The One with the Tea Leaves

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Friends season eight
September 2001 - May 2002
List of Friends episodes

Episodes:

  1. The One After "I Do"
  2. The One with the Red Sweater
  3. The One Where Rachel Tells...
  4. The One with the Videotape
  5. The One with Rachel's Date
  6. The One with the Halloween Party
  7. The One with the Stain
  8. The One with the Stripper
  9. The One with the Rumor
  10. The One with Monica's Boots
  11. The One with Ross's Step Forward (a.k.a. The One With the Creepy Holiday Card)
  12. The One Where Joey Dates Rachel
  13. The One Where Chandler Takes a Bath
  14. The One with the Secret Closet
  15. The One with the Birthing Video
  16. The One Where Joey Tells Rachel
  17. The One with the Tea Leaves
  18. The One in Massapequa (a.k.a. The One With the Zesty Guy)
  19. The One with Joey's Interview
  20. The One with the Baby Shower
  21. The One with the Cooking Class
  22. The One Where Rachel is Late
  23. The One Where Rachel Has a Baby, Part One
  24. The One Where Rachel Has a Baby, Part Two

"The One With the Tea Leaves" is the seventeenth episode of the eighth season of Friends.

First aired: March 7, 2002

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] Plot

Rachel goes to Chandler and Monica's apartment trying to look for Joey. Joey is able to hide before Rachel enters the apartment. Monica and Chandler pretend that they do not know where he is. She wants to talk with him, because they haven't seen each other since that night he expressed his feelings for her. They try to persuade Joey to talk to her, but Joey feels awkward since he has revealed his true feelings. Monica suggests to Rachel that she talk to Joey about a different subject, so that they can both feel comfortable around each other. Monica tells Rachel to pretend that she has a big work problem and asks Joey for some advice. She cannot come up with anything, so she tells him "My boss wants to buy my baby!" Rachel claims that her boss and his wife cannot have children, so at the Christmas party, he got drunk, and said he wanted to buy her baby. Joey, of course, falls for the lie. He then goes to Rachel's workplace to confront her boss about the situation. Joey later tells Rachel what he did, and she freaks out, and tells him the truth about what she did. She is then in fear that she will lose her job at Ralph Lauren. She then has a very tense meeting with her boss, who denies any hints that he might have wanted to buy her baby.

Phoebe determines through reading tea leaves that she’ll soon meet the man of her dreams. She spots a guy at the coffeehouse who she has seen many times before, and figures that he must be the man she is looking for. They bump into each other at a newsstand, and the he asks her out a date, which she agrees to. The date is going fine, until the guy starts coming on to Phoebe and making obscene comments, making her feel very uncomfortable. She then starts going to new places because the guy she out with would be at all the old ones. While at her new dry cleaners, she bumps into a guy named Parker, and the two of them begin to hit it off.

Meanwhile, Ross is looking for his faded salmon (pink) shirt, and eventually figures out that he must have let it at the home of his ex-girlfriend, Mona. He feels very awkward going to back to her place, since they broke up (Ross: "I'd be ignoring the one thing she asked me to do when we broke up, 'jump up my own ass and die'"). He goes to Mona's place and finds her spare key, which he uses to get into her apartment. Just when he gets inside, Mona and her current boyfriend enter. Ross is able to hide himself just in time. Her boyfriend spilt wine on his shirt, so Mona lends him Ross's shirt to wear. Later, the two of them are making out on the couch, while Ross remains hidden. When they throw his shirt onto the ground, Ross struggles to reach it, without them noticing. Mona and her boyfriend eventually catch him.

It turns out that Rachel's workplace, Ralph Lauren, was so glad that she would not be suing the company that they gave her one extra month paid maternity leave (as long as the money is not construed as a down payment for her baby or any other children she may bear). She and Joey have a conversation where that say that Joey's feelings for Rachel haven't been mentioned since she made up the story. Joey then inadvertently brings it up again, so Rachel says "My gynecologist tried to kill me!", to break the tension.

The episode ends with Ross ordering items from a magazine catalogue. Mona comes over and Ross apologizes about his actions. She then tells him that even though they have feelings for each other, the relationship is still complicated. They agree to end things for good. She wants to keep his pink shirt as something to remember him by, but Ross says she cannot have it.

[edit] Additional cast

Mr. Zelner - Steve Ireland
Mona - Bonnie Somerville
Parker - Alec Baldwin


Preceded by
"The One where Joey Tells Rachel"
List of Friends episodes Followed by
"The One in Massapequa"