Crab Cakes

S9 E14: The One with the Blind Dates

Friends, 1994.

There is a moment in Friends where Ross Geller is offered a free crab cake. It is not a romantic gesture. It is not even a generous one. It is, in fact, a psychological tactic, deployed by a waiter who is hedging his bets in a restaurant-wide pool.

The bet? How long will Ross sit alone before realizing he’s been stood up. The crab cake is bait, despair tempura, fried incentive for heartbreak theater.

But let’s rewind.

This is the episode where Joey and Phoebe, with all the reckless optimism of people who have never held down a functional job for more than three years, conspire to fix the lives of their friends through sabotage. They want Ross and Rachel back together, not because they’ve worked through their issues, or grown, or even exchanged a meaningful look since Season 8, but because, and I quote, “They’re Rachel and Ross.”

And so: Operation Bad Blind Date.

Rachel gets Steve, the emotionally ravaged, one-time stoned chef from Season 1, who returns like a moth to flame, except the flame is now his own self-loathing and the moth is wet. He is an open wound in a linen shirt. He cries before the bread arrives. It is exquisite television.

Ross, meanwhile, gets a history professor who sounds, on paper, like a dream: intelligent, attractive, teaches at NYU, owns real shoes. And Joey, sensing compatibility, immediately sabotages by telling her the date is canceled.

And this is how we arrive at the moment of the crab cake.

Ross, alone at a table for two, becomes part of the furniture, less a man, more a monument to thwarted expectations. The waitstaff stop pretending. As part of a bet to see how long he’ll stay, they offer him the appetizer in exchange for prolonged humiliation.

This is not the first time Ross has eaten his feelings. It will not be the last. But there is something sublime about the specificity of the crab cake: a food fancy enough to suggest dignity, yet hand-held enough to carry while chasing after your meddling friends. It is the ideal metaphor for Friends in its later seasons, breaded, pre-frozen, vaguely sentimental.

In the closing scene, Ross and Joey return to the restaurant and attempt to recreate their humiliation for a second helping of crab cakes. But this time, the stakes have shifted. The new bet is how long it takes Steve to cry again. Spoiler: it’s faster than last time. The kitchen is efficient.

And so we are left with a lesson: if someone offers you free food while you’re being emotionally manipulated, accept it. But know, deep down, that they are not feeding you. They are timing you.

Make it! Crab Cakes with Spicy Rémoulade by Marilena’s Kitchen.