Friends: The One with the Oral History of the Trivia Game Episode
The beauty of Friends is that it had a deceptively simple concept: six friends hanging out, navigating life and well, being there for each other. So it’s fitting that its best episode, “The One with the Embryos,” exemplifies all of that. “Embryos,” which aired Jan. 15, 1998, is Friends at its peak, a lightning-in-a-bottle gem. It’s a perfect blend of humor and heart that encapsulates everything fans loved about these pals and the series itself via two insta-classic storylines that dovetail by the end: Phoebe’s (Lisa Kudrow) moving surrogacy arc; and the “Who knows who better?” trivia game created and hosted by Ross (David Schwimmer) between the guys, Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Chandler (Matthew Perry), and the girls, Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and Monica (Courteney Cox), that gave us the famous apartment swap and Miss Chanandler Bong.
The episode’s genius lies not only in its exemplary use of the stellar, totally game (pun fully intended) ensemble and the balls to rattle status quo by going through with the apartment switch after the guys win, but also in the onion-peeling reveals about these characters. It deftly pulls fans in with arcane — and most importantly, believable — factoids that the audience was unaware of, but that they — these friends who hang out all the time — knew about each other. The hilariously tense Q&A deepens their relationships and fans’ relationship with them. But the indelible episode takes its title from Phoebe’s equally brilliant, watershed story. After having agreed to be a surrogate for her brother Frank (Giovanni Ribisi) and sister-in-law Alice (Debra Jo Rupp), she gets implanted with their embryos and then learns she’s pregnant. Tender and heartfelt, the weight of Phoebe’s plotline serves as the ideal complement to the high-stakes wackiness of the game. And it is in fact her news that unites these friends again by the end.
In honor of the 20th anniversary of “The One with the Embryos,” TV Guide spoke to the creative behind-the-scenes forces, who, in their own words, reveal how their best episode came together — which very well may not have happened without Kudrow’s real-life pregnancy — why they went all in on the apartment switch, and the never-before-told origin story of Miss Chanandler Bong.
While “The One with the Embryos” is perhaps best remembered for the contest, the genesis of the episode actually came from elsewhere. Shortly after production on Season 4 started in the summer of 1997, Lisa Kudrow announced she was pregnant. Rather than hide her pregnancy, Friends co-creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman decided to figure out a way to write it in, but without saddling Phoebe with baby in future seasons.
David Crane (co-creator/executive producer): [The germ of the episode] started when Lisa told us she was pregnant. We didn’t want to do another TV show where you had a woman carrying packages in front of her for nine months and in big coats. We wanted to find a way to actually incorporate it into the story, which was obviously tricky considering Phoebe wasn’t with anybody at that point. This seemed to be a really different and unexpected way to go, and it was a storyline we had never seen before. It seemed perfect — the whole idea she was carrying her brother’s kid and it turns out to be triplets.
Marta Kauffman (co-creator/executive producer): It felt like a great story for Phoebe without Phoebe becoming a parent herself.
Amy Toomin Straus (co-producer/co-writer, “The One with the Embryos”): Ross had a baby in the first season and [after that] nobody wanted a baby, but they felt like Phoebe could handle some unusual circumstances around a pregnancy.
Jill Condon (co-producer/co-writer, “The One with the Embryos”): One of the amazing things about working with Marta and David was how they arc-ed out the season and how they really thought about their characters. We knew this was going to happen as part of Phoebe’s arc before [we were assigned to write the episode].
Toomin Straus: That’s why it was called “The One with the Embryos,” because that was the [main] story. The game was just this other fun story while she was having this very emotional story. And Jill had the idea that she should talk to the embryos and give them a pep talk.
Lisa Kudrow, Friends
Condon: I very specifically remember being in the shower and thinking about her speech. It’s nice before you write to be able to go, “I know I’m going to have at least one moment that’s going to be really good!” … [Crane] recognized that it was going to be a really special speech for Phoebe to give. I love that he let me work it and that he respected his writers so much and when he recognized that something was special or important, he wanted you to feel good about it.
Condon: Part of what made it stick was a lot of factoids are real. My dad would not eat food in odd numbers. If you give him three Tic Tacs, he’ll either give you back one or take one more. These were real oddities having to do with us and our families, and I think that’s part of why it was funny. And it was pitched on by really, really funny writers over and over again. It wasn’t just us sitting in a room going, “And then, and then…” I have to give so much credit to that incredibly talented writing staff. There was nowhere better in town.
Kurland: The concept is just so relatable. I think every family and group of friends love the idea of testing “Who knows who better?” The quiz was a really fun, natural way to learn more about the characters.
Kauffman: Our feeling was that it’s much more fun for the audience to learn new things [from the questions] otherwise it’s just exposition. Sandwiches, we knew that was Joey’s favorite food, but I think besides that, most of it was stuff we didn’t know.
Crane: It’s new info, but it all makes sense because it’s all rooted in character. Yes, it’s joke, joke, joke, but it’s all character. I love whenever they get it wrong. That’s the thing. It could’ve been just jokes, but in fact every one of those moments, it’s a joke about the character who has a question being asked about them, and also how it comes out when they get it wrong — Chandler being embarrassed about when he touched a girl’s breast, Rachel lying about her favorite movie. It’s all rooted in character.
As Monica later claims, the contest hinged on one question that Rachel got wrong: What name appears on the address label of the TV Guide that Chandler and Joey get every week? Instead of merely having Rachel give the incorrect answer and then moving on, the writers turned it into an escalating gag that produced one of the show’s greatest jokes: Miss Chanandler Bong.
Kauffman: One thing I do remember is there is a joke I was the only human being to laugh at. Ross says the category is literature and the first thing he opens is, “Every week the TV Guide…” And it made me laugh so hard that the TV Guide was considered literature. It’s a subtle one. And then the real answer was Miss Chanandler Bong.
Kurland: There’s an unwritten law in a writers’ room where you never say who came up with a certain joke. I’m gonna violate that law. But only because this is one of the few jokes whose genesis I remember with almost total recall. Everything else is pretty much a blur.
When I was a little kid, one day in the Sunday comics there was this tiny application to join something called the Dodger/Pepsi Fan Club. If you joined, you’d get tickets to a game, a T-shirt and some postcards with pictures of the Dodgers. I filled it out in my 8-year-old scrawl, and to my horror, all my Fan Club mail came addressed to “Seth Kugland” instead of “Kurland.” My family was genetically bred to pounce on the weakest member of the herd and humiliate them as much as possible. Once my brothers saw that address label, they were in heaven; they mockingly called me “Kugland” for years.
