The One With the Cop

Tuesday, 23 February 1999

Joey dreams about Monica, decides he wants a relationship built on friendship first, and propositions Rachel, while Phoebe impersonates a police officer with a badge she finds and Ross destroys a new couch trying to get it upstairs.

What happens

• Joey watches Chandler and Monica finish a crossword together late at night, and then dreams that Monica is his own girlfriend doing the puzzle with him.
• Phoebe digs a police badge out of the coffee house furniture while hunting for tip money and decides to hand it in.
• Ross buys an enormous couch, refuses to pay a delivery charge nearly as high as the couch itself, and drafts Rachel to carry it home.
• Ross tells the salesman that he and Rachel used to date and admits he counted every time they slept together, which Rachel finds pathetic.
• Phoebe flashes the badge at a woman stubbing out a cigarette on a tree and bullies her into apologising to it.
• Joey admits the dream to Chandler and Monica, who convince him he wants their kind of closeness rather than Monica, and Chandler tells him they were friends before dating.
• Phoebe waves the badge at a man blocking the coffee house entrance, and he turns out to be Gary, the real officer who lost it, so she throws it back and runs.
• Joey asks Rachel to move their friendship into a romance, and Rachel refuses and tells him to befriend someone new before asking them out.
• Ross recruits Chandler and Rachel to carry the couch up the stairwell, where his shouted instructions get it wedged solid.
• Gary traces Phoebe through the fingerprints on his badge, chooses not to arrest her, and asks her to dinner instead.
• Ross returns the couch sawn in half and settles for four dollars of store credit.