Monica Geller altered the trajectory of the entire series, having life-changing effects on its characters. Summarizing the role of Monica in the series, Martin Gitlin wrote in his book "The Greatest Sitcoms of All Time" that while her friends "were ... just out to make the most of their social lives", Monica "sought to keep the others in line" while searching for "Mr. Right", who surprisingly turns out to be close friend Chandler. Several years before Monica and Chandler became romantically involved, Cox once joked in an interview that if her character were to ever have sex with another main character, it
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