The One With Phoebe's Dad

Thursday, 14 December 1995

Phoebe learns the photo she believed was her father is a stock picture, gets his real address upstate, and then sits outside his house without knocking.

What happens

• Monica admits that she and Rachel are broke and tipped the building's staff with homemade cookies instead of cash.
• Phoebe spots the man in Ross's new picture frame and insists he is her father, though the others tell her it is the stock photo that came with the frame.
• Phoebe's grandmother confesses that the photos were her mother's invention, that her real father is a pharmacist somewhere upstate, and hands over a genuine picture of him.
• Ross talks Rachel into listing his faults, and she leaves the argument feeling better about him.
• The grandmother admits she has known the address all along, gives Phoebe the street and town, and lends her the cab.
• Ross snaps the knob off the radiator, and the apartment starts cooking hours before Monica's party.
• Phoebe drives Joey and Chandler to her father's house, then cannot make herself get out of the cab.
• Ross hands Mr. Treeger a hundred dollars in tips to prove he can seize the day, and learns the knob cannot be replaced until Tuesday and that Treeger liked the cookies anyway.
• Phoebe tells Joey and Chandler she would rather not knock than discover her real father is the man who abandoned her mother, and they agree that reaching the mailbox counts.
• Joey shuts the heat off from underneath the radiator, fixing after the party what Ross could not fix before it.