Furthermore, the episode benefits from the real-world chemistry and rumors surrounding its stars. At the time, Matthew Perry and Julia Roberts were briefly romantically linked, a fact that lends an extra layer of electric tension to every scene. When Chandler pleads or Susie smirks, there is a knowingness between them—a private joke that the audience is half-invited to share. This behind-the-scenes resonance turns a functional guest spot into an event. Roberts isn’t just playing a character; she’s performing a version of herself, using her power to topple the sitcom’s most verbally agile character.
“The One After the Super Bowl” is not a subtle episode. Its humor is broad, its pacing frantic, and its B-plot involving a lost monkey and Jean-Claude Van Damme is pure silliness. But within that commercial, high-pressure environment—designed to capture the largest possible audience after the Super Bowl—Roberts and the writers delivered a perfect miniature revenge comedy. The episode endures not just for the nostalgia of a megastar visiting Central Perk, but for its smart, feminist twist on the humiliation narrative. Susie “Underpants” Moss walks away having won, proving that sometimes the most devastating weapon against a sarcastic man is a patient, clever woman who remembers exactly what he did. And for Chandler Bing, the lesson is clear: be careful who you mock in the fourth grade—she might just grow up to be Julia Roberts. friends episode with julia roberts
Roberts plays Susie Moss, a childhood classmate of Chandler Bing’s. The set-up is classic sitcom irony: Chandler, the king of sarcasm, once played a cruel prank on Susie in the fourth grade, humiliating her by pulling up her skirt and revealing her underpants to the entire school. Now, years later, Susie has transformed from a bespectacled, awkward girl into a glamorous movie star (a wink to Roberts’s own real-life stardom). Chandler, unaware of her identity, is immediately smitten. The genius of the episode lies in the tension between Chandler’s present-day desperation to impress a beautiful woman and Susie’s long-simmering, meticulously planned revenge. Its humor is broad, its pacing frantic, and
The script, written by Adam Chase and Ira Ungerleider, wisely uses Roberts’s star persona as a weapon. When Susie first appears, the studio audience erupts, and the characters on screen are equally starstruck. But Roberts plays against her luminous “America’s Sweetheart” image, infusing Susie with a cool, calculating edge. She accepts Chandler’s clumsy advances, not out of affection, but as a chess move. The climax occurs at a high-end restaurant, where Susie excites the waiter by claiming she’s with a “famous neurotic.” She then manipulates Chandler into taking off his pants and underwear in the men’s room, leaving him trapped at the table, exposed and humiliated—a perfectly symmetrical, and arguably more devastating, revenge for the fourth-grade incident. playful deconstruction of celebrity
In the pantheon of Friends guest stars—from Bruce Willis’s stoic Paul Stevens to Brad Pitt’s hateful Will Colbert—Julia Roberts’s appearance in the second season stands out as a masterclass in meta-casting and narrative economy. Her episode, “The One After the Super Bowl” (Season 2, Episodes 12 & 13), originally aired as a two-part, hour-long special following Super Bowl XXX in 1996. It is a glossy, chaotic, and immensely entertaining piece of 1990s pop culture. While the episode juggles multiple storylines—including the origin of Ross’s monkey, Marcel—the central thread featuring Roberts as Susie “Underpants” Moss is a sharp, playful deconstruction of celebrity, childhood grudges, and the performative nature of charm.