The One With the Bullies

Thursday, 25 April 1996

Two men bully Ross and Chandler out of their seats at Central Perk and steal Chandler's hat, Monica gambles her savings on the stock market, and Phoebe drives out to meet her birth father.

What happens

• Phoebe reads a run of coincidences as signs and decides she has to go and meet her birth father.
• Two men order Ross and Chandler out of their seats at Central Perk and take Chandler's hat as a joke.
• Monica comes back from an interview at a fifties theme restaurant that would have her cooking in costume, with $127 left in the bank.
• Monica watches the stock with her initials rise and decides to put every dollar she has into the market.
• A dog drives Phoebe back into the cab before she reaches the door, she loses her nerve and asks to go home, and the cab hits the dog on the way out.
• Ross asks Gunther to settle the seat dispute, and the two men punish the tattling by barring Ross and Chandler from the coffee house.
• Monica loses all her money on the market and accepts that she now has to take the diner job.
• Phoebe returns the stitched-up dog and learns from the woman at the house that her father walked out four years ago.
• The young man at the house works out that Phoebe is his half-sister, and Frank asks to call her so they can talk again.
• Ross and Chandler go back to the coffee house anyway, and the fight ends when a stranger steals the hat holding everyone's keys and watches, leaving the four men friendly.