Friends: Ross’s Monkey Marcel’s Episodes Ranked, According To IMDB

Friends’ cold open for season six’s The One With The Unagi features Ross randomly asking, “Hey, remember when I had a monkey? What was I thinking?” That was the thought on many fan’s and audiences’ minds during the show’s first season. Even Entertainment Weekly once stated giving Ross a pet monkey was Friends’ “biggest blunder.”

Friends’ premise was that it was a show about your mid-twenties when you’re trying to figure your life out, and, during which time, your friends become your family. However, the addition of Marcel the monkey took away from the show’s relatability and was wisely dropped after the show’s second season, but fans will always remember the pet monkey Ross had for a brief, strange time.

8 The One With The Fake Monica – 7.9

The One With The Fake Monica is actually Marcel’s last season one appearance. After Ross realizes that Marcel has reached sexual maturity and that he can no longer take care of him, he begins a search for a zoo to send him to. What follows is a series of college acceptance jokes (“That was our safety zoo!”) that get old pretty quickly.

Ross meets with a representative from a “wildlife interactive experience” (Harry Shearer) who actually plans to pit Marcel against other animals in combat. Ultimately, Marcel gets into the San Diego Zoo and the episode ends with an airport goodbye scene, which lacks any emotion because audiences never understood the need for this character, thus, emphasizing what a waste of screen time it was to devote to this storyline.

7 The One With The Monkey – 8.1

The Capuchin monkey is introduced in this episode after Ross decides Marcel will help with his loneliness, now that Carol has left him. The friends suggest he get a roommate instead, and he starts to say he thinks having a roommate at his age is pathetic, before realizing he’s talking to people with roommates.

Unfortunately, Ross has trouble bonding with Marcel. While the episode ends with their relationship not off to a good start, the monkey would still return for more episodes. Marcel was played by Katie the monkey and she has since continued her career, appearing on 30 Rock as well.

6 The One Where The Monkey Gets Away – 8.1

Rachel accidentally lets Marcel loose and the friends spend the episode trying to find him. Ross is then horrified to discover Rachel called animal control. Since Marcel is an illegal animal, if caught, he’ll be taken away from Ross.

However, a funny subplot is that the animal control person, Luisa (A League Of Their Own’s Megan Cavanaugh) is Rachel and Monica’s former classmate, and unfortunately, Rachel was not very nice to her in high school. The show becomes very stylized in this episode, especially when Phoebe leaps in front of Marcel in slow motion, accompanied by the Shaft theme, taking a tranquilizer dart for him.

5 The One With Two Parts – 8.1 & 8.5

Aired on the same night as one big episode, part one begins with Marcel changing the television to SAP mode, making all the dialogue Spanish and the friends can’t fix it. During the course of the episode, Ross attends lamaze with Carol and he starts to doubt himself as a parent.

In part two, Ross is still worried about being a parent and his father (Elliot Gould) recounts to him a story where baby Ross grabbed his finger with his whole fist, and that’s when he first felt like a father. Later, Marcel accidentally swallows scrabble tiles, so he’s taken to the hospital (a storyline recycled when the duck swallows Ross’s grandmother’s engagement ring). After he recovers, Marcel grabs Ross’ finger and the experience puts his parenting fears to rest, as Don Henley’s New York Minute plays.

4 The One With The Stoned Guy – 8.2

In The One With The Stoned Guy, Marcel only makes a brief appearance but it’s a relatively memorable one. Ross has a date with Celia “the bug lady,” played by The Office’s Jan Levinson, Melora Hardin. After dinner, he plans to take her back to his place and introduce her to “his monkey,” which Chandler can’t believe he’s not being metaphorical about.

Ross is hoping for a little “action” with Celia, and Joey thinks Marcel is a chick magnet, saying, “one look at his furry, cute, little face and it’ll seal the deal.” The show then cuts to Marcel hanging off panicked Celia’s hair.

3 The One After The Superbowl Part 1 – 8.6

The friends start seeing a monkey resembling Marcel popping up in a beer commercial. This causes Ross to miss Marcel, so when he’s in California for a conference, he stops at the San Diego Zoo to see him. Unfortunately, the zoo owner (Fred Willard) informs him Marcel has died saying “he got sick, then he got sicker, then he got a little better, then he died.”

However, the janitor (Homer Simpson himself, Dan Castellaneta) tells him Marcel was actually stolen. After doing some research, Ross discovers that the monkey he saw in the commercial is in fact Marcel and that he’s now in show business, upsetting jealous Joey. Coincidentally, Marcel is in NYC shooting Outbreak 2: The Virus Takes Manhattan, a fake sequel to a real movie that starred a Capuchin monkey many fans incorrectly assume is the same one that played Marcel.

2 The One With All The Poker – 8.8

In The One With All The Poker, Marcel has become obsessed with the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight by The Tokens. The show’s editors even try to make Marcel appear as if he’s dancing, however, the effect doesn’t play well.

Later on, during the friends’ poker game, Marcel continues to play The Lion Sleeps Tonight and when Ross turns it off, Marcel retreats into the bedroom, somehow slamming the door behind him to which Ross replies, “I’m gonna pay for that tonight.” By now, the Marcel antics were getting silly and outlandish, and hurting the show, which tried to be about real relationships.

1 The One After The Superbowl Part 2 – 8.8

Marcel’s final episode would actually be the series’ highest-rated episode. After reuniting with Marcel, Ross plans to spend time with him before the Outbreak 2 shoot is over. However, Marcel becomes too busy to see him. This episode was perhaps the most ridiculous Marcel storyline, as Ross cooks a candlelit dinner for him and becomes heartbroken when Marcel can’t make it because of work. Eventually, Ross and Marcel get together and have a silly music montage of them doing stuff together before Marcel leaves the show for good.

Marcel’s final episode would perhaps be the most egregious example of wasted screen time as the monkey subplot adds nothing to what the core of the show was really about. Ultimately, the cast, in particular David Schwimmer, became fed up with Katie’s antics and her trainer screaming at her while they were trying to rehearse and shoot, leading to them dropping the unnecessary primate character. However, this would not be Friends’ last foray with unnecessary and unrealistic pets as Joey and Chandler’s chick and duck would make their first appearance in the following season.

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