The One With The Race Car Bed

"The One With The Race Car Bed" is the seventh episode of the third season of Friends, which aired on November 7, 1996.
==Plot==
Against Phoebe's advice, Monica orders a bed from Janice's ex-husband's mattress store, but when she is not at home, the wrong one (which is shaped like a race car) is delivered to her home. Phoebe explains to Monica that the store will not take back the bed because she (Phoebe) has signed in Monica's name. Joey and Monica visit the mattress store to return it, but Joey is astonished to see Janice there with her ex-husband. Chandler, meanwhile, happily plays with the race car bed.
Rachel convinces Ross to dine with her dad at a fine-dining restaurant, who treats him even worse than he feared he would. Seeing that Dr. Greene has tipped very little, Ross leaves a fat $20 tip, angering the older man, who asks him to pay the entire bill. Rachel somehow convinces him to have brunch with her father the next day. At brunch, Ross and Dr. Greene find each other making jokes about Rachel's chiropractor and general lack of good sense, to her embarrassment.
Joey becomes a learning extension teacher in soap acting. He gives his students very unconventional acting advice. When Joey hears one of his students is also auditioning for the same role he wants, he tries to sabotage him by giving him bad advice about how to play the character as a gay man. This backfires on Joey, as the other actor is appreciated for his gay acting and selected for the part along with a two-year TV contract.
==Cast & 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===
Ron Leibman - Dr. Leonard Greene 
Khalil Kain - Cal 
Maggie Wheeler - Janice 
Mark Cohen - Mattress King 
Rosey Brown - Delivery Man 
James Michael Tyler - Gunther 
Simon Harvey - Jester 
Shashi Bhatia - Acting Student #1 
Steven Harad - Acting Student #2
Doug Benson - Acting Student (uncredited)
===Crew===
Directed By:
Gail Mancuso
Written By:
Seth Kurland
==Quotes==
Ross: When you guys were kids, and played, uh, "Happy Days", who were you? I was always Richie.
Monica: I was always Joanie!
Joey: Question. Was, uh, "Egg the Gellers!" the war cry of your neighborhood?
Rachel (to Ross reluctant to have dinner with her father): Just one dinner. Please, one night. For me. Please? I just want him to love you like I do... All right, not exactly like I do. But if you do come to dinner I'll love you like I do in that black thing that you like.
Chandler: I'll go.
Rachel: Look, Ross, I realize that my father is difficult but that's why you have got to be the bigger man here.
Ross: Look, sweetie, I could be the bigger man. I could be the biggest man. I could be a big, huge giant man, and it wouldn't make any difference except that I could pick your father up and say, "Like me, tiny doctor!"
==Trivia==
*Joey says he has an audition for All My Children. This is the show Gunther used to appear in as Bryce.
*Joey mentions actress Susan Lucci. Susan played Erica Kane on All My Children from 1970 to 2011.
*When the scene shows the gang sitting in the apartment, the end of the Happy Days theme can be heard. When Phoebe gives birth to the triplets in "The One Hundredth", her doctor is obsessed with Fonzie.
*This episode marks the first appearance of Gunther's love for Rachel.
*The song that Joey "sings" on the beginning of the episode is "Baby Elephant Walk". This is when we find out about Phoebe's psychic abilities. She can hear the song Joey is singing in mind.
**She also can't wear a digital watch as she mentions in "The One With George Stephanopoulos" and she can clean an aura as she tries with Ross in "The Pilot".
*Rachel says that if she squints, she can pretend Ross is Alan Alda, an actor known from the M*A*S*H series, where he played the main character, Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce.
**The series is based on the eponymous film which starred Elliott Gould.
*In this episode, it's mentioned Ross is allergic to lobster (in The One With the Baby on the Bus, he is said to be allergic to lobster, peanuts and kiwi).
*This is the last time that Dr. Greene is seen inside Monica's Apartment. It's also the only time he and Ross get along when talking about Rachel's chiropractor and her lack of common sense. 
*Ross tells Joey he can't sleep with any of his students. Ironically Ross will start a brief relationship with one of his students (Elizabeth Stevens) in about three years time.
*Ross tells Rachel he'll get the bagels. This is a traditional Jewish food very popular in Canada and the US (especially Montreal and New York). Some viewers thought this might be hinting that Rachel and/or her father are also Jewish. However, this is highly unlikely since they both order lobster at the restaurant.
* Rachel says that staff at the coffeehouse serve rude customers 'sneezers'. Later in the series Rachel mentions 'sneeze-muffins' to Joey which she served to rude customers.
*Phoebe doesn't know Monica's middle name, so she writes down "Falula". Monica does have a middle name but it is never revealed in the series, only that it starts with the letter "E", from her initials M.E.G. ("The One With The Bullies").
*This episode was used as "G is for Gunther" in the Nick at Nite Friends A-Z Event (January 2023).
*This episode was used as "J is for Janice" in the Nick at Nite Friends A-Z Event (January 2023).
==Goofs==
*When Joey's nose starts bleeding, Phoebe tells him to tip his head back but this would cause the blood to run down the throat and can cause choking. The same mistake is made in a later episode when Rachel has a nosebleed. However, this is not necessarily an error, as tilting one's head back is both a natural instinct as well as the conventional wisdom at the time of production.
*The race car bed has the mattress correctly leveled, both in the store and in Monica's room. At the closing credits scene when Chandler is in it, the mattress is much lower and one wouldn't be able to sit down in the bed or stand up easily from it.
*In the cold opening, Gunther goes to reach for the yellow mug first.
*When Ross and Rachel enter the apartment after the meal with her father, they come through the door so that Rachel is level with the blue cupboard. We then get a brief shot of Phoebe shadow-boxing before the shot returns to Ross and Rachel who are coming past the door again.
*In the same scene, Rachel says her right leg is two inches shorter but actually tilts to her left, suggesting her left leg is shorter.
*On the first day of Joey's soap opera acting class, he writes his name on the board not paying attention. When the shot cuts away to the students and goes back to Joey, his handwriting on the board has rearranged. When the shot goes back to the students again and then back to Joey, his handwriting has changed back to the way it was when he first wrote it.
*In the opening scene, right before it goes to Rachel's thought, Ross' lips don't line up with the sound.
==External links==
*Transcript of the episode including the deleted scenes
*"The One with the Race Car Bed" at the Internet Movie Database
==Episode Navigation==
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