Monica Geller "The Michigan Daily" appreciated the fact that "Cox brought moments of sincerity and severity to Monica". However, "The Washington Post" panned Cox's performance as "degrading", while Mike Ryan of ScreenCrush dismissed Monica as a "fairly normal, but boring" character. In 1999, Cox was nominated for an American Comedy Award for Funniest Supporting Female Performer in a TV Series. Although continuously praised for her performance, Cox never received an Emmy Award nomination for her role on "Friends" during its entire run, although each of her five co-stars did. Both female castmates Lisa Kudrow and Jennifer Aniston remain the show's only main
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