The One with the Ball (6 May 1999)

Gary wants to ask Phoebe to move in with him. Phoebe is freaked because it's so soon and asks Chandler to make him afraid of commitment so Gary won't ask her. Joey and Ross throw a ball ... See full summary »

Director:

Gary Halvorson

Writers:

David Crane (creator), Marta Kauffman (creator),

Stars:

Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow

Cast

Episode cast overview:
Jennifer Aniston	...	Rachel Green
Courteney Cox	...	Monica Geller
Lisa Kudrow	...	Phoebe Buffay
Matt LeBlanc	...	Joey Tribbiani (as Matt Le Blanc)
Matthew Perry	...	Chandler Bing
David Schwimmer	...	Dr. Ross Geller
Michael Rapaport	...	Gary
James Michael Tyler	...	Gunther
Victoria Garcia-Kelleher	...	Woman #2 (as Victoria L. Kelleher)
Antoinette Spolar	...	Woman #1

Storyline

Gary wants to ask Phoebe to move in with him. Phoebe is freaked because it's so soon and asks Chandler to make him afraid of commitment so Gary won't ask her. Joey and Ross throw a ball back and forth without dropping it for hours. Rachel buys a very expensive naked cat. Monica joins the boys in their ball throwing game. Rachel's cat isn't as cute as Rachel thought it would be but the store won't take it back. Phoebe agrees to move on with Gary. Rachel sells the cat for $1,500 to poor Gunther. . Phoebe breaks up with Gary because he shot a bird. Monica, Chandler, Joey and Ross have been throwing the ball all night when Phoebe drops the ball.

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Plot Keywords:

ball | cat | game | break up | bird | 

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Genres:

Comedy | Romance

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Certificate:

TV-PG

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

6 May 1999 (USA)

Filming Locations:

Dijon Street, Warner Brothers Burbank Studios - 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, Warner Bros. Television

Technical Specs

Runtime:

30 min 22 min

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

(episode #5.21), Chandler visits Phoebe's boyfriend Gary (Michael Rapaport) at his precinct. When they sit at Gary's desk, a blackboard with names written in blue chalk is prominent behind his head. All of the names on the blackboard are references to or characters from the films of Stanley Kubrick (Alex, Dim, Hal, Kissoff, even Redrum).

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Goofs

When Chandler visits Gary at work, Gary's desk has a framed picture of an African American man with a child.

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Quotes

[repeated line]
Joey Tribbiani: It's not a cat!

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Connections

Featured in Friends: The One with All the Other Ones: Part 1 (2004)

User Reviews

The One with the Ball

Not a good episode.

All three story lines were pretty bad and far from funny The one with the cat was just dumb. Joey's "this is not a cat" was just annoying and never a good joke. Gunther asking if it was a snake, are you kidding me? Maybe the only good part of this story is that it shows people that supporting breeders instead of adopting free cats is a dumb idea, but I don't think this was a point of the episode

The story of Phoebe and Gary was not funny either. And him killing a bird in the end was not funny too. I guess they just wanted to show how little they knew each other to move in together but it didn't work for me

And the story with the ball had potential but it never hit it. Monica just ruined the game and that was it