A day before yesterday I did a character case study on Rachel Green. I realized that Jennifer Aniston, the actress who played Rachel appears first in the credits in the show’s intro and I thought it would be cool if I did it in the order of the credits. Something I didn’t realize however, was the fact that next was Courteney Cox, the actress who plays Monica. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Courteney, it’s just that I never really resonated with her character.
My Complaints
Monica has the least character development among the six main characters. I don’t really like when characters don’t grow throughout the course of a television series. The series encompasses of 10 seasons and 10 years. That’s quite a lot of time for the show’s writers to develop the characters. Except for Rachel and Ross, all the other characters start growing only in the later seasons. Looking at the series, I don’t really see any change in Monica.
I also didn’t appreciate that she treated Chandler, and to an extent the other friends as well with such domination. I realize that one had to be hard to show a contrast between the friends. But that is no reason to bully your partner. People talk a lot about dominance of men over women in a relationship and are okay with Monica’s assertiveness over Chandler and that really sucks. The fact that it is played for laughs makes it even tougher to watch.
Appreciation
Although I do not like Monica as a person, I have to admit, objectively, she is a great character. In season 1, she is the most well developed character. Although her character is at her core is “The Perfectionist”, she has so many details that it doesn’t pull you away from the story. After Phoebe, she has the most interesting backstory and that also affects her personalty. She is very close to all the friends. After Joey, we see the most of her job because even though she works very hard, things do not fall in place for her. She gives everything she has to every job. That is why we want her to succeed. She is the most relatable as quite a lot of people are like her.
