Friends Season 3 Episode 13

Monica runs into Richard. They first try to stay friends, but they sleep together. They decide to make it a "Friends with Benefits" thing, Monica cant stop wanting more. Rachel agrees to read "The Shining" while Joey reads "Little Women". Phoebe's boyfriend has a problem with his shorts...





This episode was really great and funny episode of one of the best seasons of the show. This episode was great, with rlly good jokes and was great. Richard comes back, and he and Monica try to stay friends, which they cant! This makes the episode rlly funny. Also, the deal with Phoebe's boyfriend was rlly funny. This ep was rlly cool.

I like how the writers didn't focus much on the Ross & Rachel drama in this episode, at least giving Ross & Rachel, some episodes to stay together. They brought back Richard! I don't think that was the brightest idea, since now Monica has to get over him again. But you see that Monica still loves Richard, only one thing still consistently getting in the way. Having a baby. Rachel & Joey having a fight over the books was hilarious! Probably the best plot. Phoebe's athletic new boyfriend showing "brain" was hilarious as well. "Don't look directly at it" - Ross "Like an eclipse!" - Chandler. A great episode.

I should agree with the rest about Monica - the writers should have not made another one with Richard - it was too hard to watch.


Off course the best part of this episode is with Joey reading books - that comes as I remember only once again - with the encyclopedia. This part was surelly fun.


Another allusion from the part with Phoebe: as she comes to the coffee house after playing basketball, she is wearing a funky shirt. This shirt was made specially after Lithuania basketball team won bronze medals in Olympics of Barcelona, 1992. The team had the best ever Lithuanian basketball player Arvydas Sabonis, also Sarunas Marciulionis, who both later played in the NBA and many other stars of those days.


Lithuania then finished behind the first ever USA dream-team and also Croatia. This was the first of three-in-a-row bronze medals of Lithuania basketball team in respective Olympics of Atlanta'1996 and Sydney'2000.


All the players of the team were wearing that shirt as they climbed the podium in Barcelona.

The episode is actually quite good, but I don't see the point in bringing back Richard... I mean, Monica had such a hard time getting over him, and bringing him back was just not neccesary, but I guess they needed a story for Monica...





Anyway, we get to see more jealousy on Ross's part, which will grow to something much more bigger in a few episodes.





I really enjoyed the Rachel/Joey plot, it was really interesting seeing how they commented on the books they were reading, and at the same time, I was surprised by the fact that Joey likes reading books.





Phoebe's story was also quite good, but it just wasn't so good to make the episode above average. But we all know that the writers can't keep on writing amazing episodes. I like this episode just as much as the other episodes.

The One Where Monica and Richard and Just Friends contains a few big laughs, several medium laughs and a couple of small chuckles. They could have done much better. The whole Ross, Rachel and Mark jealousy thing got old in The One Where Chandler Can't Remember Which Sister and remains to be tedious and not funny nor sad. The Monica and Richard thing was dead a long time ago, and this resurrection of their romance is more like a zombie than a nice return. The bright spot of this episode is the battle of the books between Joey and Rachel. That kept this episode above a 6. I'm glad that they actually got the information right from the book, rather than retreating to the movie. All in all, a good episode that recycles too many elements from previous ones.