The One Where Joey Loses His Insurance

Thursday, 14 October 1999

Joey's health insurance lapses and he gets a hernia he refuses to pay to fix, while Ross panics into a fake British accent at his first NYU lecture and Rachel finds out they are still married.

What happens

• Rachel packs up her kitchen things to move in with Ross, and Phoebe accuses Ross of hoping Rachel will fall for him before she learns they are still married.
• Ross is invited to guest lecture at NYU on the strength of a published paper, and Phoebe almost gives away the marriage in front of Rachel before passing it off as a joke.
• Phoebe tells the others that her psychic has given her one week to live, and she decides to spend it doing whatever she likes.
• Chandler opens Joey's mail and finds that Joey's health insurance has expired because he worked too little last year, so Joey goes to his agent for work.
• Joey gives himself a hernia lifting weights, and he refuses to see a doctor because he can no longer afford one.
• Monica and Rachel slip into the lecture hall early and catch Ross teaching in a British accent, which he admits he adopted out of nerves.
• Monica and Rachel fight over the disputed candlesticks and settle it by each keeping one.
• Phoebe announces that her own psychic has died, which she takes as proof the reading was wrong and she will live.
• Joey wins the part of a dying man and plays it in real pain, and Chandler gets the child actor to cry on cue by making him look at Joey's hernia.
• Ross's divorce lawyer phones the apartment and Rachel learns she is still married, and she storms into his lecture to confront him just after he has confessed to the class that the accent is fake.