The One After The Superbowl, Part 2 (2024)

"The One After The Superbowl" is a double-length episode of the second season of Friends, which aired on January 28, 1996, immediately after NBC's telecast of Super Bowl XXX. The main plot of both episodes has Ross searching for his former pet monkey, Marcel, and discovering him working on a film set in New York.It is the most-watched episode of Friends, drawing 52.9 million viewers.

Plot[]

On Marcel's film set Outbreak 2: The Virus Takes Manhattan, Chandler meets the attractive make-up artist Susie Moss, and he starts reminiscing about elementary school, and unfortunate incidents of an age long past, including one where Chandler lifted Susie's skirt revealing her panties in front of an entire auditorium in fourth grade. When she implies directly to him to ask her out, he does.

Apparently, Susie is crazy over Chandler and very sexually aggressive, asking him to do it in all kinds of public places such as elevators. The two prepare for a big night, when Susie asks Chandler to wear her panties (revealing that she may be wearing none). Chandler agrees to this very weird deal. Meanwhile, Ross has prepared Marcel's favorite food, as the monkey is spending the evening with him, but receives a phone call that the monkey's busy and won't make it.

Monica and Rachel meet Jean-Claude Van Damme on the set. Monica, who is a huge fan of his, is too intimidated to go and talk to him, so she sends Rachel in her stead. But when Rachel takes this opportunity to go out on a date with him, Monica gets mad at her best friend, which she does not fail to point out to Rachel.

The two girls end up fighting over him, requiring Phoebe to break them up. Monica makes Rachel relinquish Van Damme to her so that she may go out with him. Rachel does this, but tells Van Damme that Monica is doing this so as to have a threesome with him and Drew Barrymore. The two girls end up fighting again, this time taking it to an even more personal level (Monica rips Rachel's favorite sweater and Rachel pours a jar of marinara sauce in Monica's purse, which unbeknown to Rachel, has a pair of her gloves in it). When spirits calm down, the two realize that they might do better without him, and neither keeps pursuing him for dates.

Joey takes Ross out with him and Cathy, assistant to the director, and Chandler and Susie. Joey's plans to try and get in the movie are quickly blown off, as Cathy reveals that she has nothing to do with casting. Chandler's and Susie's plans, however, seem to take a huge step forward, when she goes waiting for him in the bathroom in a very lusty mood. Chandler obliges, and the two start making out in a cubicle. When Susie asks to see him in her own panties with his eyes closed, he obeys. What he doesn't notice is that while undressing, Susie has taken all of his clothes. Chandler is left wearing only Susie's panties and is embarrassed. This is no pleasant surprise for him, and when he asks for the reason behind such a thing, she reveals that this was just a ruse for her to get him to wear her panties and be (almost) naked in revenge for her embarrassment in the fourth grade for him flipping her skirt and revealing her panties to everyone. She also feels because of him she endured a painful childhood bullying as "Susie underpants" until she was 18. Chandler tells her that he was just a kid back then and asked how could she still be upset about that. Seeing his point, she tells him in 20 years to call her again if he's not still upset before she leaves out.

Some time later, Joey enters the bathroom, whistling. He's surprised to hear another whistle in reply to his whistle, which turns out to be Chandler from the cubicle. Joey loses no time in finding out what happened to his friend. And when Ross enters the bathroom and finds Joey looking down at the cubicle, he finds out for himself that Chandler is wearing Susie's hot pink panties and he can't take it anymore and asks Joey for his underwear, but Joey can't help him out as he's not wearing any. He then turns on to Ross for his underwear, when a man enters the bathroom to witness the scene. Chandler ends up leaving the restaurant, partly covered by the cubicle door he's unhinged and taken with him to save him uselessly from the embarrassment. Unfortunately, the word spreads to the girls too, who take the opportunity to make fun of him telling him to "keep your panties on!"

In the credit scene, Joey is portraying a dying plague victim, but won't stop hamming up the scene, moaning and gesticulating. Finally, they change the shot to his being an already dead victim in order to get a good take.

Cast and Crew[]

Main Cast[]

Jennifer Aniston - Rachel Greene
Courteney Cox - Monica Geller
Lisa Kudrow - Phoebe Buffay
Matt LeBlanc - Joey Tribbiani
Matthew Perry - Chandler Bing
David Schwimmer - Ross Geller

Supporting Cast[]

Lisa Roberts Gillan - Cathy (Credited as Lisa Roberts)
Seth Isler - Monkey trainer
Steven M. Porter - Security guard
Julia Roberts - Susie Moss
Jean-Claude Van Damme - Himself
James Michael Tyler - Gunther (uncredited)

Crew[]

Directed By:
Michael Lembeck

Written By:
Jeff Astrof, Mike Sikowitz & Michael Borkow

Reception[]

Entertainment Weekly rates the episode "C", calling it "fragmented, poorly paced, and only sporadically funny. Cramming the already crowded ensemble with celebs may have been a ratings grabber but the results are forced sitcomedy and stilted acting" specifically citing Van Damme. The authors of Friends Like Us: The Unofficial Guide to Friends write of the second part, Julia Roberts was "a fine guest-star", and Van Damme was "embarrassing".

This episode was the highest rated episode of the series, recording 52.9 million viewers. Director Michael Lembeck won the 1996 Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Directing for a Comedy Series for this episode, the only Emmy won by the series in that year.

Trivia[]

• This is the last appearance of Marcel the Monkey, although he is mentioned many times in later episodes.
• This two-part episode, "The First One", "The One With Two Parts", "The One Hundredth" and "The Last One" are the only ones where the title doesn't refer to anything about what happens in the show.
• The first date between Chandler and Susie take place in a restaurant called Ernie's.
• When Susie and Chandler are sitting on the curb, a poster for Chris Isaak can be seen stuck on the window. Chris Isaak appeared in "The One After The Superbowl, Part One".
• Matthew Perry dated Julia Roberts for several months after her separation from her first husband in 1995.
  • In his autobiography Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry stated that Roberts' one condition once invited to appear in the episode was acting opposite Perry, leading Marta Kauffman to ask him to send flowers to Roberts, and afterwards they communicated through fax and phone as Roberts was filming Everyone Says I Love You (1996) in France, before both finally met in December 1995. Her scenes were shot between January 6-8, 1996. He broke up with her in April.
• During this episode, Ross is upset because Marcel's agent blows him off. Incidentally, the restaurant he, Joey, Joey's date, Chandler and Susie go to is called Marcel's, visible by the menu. In "The One With The Baby On The Bus", when Joey and Chandler get off the bus, the two women they got off the bus with suggest going to Markel's. (Possibly the same restaurant).
• Susie says that one actress has a mustache that makes her looks like Gabe Kaplan. David Schwimmer did not want to wear the Afro wig and mustache in episode "The One With The Prom Video" because he thought he would look like Gabe Kaplan in Welcome Back, Kotter.
• In the dubbed Spanish and Italian versions of this episode, Susie says Burt Reynolds instead of Gabe Kaplan, because Reynolds' mustache is better known in Spain and Italy than Kaplan's. In German it is Clark Gable.
• In the scene where Joey tries to get the film director's attention by shaking Phoebe, the director is surrounded by show creators Kevin Bright, David Crane and Marta Kauffman posing as film crew.
• Lisa Roberts Gillan is Julia Roberts older sister.
• Julia Roberts would later co-star with George Clooney (who played Dr. Mitchell in "The One With Two Parts") in Ocean's 11 (2001) & Ocean's 12 (2004) along with Brad Pitt (Will Colbert), Bruce Willis (Paul Stevens) and Elliott Gould (Jack Geller), and then again in Money Monster (2016).
• Julia Roberts would later co-star with Susan Sarandon, who appears later as Cecelia Munroe in "The One With Joey's New Brain", in the film Stepmom (1998).
• Joey mocks Chandler for wearing women's panties. In "The One With Chandler's Dad" (season 7), Joey wears Rachel's panties and finds them very comfortable. Later in the series Monica reveals that Chandler, with whom she's by then in a relationship, has worn her pantiesto work.
• Joey doesn't wear any underwear, this becomes a running gag in the show, the first episode being "The One Where No One's Ready" in which Joey goes commando on Chandler's "fatigues".
• Twenty years after this episode, Jennifer Aniston and Julia Roberts would team up with Jon Lovitz (who plays Steve in two episodes of Friends) for the romcom Mother's Day (2016).
• In the uncut version, when Monica is walking with Van Damme, he says he agreed to the date only because Rachel said that Monica would be in a threesome with Drew Barrymore.
• This episode was used as "M is for Marcel" in the Nick at Nite Friends A-Z Event (January 2023).

Goofs / continuity[]

• When Chandler first enters the coffeehouse Rachel is walking towards the toilets. He crosses to the far side of the sofa says "I am done" and Rachel is by Ross' chair on the right of the screen.
• When Chandler's walking out the restaurant with the toilet door you can catch a glimpse of the boxers he's wearing, when he is supposed to be wearing panties.
  • In the exact same scene, [after the bathroom interior] Ross sits down twice; he sits down then when the camera cuts to another angle he sits down again.
• Chandler is talking to Susie (Julia Roberts) and a man is standing behind Chandler in a doorway. There is a cut to Susie, but when the camera goes back to Chandler the man is not there. Then he appears again.
• When Susie is asking Chandler to wear her panties, her hand is on his neck. In the next shot it is gone, and then it is back again.
• When Chandler removes his clothes, one of his shoes ends up by Susie's right foot (and is still there when Susie leaves) yet she picks up two shoes from in front of the urinal. When Joey enters sometime later, the shoe has gone.
• Ross is seen sharing an ice-cream with Marcel in this episode. However in a later episode he claims he can't eat ice-cream because it hurts his teeth.

Memorable Quotes[]

External links[]

• Transcript of the episode including the deleted scenes
• "The One After the Superbowl" at Wikipedia
• "The One After the Superbowl: Part 2" at the Internet Movie Database

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