The One With the Girl Who Hits Joey

Thursday, 18 February 1999

Ross learns Chandler and Monica are together, and Chandler panics into a proposal that Monica turns down, while Ross's new neighbours shun him over a retirement collection and Joey loses a girlfriend who punches him.

What happens

• Ross pounds on the door after seeing Chandler and Monica through the window, and Chandler tells him he is in love with her, which delights Ross rather than angering him.
• Rachel admits that she and Joey have known about the relationship for a while, and Ross forgives them when they explain they were worried about how he would take it.
• Joey brings his new girlfriend Katie to the coffee house, and after she punches him several times he quietly tells the others that she is genuinely hurting him.
• A neighbour named Steve asks Ross to contribute a hundred dollars towards the retiring handyman, and Ross refuses on the grounds that he has only just moved in.
• Rachel tells Chandler that Monica wants marriage and children, and Chandler's attempt to argue that the woman he is dating is a different person collapses under his own questioning.
• Chandler starts calling Monica a woman he is seeing casually and accuses her of baby fever, and Monica cancels their evening and walks out.
• Monica refuses to tell Chandler how to fix the argument, saying she is finished acting as his relationship tutor and he must work it out alone.
• Ross's housewarming party for the building draws no guests at all, and he discovers Phoebe celebrating at the handyman's party across the hall after donating the hundred dollars herself.
• Rachel punches Katie back and then kicks her, and when Katie demands that Joey take her side he declines, which ends the relationship.
• Chandler proposes to Monica in front of everyone, Monica turns him down and tells him the pressure never came from her, and both agree he is not ready to handle the relationship by himself.