The entire group attends Joey’s play together. Joey invites Kate, Ross arrives with a date, so Rachel feels compelled to bring a date as well. Rachel ends up with her eccentric date, Tommy. Joey and the cast receive harsh reviews for their performances, but Joey finally gets the opportunity to reconnect with Kate. They spend the entire night talking. Rachel decides to stop seeing Tommy after realizing Ross was right about him being a maniac. Eventually, Kate leaves for a job opportunity in Los Angeles.
Did you know ?!
• The theater patron who suffers verbal abuse by Rachel’s date was played by Peter Bonerz, who directed this episode. Bonerz is best known for starring on The Bob Newhart Show (1972).
• At the end, when Joey’s stage character says that he’ll be back in 200 years to meet her great-great-great-granddaughter may have sounded like some kind of joke, but it wasn’t. According to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, a spaceship traveling at near the speed of light could go on a trip of 200 years (to those on Earth), but to the space traveler only about four years would have passed for him.
• The director’s pretentious line to Joey and Kate (“a plague on both your houses!”) originates from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”
• Aside from the scene where Tommy screams at the chick and the duck across the hall, Phoebe is in Monica and Rachel’s apartment for the whole episode.
• David Schwimmer and Ben Stiller co-starred together in Madagascar (2005) and its sequels.
• The man who plays Mike’s parents’ friend in The One with Ross’s Inappropriate Song (2002) can be seen in the background once the play is over and Joey introduces Kate to everyone.
• Jennifer Aniston and Ben Stiller starred in Along Came Polly (2004) together.
• This is the only episode where Monica and Pete are in a stable relationship and they are not involved in any storyline. In the uncut DVD version of the episode, Monica constantly casually references her relationship with Pete. Monica also tells Phoebe she will kill her if Pete calls and she doesn’t put him through.
• David Schwimmer replaced Ben Stiller for the production of “The Producers” in The 5 Wood (2004).
• After Tommy screams at Ross and goes inside the coffee shop you can see Eddie Cahill walk behind Ross. He later played Rachel’s assistant, and crush Tag Jones.
