The One With Monica’s Thunder
“The One With Monica’s Thunder” is the seventh season premiere of Friends, which aired on NBC on October 12, 2000. Minutes after Chandler proposes to Monica, she plans to celebrate on the town with her friends – until she catches Ross and Rachel kissing.
It’s still the night of Monica and Chandler’s engagement and Ross arrives at Monica’s apartment and is told the good news and Monica screams from the balcony in happiness. Later the gang decide to dress up to go drink champagne at the Plaza. Rachel is a little sad and lonely and asks Ross whether they want to have a “Bonus Night”.
Monica catches them kissing and is upset because she waited her whole life for that day and thought it would only be about her engagement but now it is about Rachel and Ross getting back together – they stole “Monica’s thunder”. Monica is really upset and doesn’t want to go out for champagne anymore, especially not with Rachel.
Monica’s remark prompt a huge fight between her and Rachel, where Monica reminds Rachel the last time she stole her “thunder” was when Rachel went “third base” with Monica’s cousin on her (boring) 16th birthday, and it was all her guests talked about. Monica accuses Rachel of doing it again because Rachel wanted to be the first to get married and can’t stand that her ‘former fat friend’ is getting married before her. While initially angry at Monica’s accusation, Rachel admits that she kissed Ross because she was sad about not even being close to getting married. Monica forgives Rachel, who’s truly sorry for ruining Monica’s night. Ross is embarrassed however, when Monica almost made Rachel sleep with him.
Meanwhile Joey has an audition for a movie and tries desperately to prove he can look like he’s only nineteen for the part while Phoebe decides to make certain she’s chosen by Monica and Chandler to play her guitar at their wedding reception.
This is one of the few bottle episodes in which no extra actors or sets are used.
Monica tells Rachel that she’s to announce that she’s pregnant when Rachel announces her engagement to Ross. Ironically, the opposite happens in the final episode of this season – Monica and Chandler get married, and Rachel finds out that she’s pregnant.
When Joey comes out dressed as a 19-year-old, Chandler is playing Crash Team Racing on his PlayStation. As with the previous scenes of PlayStation games being played, the game sequence is pre-recorded off-air. However both crew and cast played these games between filming.
During season seven, the theme song is now cut down to just the chorus of the song and there are no dancing scenes of them at the fountain. The DVD, however, has dancing scenes and is the same length as the other seasons.
The Magna Doodle shows a drawing of a cartoon beetle ready to step on an ant.
This was the first episode of Friends that was shown on British TV channel E4.
Running gag: Ross bragging about he and Rachel kissing and possibly getting back together, until Rachel tells him the moment had passed. However they do sleep together again one month before Monica’s wedding resulting in Rachel becoming pregnant, after both admitted they wanted to sleep together on this night, as seen in “The One With The Videotape”.
In the uncut version, an additional scene is shown. The scene shows Rachel giving advice to Joey on how to look like 19 by choosing the right clothes to fulfill that ambition. She then, says to him, “fashion is all about youth”. Later in the episode, Joey follows Rachel’s advice by trying some clothes on.
In Phoebe’s final song, she sings “who will perform the ceremony”. Joey ends up conducting not just Chandler and Monica’s wedding but also her wedding to Mike Hannigan in the final season.
In the TV episode, as Phoebe and Joey have their conversation about whether Monica would let Phoebe play at the wedding, Joey sniffs Phoebe’s breath and angrily realizes that she ate his candy bar. In the uncut DVD episode, Phoebe and Joey instead adlib a few lines about “would she” when Phoebe says it’s beginning to sound like “woodcheese” and Joey says “I could go for some woodcheese right now”. It is not clear why the uncut episode omitted the scene from the TV version.
The “incident” Chandler talks about is the same thing which it’s implied happened to Ross in “The One With The Jellyfish” (S4E01).
The discussion between Ross and Rachel in the hallway about the good times they had sex comes up again after returning from visiting her father in hospital in “The One Where Joey Speaks French “.
Rachel telling Ross he couldn’t watch her change is a callback to “The One With A Chick And A Duck” when they had a similar conversation.
From this episode onward, the subtitles in the Netflix version
