“The One with All the Poker” is a real disappointing Friends episode: the two big arcs of the episode involve women being inept at a “men’s game”, and Ross becoming a person he’s never been before. It’s an episode with a number of funny moments, yes, but the way the narrative plays out, it felt like it betrayed its characters, and how it posited its own gender dynamics early on in its run. But all the men vs. women nonsense aside, “The One with All the Poker” contains one important – and completely unintended – revelation: Ross and Rachel would not make a good couple.
Anybody who remembers “The One with All the Poker” remembers it for one scene: when Ross and Rachel get into a betting contest, which goes from competition, to Ultimate Man vs. Woman competition with everyone putting in money for their gender when Ross and Rachel run out of cash (Ross: “Joey, I’m a little shy” Joey: “It’s ok, Ross, you can ask me”). It then turns again in the final instant, when it becomes “Awww, Ross is such a sweetheart) when he caves and lets Rachel win. It’s a memorable scene of the show, but under a critical eye, it becomes memorable for all the wrong reasons.
In a nutshell, it represents Ross emotionally coddling Rachel when she’s in a depressed moment. Sure, it plays out real cute when Ross lets her win after she doesn’t get the dream job at Bloomingdale’s, but in terms of their relationship dynamic and how Ross changes through the episode, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. At first, ‘All the Poker’ is trying to show Ross’s manlier side, which is really just a lot of bullshit that even he can’t finish with something meaningful. Why poker grows hair on his back is something we don’t know – but it turns into a lot of posturing and talking down to Rachel, by a character who hasn’t been able to do much but openly fawn in front of her.
The call during the poker game at the end also feels a little manipulative: before that, it was about one of the girls finally beating the guys who have kicked their asses continuously at cards – even after they’ve been trained by Monica’s odd aunt. Shit, they even beat them at games they’ve never heard before! But that chance at redemption for the women on the show through heated genderized card-playing is thrown out in favor of reminding us that Ross loves Rachel, and he’s willing to remove his nutsack if it gives her a moment of happiness.
I guess the episode comes down to the placement of the phone call: being so conveniently added to the middle of the scene changes its tone, concluding with a shrug of the shoulders when it comes to gender. So what if the men win; they know how to appeal to a woman’s emotions, ISN’T THAT JUST THE GREATEST? ‘All The Poker’ is an episode that doesn’t age well at all, another episode where Ross’s personality becomes a plot device, one that doesn’t even remain consistent throughout (as soon as Rachel starts taking potshots at him, Ross recedes into his “I love Rachel” cocoon of awkwardness and limp-dicked behavior).
Other thoughts/observations:
- the girls don’t even get the common rules of ANY card game: Phoebe and Rachel are talking about their cards out loud, trading with each other… it’s like they’ve never seen a deck of cards before, despite being in their late 20’s, in a day and age without iPhone card games.
- Bluffing is not lying about hitting someone with a car – the only appearance of Aunt Iris is a forgettable one, a character never mentioned again in Friends lore (a rare occasion of this happening).
- whistling never sounds that good on television, does it?
- Marcel likes listening to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”… ugh, I can’t want for that monkey to be gone!
- by now, Chandler is consistently the funniest character on the show, and when there’s no plot involving him, he can just sit in scenes and bust out great one-liners and awkward self-revelations.
- Can someone go buy me some ‘pretz’? I’m starving over here!
- Phoebe: “Hello kettle, this is Monica. You’re black.”
- Up next: Rachel has a no good, really bad day in “The One Where the Monkey Gets Away”.
Luckily, the series would later give us a much better Battle Of The Sexes plot in TOW The Football. Although that episode also isn’t without its share of dated-even-for-1996 gender stereotyping (ie. Phoebe and Rachel not even knowing what the NFL is, even though they’ve hung around Chandler and Joey for years).
and of course, one of the all-time greats, ‘The One with the Embryo’.
You wrote that Rachel “didn’t get the dream job at Bloomingdales” which anyone who truly knows Friends knows that she missed out at the job at Saks 5th Avenue in this episode and later in the series gets the job at Bloomingdales. If you’re going to blog about it, know it well 😉