The Harleth Journal published the following article on August 7, 2014.
Friends, an immensely popular American sitcom that ran from 1994 to 2004, ranks as one of the greatest shows in television history. It revolves around the entertaining adventures and interpersonal relationships of six friends with distinct, endearing personalities.
Monica Geller’s exceptionally tidy apartment in Greenwich Village serves a focal point for the series. As the show progresses, her obsession for cleanliness and discipline is comically exaggerated. Co-Executive Producer Marta Kauffman notes 1 :–
It wasn’t until we did the first Thanksgiving episode that we realized how much fun Monica’s neuroses are.
Adding a Laugh Track to “Monica’s Ways”
In addition to following strict cleaning routines, Monica engages in a number of strange, elaborate rituals such as eating Tic Tac candies only in even numbers. She compulsively makes her bed so that the duvet tag always faces the bottom right, folds towels and paper napkins (including toilet paper) in a particular fashion, and sets her clocks in each room to a specific time.
She also labels and maintains a strict inventory of all her household items. For example, she has eleven specific towel categories including “everyday use,” “fancy,” “guest,” and “fancy guest” (Season 4.6, “The One With The Embryos”).
Further, Monica is defensive about her tidying rituals; any violation of the latter by others who wish to lend a helping hand is tantamount to catastrophe. In the episode, “The One With The Flashback” (Season 3.6), it is revealed that Phoebe Buffay (Monica’s best friend and ex-roommate) decided to move out of their apartment because she was worried “Monica’s ways” would ruin their friendship.
In an episode titled, “The One with Joey’s Porsche” (Season 6.5), she confesses that she once bought car-cleaning supplies and washed six dirty cars parked outside her apartment building. In another episode, “The One with the Dirty Girl” (Season 4.6), Ross (Monica’s brother) tells his friends that he is seeing a beautiful colleague who keeps her home unbearably filthy. Monica is so troubled by Ross’ girlfriend’s lack of hygiene that not only does she lose sleep over it but she also visits the woman and begs her to let her clean the latter’s apartment.
Calling it by Another Name
Although Monica’s behavior fulfills the diagnostic criteria for OCD as stated in the DSM IV TR, it is consistently depicted as quirky and amusing. The other characters never treat her obsessive-compulsiveness as abnormal. They either ignore it or accommodate her peculiarities by finding humor in them. When her husband, Chandler Bing, gives into curiosity and opens her forbidden closet, he stumbles upon her secret hoarding area. It is interesting to note that rather than getting alarmed by the discovery, he views it as a humanizing aberration in her otherwise unnatural tidiness. He reassures her that she was not “sick but just sometimes messy” and thus affirms her behavior as normal.
“The One With The Secret Closet” (Season 8.14)
The audience is thus encouraged to follow their lead and focus on the comedic value in Monica’s odd behavior. For example, she is seen vacuuming her vacuum cleaner with a Dustbuster and then wishing there was another smaller version with which she could clean the latter. Monica too refers to her neuroses as “cute obsessive things,” implying that she views them as an extension of her personality.
OCD as Hyper-Normality
The show takes the distortion of her condition a step further when it portrays Monica’s OCD not only as a variant of normalcy, but also as one of her most remarkable strengths. Her obsessive-compulsive tendencies appear to aid her successful career as a five-star restaurant chef. She boasts that her restaurant is “not just Health Department clean, but Monica clean!” (Season 9.6, “The One With The Male Nanny”).
The other five characters also invariably, appreciate her neuroses. They treat her apartment as their second home, regularly enjoying her cooking and hospitality. Further, they turn to her when faced with adversity as her regimented solutions produce desired results. For example, she creates a rigorous exercise program and successfully helps Chandler shed the extra pounds that he was struggling to lose. In another instance, Monica (who had been fired earlier because of her demanding plans) steps in at the last minute and saves Phoebe’s outdoor winter wedding ceremony when bad weather threatens to derail it.
In this manner, Monica explicitly displays an inflated sense of individual responsibility, which is described in the cognitive behavioral causal theory (Salkovskis, 1985). However, this supposedly defective thought pattern serves her well, as she fulfills the role of mother hen / drill sergeant perfectly.
OCD In/Visibility in Hollywood
So, why does her obsessive-compulsive condition remain unacknowledged in the show? Television writer and producer Bill Prady states that giving a character a disability places too much responsibility on the writers to get all the facts right 2 His statement provides insight into the relationship between disease and screenwriting in Hollywood. Unless the objective is to address OCD, as in reality shows such The OCD Project, Hoarders, and Hoarding: Buried Alive, diagnosing a character with a medical condition is too risk-laden for producers. It ultimately interferes with the creative freedom enjoyed in fiction and thus threatens to compromise the show’s entertainment value.
Is it problematic to guise obsessive-compulsive tendencies as harmless personality quirks? Or does removing the disability label from the condition empower persons to redefine OCD such that it functions in their favor? Which of these applies to Monica Geller in your opinion? Share your thoughts below.
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Works Cited
Friends: The Complete Series. Prod. David Crane and Marta Kauffman. Perf. Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, and Lisa Kudrow. Warner Home Video, 2006. DVD.
Videos
The One With The Chicken Pox. Prod. David Crane and Marta Kauffman. Perf. Courteney Cox and Tom Selleck. Warner Home Video, 2002. YouTube. Nikita Kostylev, 12 Apr. 2008. Web. 7 Aug. 2014.
The One Where Chandler Gets Caught. Prod. David Crane and Marta Kauffman. Perf. Courteney Cox Matthew Perry. Warner Home Video, 2005. YouTube. AnaPlah, 20 Aug. 2009. Web. 7 Aug. 2014.
The One with the Dirty Girl. Prod. David Crane and Marta Kauffman. Perf. Courteney Cox and David Schwimmer. Warner Home Video, 2003. YouTube. delegeitorTeleco, 3 Dec. 2009. Web. 7 Aug. 2014.
