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Mr. Geller's Hat at end of "TOW Joey Moves Out"

posted a year ago by CarolTheDabbler (575)
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This is the episode not only where Joey moves out, but also where Monica's parents find out that she is dating their friend Richard. Apparently this little scene appears only on the DVD (at the very end), not on the aired version:

Monica's father comes to see her, having just been to see Richard with the intention of telling him off, but having ended up drinking a beer instead. He's wearing a vaguely odd-looking felt-fedora-type hat. Finally Monica asks him where he got the hat. He looks bewildered and says he doesn't know. And that's it.

Does anyone know what that was all about -- the hat, I mean?

[–] Melton (4663) a year ago

A few possibilities:

When Jack enters he behaves a bit like a mob boss protective of his daughter. Friends has quite a lot of movie references and characters humorously slipping into genres (remember the jellyfish story?) Jack’s hat gives him the 50’s mobster look.

As a bonus to the above, Elliot Gould was in Bugsy Malone. Could be a 4th wall breaking gag?

Selleck was originally set to play Indiana Jones until Magnum P.I. yanked him back. Possibly another 4th wall breaker implying Jack has been trying on Richard/Selleck’s Indy hat. This is less likely as it doesn’t explain the ‘I don’t know’.

[–] CarolTheDabbler (575) a year ago

That's also not really a classic Indiana Jones type of hat -- the brim is way too narrow. You may have something with your first two points, though. I've never seen Bugsy (nor Bugsy Malone, which I just discovered is an unrelated comedy with an all-child cast), but Gould did wear that general sort of hat in it.

See this photo: https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.virtual-history.com%2Fmovie%2Fphoto%2Fpr55%2Flarge%2Felliott_gould.jpg&tbnid=o3zW6mNyqC-_yM&vet=12ahUKEwiE68nLo6iBAxUvyMkDHcgeAeMQMygBegQIARBU..i&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.virtual-history.com%2Fmovie%2Fperson%2F365%2Felliott-gould&docid=-lSx7PrrVdPlgM&w=1000&h=667&q=bugsy%20%22elliott%20gould%22&hl=en&ved=2ahUKEwiE68nLo6iBAxUvyMkDHcgeAeMQMygBegQIARBU

... however that doesn't explain why the brim is squashed in the Friends scene.

Maybe that scene was some sort of inside joke (which could explain why it was in the DVD episode but not the aired version)? Hopefully someone who was there has explained it somewhere online, but if so I have yet to find it.