The One With The Girl From Poughkeepsie

"The One With The Girl From Poughkeepsie" is the tenth episode of the fourth season of Friends, which aired on December 18, 1997. 
==Plot==
Although it's almost Christmas, not everyone is in a really festive mood, and Rachel, Ross and Monica, in particular, face some tough times ahead of the holidays.
Following her highly negative review which resulted in her being hired as the head chef or Allesandro's restaurant, Monica is being tormented by her subordinates in the kitchen staff. They bur her chef jacket and write "Quit Bitch" on her hat, but even though these insults hurt her feelings, Monica is not willing to let go of her dream job. Chandler suggests a management trick, so she hires Joey to act like a waiter just so she can fire him in front of the others, to make them respect her. But when Joeys earns a small fortune in tips, he is unwilling to go along with the ruse. It is only when he truly sees the degree of cruelty and abuse Monica is being forced to endure (which almost makes her resign) that he sticks to his role and plays a similarly arrogant employee. Monica quickly takes advantage of this and fires Joey in front of everyone, which Joey seems to take a little harder than he expected. This is enough for Monica to acquire control over her colleagues who realize they could get fired anytime too. 
Rachel hates being single during the holiday season, and is more willing than usual to have a fling with someone rather than something serious. Chandler knows of a couple of guys at work who might do the trick for her, which he uses in his favor to obtain free stuff from them. After picking her preferred guy, Patrick, Rachel starts to believe that a deeper relationship could develop, but when she learns that Chandler told Patrick that all she wanted was a fling, she's furious with him. Chandler tries to rectify his mistake, but telling Patrick that Rachel might be interested in a serious relationship with him is another mistake which leads to Rachel being dumped before Christmas. Angry that she's all alone again, Chandler consoles her on how he never lied once about her to his colleagues, which makes Rachel appreciate their friendship more.
Ross meets an amazing girl from Poughkeepsie on the train, whom he finds really beautiful, smart and funny. All that is keeping him from this girl is the considerable distance between them. Things are different with another girl from uptown - she's really close and easy to reach, but isn't smart, not funny and is actually a bigot. Managing time between the two girls is too much for him, and he ends up exhausted from dating them both. He breaks up with the girl from uptown, and doesn't even manage to connect with the girl from Poughkeepsie when he falls asleep on the train. He wakes up in Montreal, next to a beautiful blonde woman who asks him out for coffee. Just as things might head in a new, exciting direction, he learns that the woman is from Nova Scotia.
Phoebe finds it hard to write a special holiday song about all of her friends because of the lack of good rhyming words, but it only takes some of her more fertile imagination to solve the problem. She sings the song at the end of the episode.
==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===
Fred Stoller - The Waiter
James Michael Tyler - Gunther
Jamie Kaler - Mike
Micheal DiMaggio - Drew
Shannon Maureen Brown - The Woman On The Train
Amy Smallman - The Kitchen Worker
Yasemin Baytok - The Poughkeepsie Woman
Vic Helford - The Conductor
===Crew===
Directed By: 
Gary Halvorson
Written By: 
Scott Silveri
==Trivia==
*This is the only Season 4 appearance of Stu, Monica's colleague. His second and final appearance was in "The One With The Stripper" (S8E8).
*When Chandler mentions 401(k)s, Phoebe thinks he works with robots. Apparently, she's still unfamiliar with them in Season 9 as she mispronounces it in "The One With The Fertility Test".
*This is the 2nd time Joey works at one of his friends' job after working with Chandler in "The One With The Chicken Pox". This will happen one last time in the very next episode, where he works for Ross' museum.
**He convinces the restaurant staff to call him Dragon. He also forged himself a new identity while working at Chandler's company as he pretended he went by Joseph and he had two kids and a wife, Karen.
*In this episode, Ross is seen sleeping in Central Perk. However, in "The One With George Stephanopoulos", Ross sees Phoebe sleeping in Central Perk and states "I cannot sleep in a public place". It's implied he is exhausted from all the back and forth traveling. 
*When Chandler asks Ross what song Phoebe was singing, he says that she sang "the one with the cat". Incidentally, "The One With The Cat" was a title of a former episode (S4E2).
*Towards the end of the episode, Ross is seen traveling to Poughkeepsie to break up with one of the girls, but has fallen asleep. He apparently stays asleep till Montreal, which is approximately a 9 and a half hour journey by train (Adirondack service).
*Chandler asks Rachel if she's ever been with a woman of which she is extremely defiant, but we later find out in "The One With Rachel's Big Kiss" that she did indeed have a drunken encounter with Melissa Warburton at College where the two of them made out together passionately.
*Unusually Ross and Rachel only share the tag scene together.
*Although this episode was the 10th to air, it was actually the 12th to be produced.
==Goofs/ Continuity==
* Rachel's birthday is inconsistent. In "The One With Joey's New Girlfriend", Rachel tells Gunther her birthday is May 5, and this is consistent with the month of birthday parties thrown for her on the show in "The One Where Rachel Finds Out", (which aired in May 1995) and in her one-month-early surprise party in "The One Where Rachel Smokes", (which aired in April 1999). Rachel's 30th birthday, however, is celebrated in February in "The One Where They All Turn Thirty", (which aired on February 8, 2001) while in this episode she says it's after Valentine's Day (February 14). A birthday in February is also consistent with Rachel's statement to a police officer in "The One With Chandler's Dad" that she is an Aquarius (January 21- February 19). 
*The woman on the train in Montreal states "it's just a two hour ferry ride to Nova Scotia." No passenger ferry services exist between Montreal and Nova Scotia (they are in fact connected by road), and even if they did the trip would take would take 80–90 minutes by plane, and 10–14 hours by car, several days via waterways.
TOWTGirlFromPoughkeepsie-CentralPerk.png
TOWTGirlFromPoughkeepsie.png
== External links ==
* Transcript of the episode including the deleted scenes
* "The One with the Girl from Poughkeepsie" at the Internet Movie Database
==Episode Navigation==
Category:Friends Episodes
Category:Friends
Category:Season 4
Category:Season 4 Episodes
Category:Episodes
Category:Holiday Episodes