My all-time favorite episode of Friends, and I think this is the case for many, is “The One With The Embryos” from Season 4. While it’s named after the storyline regarding Phoebe and her pregnancy, the part of the episode that sticks with me is the silly trivia contest that led to Chandler and Joey switching apartments with Monica and Rachel after they made a bet. It’s a hilarious game of whits that leads to one of the most jarring and hysterical plot points when the boys join the list of people to live in Monica’s apartment, and the story behind how this episode came to be makes it even better.
The Trivia Contest Was Born Out Of An Effort To Save Money And The Pad O’ Guys
Sometimes the best ideas are born out of limitations, and that’s exactly what happened with this episode of Friends. In an oral history about “The One with the Embryos” for TV Guide, executive producer and director Kevin S. Bright opened up about how the idea for the trivia contest, and ultimately trading apartments, came to be. He said:
The first season of Friends, when we were really over budget by the middle of the season, we were trying to figure out a way to solve the [money] problem, and I said, 'If we could do one show where they never leave the apartment or the coffeehouse, then we won't have to build any swing sets and we won't have any guest stars' -- [essentially] a bottle episode. I pitched it to Marta and David the first year and everybody was a little grumpy about having to figure out an episode where they have to stay in the basic sets, but [what] we figured out is, what the audience really loves about the show is these six actors.
Amy Toomin Straus, a co-producer and co-writer on the episode, then said the writers were told that if they could get the entire cast of Friends in one room, “it’s like magic.” So, that’s essentially what they did. This led to Seth Kurland, another co-producer and writer, explaining how he came up with the idea for the trivia game Ross moderates and Chandler, Monica, Rachel and Joey play. He said:
There was a group of young screenwriters I knew called the Pad O' Guys who shared a house for several years after graduating college. Right before they all moved out and got their own places, they decided to have a last night game show called Pad O' Jeopardy to see who knew the most Pad O' Guys trivia. ... David Arnott was the emcee. The three Pad O' Guy contestants who competed against each other that night were Shane Black, Fred Dekker and Jay Cappe. Arnott wore a suit, played the Jeopardy! theme on the piano, and Greg Pruss created a huge Jeopardy!-style game board. In early drafts, Ross' questions were just being read off a pad. Again, I don't remember who came up with the idea for the quiz in the writers' room, but because of Pad O' Jeopardy, I lobbied that we use a real game board and we eventually did.
So, the idea for the trivia game, which led to some of the most iconic quotes from Friends that fans still reference – “Miss Chanandler Bong” and “That’s not even a word!” are staples in my vocabulary – came from an effort to cut costs and a random story about a few of the writers. That alone makes this episode even, better, but there is more to how this hilarious story, and the eventual apartment switch, came together.
The Friends Crew Fully Decided To Commit To The Bit Of Switching Apartments
One of the reasons this storyline works so well, and is my favorite, is because the cast and crew fully committed to the bit. The exaggerated reactions the girls have to getting questions wrong, Ross’s seriousness as the game show host, and the boys’ glee about winning all come together to make a gloriously hilarious episode that culminates in one of the best and most unique bits of the show: they switch apartments.
David Crane, the show’s co-creator and executive producer, explained why they decided to not just make the apartment switch a gag, and actually go through with the flip to TV Guide, saying:
What's really fun about that episode is when that game starts, you don't think they're actually going to go through with the switch if the girls lose. It feels like fake stakes or [what] we used to call schmuck bait... In this case, we went with, 'What if this is what's on the table and it actually happens?' And then they're in different apartments for almost the rest of the season. The discussion was if we do it, we have to stick to it. We can't just go, ‘Oh, next week, they switch back.’ If we're doing it, we're doing it. It felt crazy because that was Monica's apartment and yet, let's own it.
I’m so happy they owned it! The bit was truly hysterical, and the creativity behind it, plus the dedication to pulling it off is one of the many reasons why Friends is one of the best ‘90s sitcoms. Seeing all the boys' furniture in the girls' apartment was so jarring, especially against those purple walls, and the same can be said about Monica and Rachel moving into Chandler and Joey’s place. Greg J. Grande, the set decorator, explained why just the set changes made the sequence so funny, and it makes complete sense. He said:
My goal was to embrace the pathetic nature of the guys' furniture in this space. The great part was that when you placed their furniture in the girls' apartment, it turned out to be not so bad. I embraced the architecture and the layout of the guys' apartment with all of the girls' stuff, which became quite the cozy, quaint little space. There weren't purple walls, but at the end of the day it looked nice. Ironically, they both worked really well.
John Shaffner, a production designer, also weighed in on the set decisions made to pull off the apartment switch, and he noted how it feels like the boys are “trespassing” when they move in. That feeling of misplacement really makes the entire situation wild, and incredibly funny. He said:
It played better with the guys moving into the girls' apartment. You have that masculine playing off the feminine attention inside that space. You never lost the sense that they were trespassing, that they had crossed over and were not in their normal place.
I think one of the reasons this episode is a favorite of mine comes down to how goofy the premise is. I feel like my friends and I would totally do a trivia game like this, and place a funky bet on it. However, I’m not sure if we’d go through with it. The fact that the Friends actually switched apartments, and this bottle episode became the biggest gag of Season 4, is a major reason why it’s not only hysterical but truly legendary.
The one with the trivia contest, the switching of apartments, and the embryos is a top-tier episode of Friends. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer gave it their all, brought the funny, and the writers and crew created a story and a set that amplified their hilarious performances. Overall, this episode, which started in an effort to save money, ended up being one of the most unique installments of Friends, and even though it’s been decades since it aired, it’s still regarded by me and many others as one of the comedy’s best storylines.
You can stream “The One with the Embryos” (which is Season 4, Episode 12) and all of Friends with a Max subscription.
