Second Look: Friends Season 5, Episode 5 – “The One with the Kips”

Friends Season 5, Episode 5 “The One with the Kips”
Written by Scott Silveri
Directed by Dana DeVally Piazza
Aired October 29, 1998 on NBC

Conflict is in the air in “The One with the Kips”, a fifth season episode of Friends that seems to derive at least a bit of its tone from the show’s first Dark Era (the post-breakup season three episodes) – at least, until its third act, when it shifts surprisingly to deliver some rather poignant, touching resolutions in its third act. That much cynicism being met with endearing optimism is, of course, a difficult balancing act – and one, unfortunately, “The One with the Kips” stumbles through until arriving at its startingly soft (and often hilarious) final moments, which again reveal the growing dichotomy between the show’s two lead romantic plots.

Continuing from where “The One Where Phoebe Hates PBS” ended, “The One with the Kips” focuses most of its attention on the two stories driving the plot to open season five; Monica and Chandler’s secret relationship, and the fallout from Ross saying Rachel’s name during his second wedding. “Kips” begins with the latter of these, shoving everyone into Monica’s bedroom (where we find Joey has hidden snacks, lest the events of “The One with the Morning After” were ever to happen again) while Ross prepares to tell Rachel that he’s no longer allowed to hang out with her.

Of course, Friends makes Ross squirm through the farcical delays placed in front of him; first, Rachel finds out her family dog died, then later gets a bloody nose right as Ross is preparing to tell her the bad news. It’s unfortunate “The One with the Kips” doesn’t glean more from making Ross squirm and face the true consequences of his decision – especially once he does tell her, and Rachel almost coils in response, blown away when she realizes Ross already agreed to Emily’s ridiculous proposal. I can take or leave their first two scenes; while they’re comedic enough, the incidental roadblocks being placed in front of Ross are only remotely amusing, especially as Ross conveys the weight of his decision in every single frame of the first two acts (it’s not quite Sad Ross, but Resigned Ross is pretty close) and Friends hinges their story on a reveal we already know is going to be awkward and unpleasant.

When it does come to a head, it appears Friends might actually a take a bold move and introduce some real complexity into the group dynamic; Rachel gets visibly angry and storms out after Ross tells her and apologizes, and it’s only a few hours before they’re both at the coffee shop and everyone’s afraid the group is going to split up. Rachel, of course, feels the anxiety of being the next ‘Kip’ of the group, the de facto person who falls out of the social group once a couple breaks up (an emotion Ross never experiences during all of this, which may be the actual funniest part of this episode) – and then, unfortunately, Friends immediately defuses the conflict by having Ross back out instead, pretending to play the ‘nice guy’ role once again while he tries to save a marriage that he tells Rachel “has to work”.

Their final scene in the episode would be a stronger one with a little bit more focus put on the two actually contending with the potential of each other’s absence (all we get is Ross’s Petpo Bismol chugging, which is such a good touch, it begs for more) – instead, we spend a lot of time on one of season five’s lesser Monica/Chandler stories, where Chandler suddenly becomes the kind of cynical selfishness that plagued episodes like “The One with the Screamer” or “The One at the Beach”, in what is a rather ineffective exploration of how Chandler’s lingering immaturity can affect his new relationship.

That immaturity, which manifests in his various insecurities, anxieties, and attempts to self-sabotage his own life, is of course one of the driving factors of his arc in seasons five and six; its introduction here, however, is a bit lackluster, with Friends leaning hard on Monica’s own neuroses to somehow try and make this an even playing field for the two to argue on, as Chandler and the hotel manager bond over Baywatch and high-speed criminal chases. It’s almost the inverse of Rachel and Ross’s plot; where their story starts strong and falls apart, Chandler’s behavior feels like the episode’s weak point – until the end of the episode, when Monica and Chandler talk about their failed attempt at a Vermont getaway.

Chandler thinking the two broke up over one fight, and Monica realizing the implications of that behavior and the relationships she’s seen him in previously, is one of the best moments of season five’s early episodes, Chandler’s earnestness and Monica’s surprised reaction providing a smooth landing strip for their plot in “The One with the Kips” – and then their final moment, when Monica and Chandler do what eventually became known as “changing your Facebook status”, confirming with each other that they are, in fact, in a serious relationship.

It’s such a nice moment – and is a perfect preamble to the episode’s final scene, when a mention of Donald Trump (unfortunately) and an eyelash curler reveal the truth about Monica and Chandler’s “individual” weekend trips to Joey, and he loses his mind in hilarious fashion. Joey putting the pieces together before anyone else in the group is a perfect plot twist, and his reaction, which lead to the couple dragging him into Monica’s bedroom – in turn making Phoebe and Rachel think they’re starting a new ‘group’ without them – is absolute gold, and another moment where Friends reminds us that Joey, is in fact, the best friends of Friends.

Without that, “The One with the Kips” is a kind of an odd, miscalibrated episode; it still has its fits and starts, as its pair of resolutions only continue to draw out the dissonance I discussed in “The One After Ross Says Rachel”, and the diverging paths the two pairs are taking in the quality of their stories. It also doesn’t help that Phoebe and Joey really have nothing to do unless they’re playing dumb (Phoebe’s really been chilling since “The One Hundredth”); when the episode finally lets Joey stop being an idiot, it adds so much texture to the existing material around it, allowing one of the show’s funnier, more romantically neutral characters to serve as a surrogate for the audience’s reaction to the Monica/Chandler pairing (heard emphatically during “The One with Ross’s Wedding”). Regardless of Phoebe and Joey’s lack of presence in the narrative, “The One with the Kips” would still be an imperfect episode of Friends, one with an emotional gamut a bit too wide and one-dimensional for it to carry two different stories; while I certainly appreciate the ambition of trying to put these two emotionally-charged stories together, it continues to bring a bit of dissonance to Friends one would hope the writers would lean away from, especially as the season continues.

Grade: C+

Other thoughts/observations:

• Panic sometimes creates moments of genius, exemplified when Monica and Chandler convince Joey that he wasn’t catching them in a tryst in the middle of the night, but rather them getting together at 9am to come wake him up. The final image – him asleep on the toilet – is one of the season’s single best images.
  
• Phoebe: “I know it’s Lepoo right now, but it’ll get better.”
  
• “You want my advice?” “Sure.” “You got married too fast.” “That’s not advice!”
  
• Ross contemplates a life outside the friend group, where he’d “just see Joey at Burger King”.
  
• Yes you heard correctly: Rachel’s dog was dragged 19 blocks by an ice cream truck before its death.
  
• “We may have to repopulate the earth.” “and condoms are going to do that?”
  
• Extended thoughts: the extended version has a short clip of an extremely weird Phoebe performance, Joey’s facts about Donald Trump’s private elevator, and longer scenes of Chandler watching the car chase (yay, said nobody).
  
• Up next: Phoebe contemplates a life of fur coats in “The One with the Yeti”.