but finds it’s not so bad. In far worse pain is Joey, who’s suddenly struck with what Phoebe thinks are sympathy pains, but as Joey says, “I didn’t know I cared that much.”
Phoebe meets her replacement doctor, Dr. Harad. He assures her that she is in good hands, and she is temporarily reassured until he, for no obvious reason, tells them on the way out that he loves Fonzie. Frank Jr. arrives, but Alice is also missing. She is stuck in Delaware, so Frank Jr. will be Phoebe’s coach until Alice arrives, but it’s okay, because Alice told him all about the “Lamazda stuff”.
Monica and Joey are sitting in the waiting room when Rachel enters and excitedly tells Monica that she got the two of them dates with a couple of male nurses. Monica doesn’t want to go, but can’t think of an excuse to get out of it without revealing her secret relationship with Chandler. Back in Phoebe’s room, Joey informs the others that Monica and Rachel were asked out by the nurses, which upsets Chandler. Joey has another bout of “sympathy pains”, making Phoebe think he’s trying to steal her thunder.
Joey learns that he has kidney stones.
Dr. Harad comes in and comments that Fonzie once dated triplets. Chandler asks who Fonzie is, and Dr. Harad confirms that he is indeed talking about Arthur Fonzarelli, the Happy Days character. He appears to have an unhealthily strong obsession with the character which seems to be making him "love drunk" and after he has left, Phoebe demands that Ross go find her a different doctor.
Chandler runs into Monica out in the waiting room, and she starts to tell him about what happened with Rachel and the nurses. Before she can finish, Chandler interrupts; he clearly assumes Monica is going to go out with the nurse and tries to save face by telling her he's fine with her dating the nurse, that he and Monica are nothing, they're just “goofing around.” Monica says she was going to try and get out of the date, but if Chandler thinks they’re just “goofing around,” maybe she will go on the date after all. Joey comes in off the elevator, having just bought a few things in the gift shop, when he is hit with his third bout of pain.
Phoebe tells Rachel that she wants to keep one of the triplets.
Ross returns to Phoebe’s room with a new doctor, but she finds a problem with this one too: he’s a little young. He assures her he’s fully qualified to perform the delivery, but she doesn’t want to hear it and sends him away, so it’s back to Fonzie-obsessed Dr. Harad. Meanwhile, Joey is in a hospital room of his own, where a doctor informs him he is suffering from kidney stones.
Rachel and Phoebe are alone in the delivery room, and Phoebe confides in Rachel that she wants to keep one of the triplets. Phoebe begs Rachel to talk to Frank, and feel him out about whether or not he might be willing to let Phoebe take one of the triplets.
Back in Joey’s room, the doctor tells him the kidney stones are too close to the bladder to attempt to break them up with shock waves so he has two options: wait until he passes them naturally, or have a procedure done which Joey finds a little too invasive for comfort. He opts for option number one.
Chandler and Monica make up.
In Phoebe’s room, a male nurse enters the room, and Rachel informs Monica that this is Dan, Monica’s date for Saturday night. Monica tells Dan she’s really looking forward to their date, so Chandler steps up to interrogate him. He asks Dan why he’s a nurse and not a doctor, and isn’t being a nurse kind of girly? Dan answers that he’s just doing it to put himself through medical school, and it didn’t feel so girly during the Gulf War. Trying to save face, Chandler asks a female nurse out for Saturday night, and she turns him down immediately, adding to his embarrassment.
Out in the waiting room, Frank is getting off the phone with Alice’s mom when Rachel approaches him. “So, Frank,” she says, “Three babies. That seems like a lot, huh?” Frank laughs and says “Not to me.” Rachel considers her duty to “feel Frank out” done and leaves.
Phoebe holds the newly born triplets.
In the delivery room, Phoebe’s ready to give birth. Dr. Harad orders everyone except for Frank and the rest of the medical staff out of the room and tells the nurse to turn the TV on to Happy Days. At the same time, Joey’s just about ready to pass his kidney stones. With help from Harad, who proves himself to despite his Fonz obsession be a highly competent doctor, Phoebe has three healthy babies, while with the help of his own doctor Joey has three healthy kidney stones. Phoebe’s delivery comes with a surprise though: instead of two boys and a girl, she has given birth to two girls and a boy, so little baby Chandler is actually a girl.
A short while after all three of the triplets have been born, Chandler approaches Monica in a hallway to ask if she’s really going to go out with Dan. She replies that since she and Chandler are just “goofing around” she figured why not “goof around” with Dan too. Chandler says that he doesn’t know if she’s ever looked up the term “goofing around” in the dictionary, but the technical definition is “two friends who care a lot about each other, and have amazing sex, and just want to spend more time together”. Monica is clearly charmed by Chandler's words and forgives him. She kisses him and goes to call off her date with Dan.
Everyone is back in the delivery room holding the babies. Rachel breaks the news to Phoebe that she won’t be able to keep one of the babies. Phoebe asks her friends to leave so she can have a moment alone with the triplets. They oblige, and Phoebe has a “heart to heart” with her new nieces and nephew. She tells them she wishes she could take them home and see them every day, but she will settle for being their favorite aunt, and the four of them cry together.
Cast and Crew
Main Cast
Jennifer Aniston - Rachel Green
Courteney Cox - Monica Geller
Lisa Kudrow - Phoebe Buffay
Matt LeBlanc - Joey Tribbiani
Matthew Perry - Chandler Bing
David Schwimmer - Ross Geller
Supporting Cast
Giovanni Ribisi - Frank Buffay Jr.
Debra Jo Rupp - Alice Knight Buffay
Sam Anderson - Dr. Harad
Patrick Fabian - Dan
Iqbal Theba - Joey's Doctor
T.J. Thyne - Dr. Oberman
Brenda Isaacs Booth - The Nurse
Heidi Beck - The Delivery Room Nurse
Crew
Directed By:
Kevin S. Bright
Written By:
Marta Kauffman & David Crane
Trivia
General
- This episode is one of the few titles that doesn't begin with "The One Where..." or "The One With..."
- The name of one of Phoebe's doctors is Dr. Oberman. In "The One With The Sonogram At The End" Carol's doctor is also named Dr. Oberman.
- Lisa Kudrow was actually not pregnant in this episode. She had her own baby on May 7, 1998, so at this time her belly was fake
- This is the final appearance of Debra Jo Rupp as Alice Knight. Alice was in 6 episodes of Friends.
- This is Lisa Kudrow's favorite episode.
- This is the only episode in which its number is shown in the title.
- All of this episode takes place in the hospital.
- This is one of the few episodes to not feature Monica and Rachel's Apartment, Chandler and Joey's apartment, or Central Perk.
- When Phoebe's doctor requests the TV be turned on, the Happy Days theme is playing, and the doctor mentions it is the episode where Fonzie plays the bongos. The episode mentioned is "Fonzie Joins the Band" from the second season. However, that Happy Days theme was not used until the series' third season. During the first two seasons of Happy Days the opening theme was "Rock Around the Clock" performed by Bill Haley & His Comets. (Although the DVD release of the second season of Happy Days replaced "Rock Around the Clock" with the Happy Days theme song, it shouldn't air that way in syndication.)
- This is the 100th episode of Friends aired.
- Phoebe calls Doctor Oberman "Doogie" in reference to Doogie Howser, a teenage physician, due to how young Doctor Oberman appears.
Goofs
- When Phoebe tells Rachel she wants to keep one of the babies, Rachel's chair is right next to Phoebe's bed. Then the camera angle changes to Phoebe, but you can see Rachel's arms, indicating that she didn't move. However, when the camera goes back to Rachel, her chair is a little far from the bed, so that she has to get up and walk to be next to Phoebe.
- When Phoebe says "I'm in the middle of the last favor you asked me to do" in this shot, her hands are on the top of her belly. In the next shot, they're in the bottom of her belly.
- At the beginning when Phoebe asks someone to call Frank and Alice, and her mom, Ross searches his pockets. But when the camera angle changes, his hands are down by his side.
Outtakes
- In an outtake featured on this season's gag reel, Lisa Kudrow is shown improvising one of her first lines after the opening credits. Instead of speaking the eventual line, namely "That's easy for you to say, I don't see three kids coming out your vagina!", Kudrow jokingly replaces the final word with the word "dick", though this is bleeped out on the reel. This infamous incident can be viewed on YouTube, around 3 minutes into the video.
Continuity
- Phoebe states that everybody told her that labour would be the worst part. She said they were wrong and that the hardest part was to give them away. But in The One With Phoebe's Uterus her birthmom (Phoebe A) tells her just that. It is also true that Phoebe started to either not believe or forget about her mother's words.
| 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 All The Kissing" |
The One Hundredth | Followed by "The One Where Phoebe Hates PBS" |
| << Season 4 | Season 5 | Season 6 >> | |||||||
| #01 | "The One After Ross Says Rachel" | #09 | "The One With Ross' Sandwich" | #17 | "The One With Rachel's Inadvertent Kiss" | ||||
| #02 | "The One With All The Kissing" | #10 | "The One With The Inappropriate Sister" | #18 | "The One Where Rachel Smokes" | ||||
| #03 | "The One Hundredth" | #11 | "The One With All The Resolutions" | #19 | "The One Where Ross Can't Flirt" | ||||
| #04 | "The One Where Phoebe Hates PBS" | #12 | "The One With Chandler's Work Laugh" | #20 | "The One With The Ride-Along" | ||||
| #05 | "The One With The Kips" | #13 | "The One With Joey's Bag" | #21 | "The One With The Ball" | ||||
| #06 | "The One With The Yeti" | #14 | "The One Where Everybody Finds Out" | #22 | "The One With Joey's Big Break" | ||||
| #07 | "The One Where Ross Moves In" | #15 | "The One With The Girl Who Hits Joey" | #23 | "The One In Vegas, Part 1" | ||||
| #08 | "The One With All The Thanksgivings" | #16 | "The One With The Cop" | #24 | "The One In Vegas, Part 2" | ||||