The "Mother Hen" of the group, Monica Geller is best known for her cleanliness, orderliness, competitiveness, and bossiness. Consequently, Monica's most memorable moments originate from her obsessing over the state of her apartment, turning virtually anything into a competition, and doing her best to control absolutely everything and everyone.
Whether it's cleaning other people's dirty cars, playing a "friendly" game of football, or barking orders military style, Monica's antics never fail to make us laugh. Over the course of ten seasons, there have been tons of unforgettable Monica moments, and today, we're listing the ten most memorable episode of this clean-freak, bossy friend.
10. THE ONE WITH THE FAKE MONICA (SEASON 1, EPISODE 21)
In this somewhat underrated season one episode, Monica discovers that a woman stole her credit card and has been living her life, to Monica's horror, better than her. Together with Phoebe and Rachel, she decides to catch the thief. However, once she actually meets Fake Monica at a tap dancing class, Monica, aka Monana, doesn’t turn her in, but befriends her.
Fake Monica and Monana start hanging out, crashing parties, auditioning for Broadway musicals, and getting drunk. In the end, Fake Monica gets arrested and the real Monica realizes that even though she had fun doing all the stupid, spontaneous stuff with Fake Monica, she can’t change her personality. However, she does return to the tap dancing class. This episode manages to make light of what would, in reality, be a frightening experience. And while we laugh at Monica’s hilarious escapades, at the same time, we relate to her anxieties.
9. THE ONE IN BARBADOS (SEASON 9, EPISODE 23 & 24)
The season nine finale, “The One in Barbados” isn’t a standout Friends episode, but it is a hilarious Monica episode. In fact, she pretty much saves the show. As it turns out, Monica’s hair gets a bit of extra body in the humidity. Throughout the episode, Monica’s hair keeps getting bigger, making her the target of some pretty hilarious jokes. Like Phoebe asking “are you leaving the Supremes”, which Jennifer Aniston found so funny she couldn’t keep herself from laughing. Chandler, meanwhile, finally finds out what it feels like being the more attractive partner in their marriage.
Aside from the huge wall of hair, Monica’s meddling in Phoebe’s love life and especially her ping-pong match against Mike are the highlights of this season finale.
8. THE ONE WITH THE EMBRYOS (SEASON 4, EPISODE 12)
Known among the fans as 'The One with the Quiz', this season four episode starts off with Chandler and Joey on the one side and Monica and Rachel on the other side making a friendly wager about whether the guys can guess all the items in Rachel’s shopping bag. They guess correctly and Monica, being Monica, asks for a rematch because she can’t stand to lose. So, Ross creates a full-fledged trivia quiz. After a series of absurd questions and hilarious answers, the teams are tied and so they enter the lightning round.
Super-competitive and overly confident Monica agrees to raise the stakes by betting the apartment, much to Rachel's dismay. The boys play first, getting four questions right. But, the girls get stuck on question number four – what is Chandler Bing’s job. The only thing funnier than watching them panic while trying to figure it out are Monica’s desperate cries after Rachel incorrectly guesses “transponster”. "The One with the Embryos" isn't just a hilarious Monica episode, it's one of the funniest Friends' episodes. Plus, the apartment switch paid off with some unforgettable moments down the line.
7. THE ONE WITH ALL THE RUGBY (SEASON 4, EPISODE 15)
While Ross was getting his butt kicked in rugby and Chandler was busy moving to Yemen, Monica discovered a curious light switch that seemingly did nothing. She tried asking Joey about it, but, of course, he never cared because he’s not Monica.
But the light switch was driving Monica crazy so she did the sensible thing and plugged noise-making appliances in all the outlets to find out what the switch does. When that plan didn’t work she went down to city hall, paid $20, and waited in line for three hours to get the electrical plans for the building, which led her to blow holes in the wall, that she then covered with drawings to hide them from Rachel. In the end, it only took seven pretty serious shocks to get Monica to officially give up. Also, props to whoever came up with the idea to put this particular book in Monica's hands.
6. THE ONE WITH PHOEBE'S UTERUS (SEASON 4, EPISODE 11)
While we weren’t particularly crazy about Chandler’s relationship with Kathy, it did give us some pretty unforgettable moments. In “The One with Phoebe’s Uterus”, Chandler is worried about sleeping with Kathy because he’s afraid that he won’t be able to fill Joey’s shoes... so to speak.
He turns to Rachel and Monica for advice, and Monica gives him an important lesson about the seven erogenous zones. She makes a drawing and starts giving Chandler some pointers as to how to navigate these zones, which culminates in Monica yelling out seven repeatedly. Suffice it to say "seven" is one of the show’s most memorable scenes. In the end, Kathy comes over to Monica’s apartment to thank her.
5. THE ONE WITH CHANDLER IN A BOX (SEASON 4, EPISODE 8)
The plot of this Thanksgiving episode revolves around Chandler trying to get Joey to forgive him for sleeping with his girlfriend. Joey proposes Chandler spends the Thanksgiving in a box, thinking about how he let him down. Meanwhile, Monica gets ice in her eye and reluctantly goes to the ophthalmologist who happens to be ex-boyfriend Richard’s son.
She ends up agreeing to go on a date with him and thus inviting him to Thanksgiving. When the group hears about this, they’re all quick to point out how wrong it is to go out with the son of a man you used to date, and not so long ago. And while they are in the right here, we can’t help but laugh and cheer when Monica calls all of them out for the stupid things they did, saying: “Fine, judge all you want to, but... Married a lesbian; left a man at the altar; fell in love with a gay ice dancer; threw a girl's wooden leg in the fire; livin' in a box!” And she delivers this zinger with an eye-patch.
4. THE ONE WITH THE BUTT (SEASON 1, EPISODE 6)
Monica’s obsessiveness about the state of her apartment is well established throughout the show. In the season one episode “The One with the Butt”, Monica goes just a tad crazy when Rachel cleans the apartment and moves the green ottoman from its designated spot, prompting the gang to call her out for her cleanliness and orderliness.
Later on, in an effort to prove that she can be a “kook”, Monica leaves her shoes in the living room, only to be rendered unable to sleep wondering whether to go get them or not. The discussion she has with herself while lying in bed is absolutely hilarious. She even hatches a plan to go get the shoes and then wake up really early to put them back so no one would know she's not a "kook", before finally crying out for help.
3. THE ONE WITH ALL THE THANKSGIVINGS (SEASON 5, EPISODE 8)
In the season five episode “The One with all the Thanksgivings”, we get a few flashbacks to past Thanksgivings, including “more turkey Mr. Chandler” and Joey putting his head up a dead animal. But while everyone’s memories were pretty funny, Monica’s were most certainly the highlight. In the first flashback, she obviously has a thing for Chandler who hurts her feelings by calling her fat. So next year, in the second flashback, Monica gets revenge by slimming down and trying to seduce Chandler.
While Chandler was certainly into her, Monica’s inept seduction techniques – which include rubbing a very large, sharp knife against her body, amongst other objects found in the kitchen – end up costing Chandler his toe. But the best moment comes at the very end when Monica puts a turkey on her head in an effort to cheer up Chandler, prompting him to say those three little words for the first time.
2. THE ONE WHERE NO ONE'S READY (SEASON 3, EPISODE 2)
In “The One Where No One’s Ready”, Monica finds a message from her ex-boyfriend Richard on the answering machine. Though everyone keeps telling her it’s an old message, Monica keeps obsessing over it, prompting her to leave what she believes is a breezy message, which the group unanimously decides isn’t breezy in the slightest once she plays it for them. To make matters worse, it’s followed by a message from another woman, causing Monica to freak out once again.
She ends up having a very awkward conversation with Richard’s daughter Michelle, who she believes left that message for Richard. In one last-ditch effort to make things right, Monica leaves yet another message for Richard, blaming her actions on her period only to accidentally set it as his outgoing message, which rightfully causes Monica to freak out yet again. And that concludes the story of Monica being breezy.
1. THE ONE WITH RACHEL'S SISTER (SEASON 6, EPISODE 13)
In this season six episode, Monica won’t admit she’s sick because to her being sick is a sign of weakness. To prove that she’s “in the pribe ubb libe”, Monica tries to entice Chandler into bed. Monica attempting to seduce Chandler with her voice almost Janice-level nasal is one of the funniest things that ever happened on the show. Even Courteney Cox appears to bite back a smile when she says the side-splitting line: “are you saying that you don’t wanna get with this”.
In the end, Monica does succeed in getting Chandler into bed by rubbing vaporub on her chest right in front of him. Before she follows him into the bedroom, Monica victoriously quips “worked like a charm”. It’s episodes like this one that makes us wonder how is it possible that Courteney Cox never got an Emmy for her portrayal of Monica.