The One With Five Steaks And An Eggplant

"The One With Five Steaks And An Eggplant" is the fifth episode of the second season of Friends, which aired on NBC on October 19, 1995. When planning birthday festivities for Ross, the six discover money is an issue in life, even among friends.
==Plot==
When a sexy woman named Jade calls Chandler and Joey's by mistake, looking for her ex-boyfriend Bob, Chandler decides to answer the phone in Bob's stead and fixes himself up on a date with her at the coffeehouse. Ross is reluctant to let Chandler hit on Jade, but Chandler has his way when he steps in and accuses Bob of being a jerk for never showing up (of course, as Bob never got Jade's message, he couldn't know about the date in the first place). Meanwhile, behind Ross' back, Chandler is planning his birthday, involving a gift, a cake, and tickets to see Hootie and the Blowfish. Rachel, Phoebe, and Joey find $62 each too expensive of a plan. They get to talking about the fact that Ross, Monica and Chandler don't seem to notice that Rachel, Phoebe, and Joey are more financially challenged. Monica comes in and unknowingly rubs their face in this when she proposes a fancy dinner that night to celebrate her promotion at the restaurant.
The friends go to PhilloSophie, a fancy restaurant, to celebrate Monica. Chandler arrives late to dinner and tells Ross that he just had a great date with Jade. The waiter arrives for the orders. Ross, Monica, and Chandler casually order expensive seafood, while Phoebe orders a cup of soup, Joey gets a small pizza, and Rachel chooses a side salad (on the side of her glass of water). When Ross splits up the bill equally between them, it leaves the poor ones to pay more than what they ordered, which makes Phoebe and Joey bring up the money issue. Joey also reveals Ross' "birthday hoopla", to which Ross becomes initially excited, but then realizes it is in bad taste at the moment. The friends agree to try help and solve the money issue.
The next day, Monica brings dinner for everyone - five steaks and an eggplant for Phoebe. Monica mentions that she has obtained the steaks from a new meat supplier at work. Ross, Monica, and Chandler also reveal that they have gotten tickets for everyone for the Hootie and the Blowfish concert as their treat, but Rachel, Phoebe and Joey refuse to be paid for as if it were charity. Ross, Monica, and Chandler go to the concert anyway, while the others stay home and spend their time guessing how many fingers Joey has behind his back. Chandler tells Ross that he's had sex with Jade. He describes how good he was, mentioning that Jade was biting her lip to keep from screaming his name. Just then, the phone rings. Chandler answers in Bob's stead, and asks Jade how her "fling" was. The replies he receives are not at all what he expected - she found him mediocre (or "eh", as she put it), she had to keep biting her lip to not scream Bob's name (not Chandler's), and found the time much too short.
At the coffeehouse, Monica, Ross, and Chandler reveal to the others that they met with the band after the concert, making the others jealous, especially after Phoebe finds a hickey on Monica's neck, which is "the work of a Blowfish". The money argument comes up again, with no apparent solution. Then Monica receives a call from work where her boss tells that the five steaks weren't a gift, but a kickback, and as she accepted them she broke corporate policy and is fired. The money argument is immediately forgotten and everyone consoles Monica. Joey takes the coffee bill to pay it for her, but turns and asks Chandler for five dollars as he doesn't have any.
Some time later, Jade calls again at Chandler's. As Chandler isn't there, the answering machine takes the call and prompts for the message. Joey suddenly springs up from the couch, listening intently. When Jade requests one last night of sex he jumps up to grab the phone, but slips and falls.
==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===
Brittney Powell - Jade
Chris Young - Steven Fisher
Spencer Cherashore - PhilloSophie Waiter
James Michael Tyler - Gunther (uncredited)
===Crew===
Directed By: 
Ellen Gittelsohn
Written By: 
Chris Brown
==Trivia==
*According to the script, Matt LeBlanc was supposed to grab the phone and say "Bob here!" when Jade called, but he missed and fell from the couch. The editors chose to go with the latter as they found it funnier.
*The sarcastic waiter at the restaurant the gang go to is the same one who served Monica and Judy in the uncut DVD version of "The One With The Fake Monica". The restaurants, however, are different.
*The name of the fancy restaurant is not spoken in the episode, but the menus clearly say PhilloSophie on them. The name is a play on the word "philosophy." 
* The blouse Phoebe wears is the same one she wore in the first half of the previous episode. She also wears it in the spoken introduction to "The One With Ross' New Girlfriend".
* Jade says her legs are on the new James Bond movie poster. When the episode was aired, the latest James Bond movie was GoldenEye.
* Jade claims to "Bob" that Chandler's sexual performance was awkward and bumpy. This is an issue which is later revisited in "The One With Phoebe's Uterus", where Chandler has trouble with his sexual performance with Kathy, until Monica teaches him about hitting all of the seven erogenous zones in a woman to dramatically improve his sex life.
* When Ross mentions Mr. Roper, he's referring to a character in the sitcom The Ropers which ran for two seasons from 1979 and was a spinoff from Three's Company mentioned later in the series (both are remakes of UK sitcoms George & Mildred and Man About the House respectively).
* Both Rachel and Joey would get highest paying jobs later in the series, with Rachel being an executive at Ralph Lauren and Joey being a part of the soap opera Days of Our Lives.
==Goofs==
*When Ross is talking with Julie on the phone, he asks everyone to say 'Hi' to her. After the camera angle changes to show the rest of the gang, you can see the microphone hanging above them.
*When Monica is talking on the phone near the end of the episode, the phone switches hands so she's holding it against her opposite ear, with no time to do so.
*In this episode Monica gets fired from her job, yet in "The One With Phoebe's Wedding" she says that she's never been fired. 
* After the concert, Ross puts his jacket on, in the next shot it's off again and he starts to put it on but the next shot shows it fully on again.
* Rachel leans over the couch and asks Monica who gave her the hickey, then while Phoebe is ranting, 10–15 seconds later we can see once again, from a different angle, the same moment of Rachel leaning over the couch and asking Monica.
* Ross orders a prawn meal at the celebration meal but in the next episode it emerges he's allergic to shellfish or at least lobster. This is stated again when he and Rachel have dinner with her father.
* When Rachel, Joey and Phoebe are discussing Ross' birthday dinner, they each say "for Ross" but the next wider shot shows Rachel mouthing "for Ross" again but without sound.
*On the scene where Chandler is going to meet Jade, on top of his and Ross' table at the coffee shop there's a flyer announcing a concert of the (actual) psycobilly band Reverend Horton Heat for 'Saturday Oct 22', but in 1995 that date fell on Sunday. There was a Saturday October 22 in 1994, though, so the prop was probably a year old by the time the episode was shot. Also, the venue appears to have been a cultural center in Tenderloin, a neighborhood in San Francisco, that is, in the same State as Burbank, the city where Friends was actually filmed.
== External links ==
* Transcript of the episode including the deleted scenes
* "The One with Five Steaks and an Eggplant" at the Internet Movie Database
==Episode Navigation==
Category:Friends Episodes
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