Monica Geller off-the-beam benevolent monarch." By the show's final season, Monica's personality has been "exacerbated for comedy" to the point of which she becomes borderline "cartoonish." Monica has a complicated relationship with her parents Jack (Elliot Gould) and Judy Geller (Christina Pickles), more-so with her mother. "Entertainment Weekly" referred to the character's relationship with her parents as "esteem-sucking." In fact, the majority of "Friends" main characters have "strained relationships" with their parents. Described as "hypercritical," Judy enjoys constantly criticizing her daughter's appearance, career, and love life, while acting much kinder towards her son, whom she favors. Chelsea Mize of Bustle wrote that
Monica Geller several cooking-related jobs throughout the series, having worked at five different restaurants, a trend that nearly coincides with her constant rotation of boyfriends in an ongoing search for the "perfect match". Michael Hogan of "The Guardian" believes that the character's "competitive, perfectionist, obsessive-compulsive nature made her ideally suited to a career as a chef." However, her love of cooking and food is also responsible for her having been extremely overweight as a child, throughout high school and college. The running gag of an overweight Monica is often used as a recurring backstory for the character throughout the series, first explored