Phoebe agrees to carry the artificially inseminated child(ren) of her brother, Frank, and his older wife, Alice Knight Buffay, leading to an anxious wait that is eventually rewarded with a pregnancy. Meanwhile, Chandler and Joey’s playful demonstration of how well they know Monica and Rachel, by guessing the items in their shopping bag, escalates into a high-stakes quiz competition, with Ross as the question master. The game is intense, and driven by their competitive nature, Monica accepts Chandler’s bold wager: either the boys will get rid of their birds, or the girls must surrender their master apartment in exchange for the boys’ smaller rooms. In the final round, Rachel’s mistake allows the boys to secure victory, triumphantly claiming the apartment.
Did you know ?!
• The surrogate mother story arc was written especially for Lisa Kudrow because she was really pregnant with her son Julian.
• One of the questions the guys get right is about Monica’s categories of towels. When the guys & the girls move, several boxes with Monica’s name & the towel categories are visible in the background.
• The One with the Embryos (1998) is ranked #21 in “TV Guide’s Top 100 T.V. Episodes of all time”.
• Chandler, Joey, Monica, and Rachel play a game of who knows who better, with Ross being the question man. It appears that Ross is the one who actually knows all of them the best, considering that he came up with all of the questions and answers. However, it does make sense that he would, considering that he is Monica’s brother, he dated Rachel, and he’s been Chandler’s best friend since college.
• When Rachel answers the name of Joey’s imaginary friend she says he was called Maurice and was a space cowboy making a reference to the song “The Joker” by Steve Miller Band.
• Monica and Ross’ Grandmother Althea’s funeral was previously shown in The One Where Nana Dies Twice (1994).
• During the game, who knows who better, we learn that Rachel’s favorite movie is Weekend at Bernie’s (1989), which starred Jonathan Silverman, who played the doctor that delivered Ross and Carol’s son Ben in The One with the Birth (1995).
• When Ross asks the last question before the Lightning Round, it is visible that the board had 16 questions for each team. Both the guys and the girls got 9 out of 10 questions. However, the question that Joey and Chandler got wrong was never revealed.
• Monica’s towel categories include: Beach, guest, fancy guest, old towels, bathroom, kitchen and every day use.
• Ross puts the half eaten cookie back in the box twice.
• Chandler’s biggest fear is Michael Flatley from the Irish Step group “Lord of the Dance.” Monica’s biggest pet peeve is animals dressed as humans.
• Chandler’s initial job, a white-collar position at an office, was never given a title. The only real clue about what he did was that he worked with data sets. In the episode where Chandler and Joey win a trivia contest with Monica and Rachel and get their apartment, the question that causes the women to lose is “What is Chandler’s job?” Rachel says “He’s a…he’s a transpodster” and Monica screams “That’s not even a word!”
• This episode is included on the 2000 DVD release The Best of Friends Volume 2.
• After winning the quiz, Joey and Chandler subsequently move into Monica’s apartment. This means that the whole group have lived there at one point or another. Ross and Phoebe both lived there at separate times prior to the events of the series. It is known throughout the series that Phoebe was Monica’s previous roommate before Rachel. However, we do not find out about Ross living in the apartment with his grandmother until the final episode of the series The Last One: Part 1 (2004).
• Although the “Lightning Round” was only supposed to be 30secs. The boys actually get 42secs; with the girls getting 43secs.
• It seems that Monica and Joey know the most about the other sex. They’re also the ones that answer the most questions correctly. Rachel and Chandler each only answer one question correctly. Rachel gets two questions wrong: one in the game and one in the lighting round. Chandler answers one question incorrectly in the lightning round. Monica and Rachel lose the entire game because they both simply didn’t know the answer to the last question.
• The board for the quiz game resembles the board seen on Jeopardy! (1984).
