The One with George Stephanopoulos

Rachel gets her first paycheck and discovers two things: her job at Central Perk isn't an exact substitute for an orthodontist's income and there's something called a payroll tax that gets first dibs on her earnings. This launches the main storyline of the episode: is Rachel going to give up and move back to the security of her Long Island life?

As I've mentioned before, the writers usually create three storylines that weave across the episode. In this, the fourth episode of the first season, two of the storylines merge. The three storylines are introduced one after the other in the first scene after the opening credits: Phoebe is exhausted because she can't sleep due to her grandmother's intimate and talkative relationship with her new boyfriend (Monica invites Phoebe to spend the night at her place), Ross is sulking because it's the anniversary of the first time he and his ex-wife Carol made love (Chandler and Joey convince him to go to a hockey game with them), and Rachel is confronted with the reality of her moving to Manhattan first by her meager paycheck and then by her Long Island friends showing up at Central Perk while she's working . . .

The scene is over-the-top funny but underlying it is the contrast between the superficiality of her old friends who are stupified by Rachel's new life and her new friends who are encouraging and supportive.

In the meantime Chandler and Joey are trying their best to cheer Ross up, but fate has other plans for him. At the hockey game, an errant hockey puck hits Ross square in the face, and its off to one of Friends' favorite situations for mining laugh's: the admittance booth at the hospital . . .

That was just a small taste of what Ross had to endure in the Emergency Room. As always, David Schwimmer's Ross excels at getting laughs from his pain whether it's physical or emotional. In fact, as the series progresses, David Schwimmer's physical comedy competes equally with his comedic delivery and (this is just my personal opinion) he raises the bar for the rest of the ensemble. In doing so, he's just one of the fortuitous outcomes of throwing these six actors together. I mean, Ross barely talks in this scene (from a very, very future episode), but Jennifer Aniston and Matt LeBlanc play off him like virtuosos . . .

Seriously, that was a piece of art. The three of them had timing better than a swiss watch, the expressions were priceless, and the delivery was effortless. And yes, that was from Season 10, and all of them have grown as actors and individuals, but compare Ross to Captain Herbert M. Sobel in 2001's Band of Brothers. It's like night and day.

Back to our current episode, Monica and Phoebe, decide to help Rachel feel at home by planning a surprise slumber party and it doesn't go as planned, because they each of them realize they don't have a plan . . .

If your a fan, you remember the ending. If you don't remember, Rachel tells the credit card company she's alright, she has magic beans . . ., then she hangs up the phone and looks at her friends playing "Twister" and says "I'm fine . . . " and the credits roll.