The One With the Thumb

Thursday, 6 October 1994

Monica finally introduces her boyfriend Alan to her friends, who adore him, and then dumps him because she feels nothing; Chandler starts smoking again, and Phoebe gives away a bank's mistaken thousand dollars and finds a thumb in her soda.

What happens

• While coaching Joey through an audition scene, Chandler takes the cigarette himself and is back on them after three clean years.
• Phoebe discovers an extra five hundred dollars in her bank account and decides she cannot keep money she did not earn.
• The others catch Chandler smoking in the coffee house, and he tells them that this time he simply will not quit.
• Monica admits she is seeing a man named Alan and refuses to let any of her friends meet him.
• Monica relents and brings Alan upstairs, and instead of tearing him apart the group turns out to love him completely.
• Phoebe hands the whole thousand dollars and the free football phone to Lizzie, a homeless woman she knows, and accepts only a soda in return.
• Phoebe opens the soda Lizzie bought her and finds a severed thumb floating inside.
• Monica tells Paula that her friends feel something for Alan she does not, and decides to break up with him.
• Monica announces the break-up to the group, who mourn Alan far harder than she does.
• Chandler walks out to buy cigarettes, and Phoebe stops him by offering the seven thousand dollars if he never smokes again.