Mel & Alans wives

[treky]

I wonder why they never showed them? They never even mentioned their names. I wonder why? And why they never showed Alans kids? And they only showed Pickles a couple times?

[MickeyMac]

Good question. Maybe they just wanted to focus on the main characters I guess.

[FanofRetroTV]

Lots of shows did that such as Cheers and Frasier. In this case they might not have had any good ideas or reasons for using their wives expect for Mel being Alan's brother-in-law. Also they did mentioned Alan's wife name, but I forget it. It was in the five season where the gang sends a scipt to Alan full of insurts and they need to get it back.

[goodolddays]

You're right. An episode did mention Alan's wife by name. I forget the name of the episode, but, as you said, it was the one where Rob, Sally and Buddy forget to eliminate the insults they put in one of Alan's scripts. They spend the night trying to retrieve the script from Alan's office only to find that Mel just delivered it to Alan's home. So they all go there, break in, and find Alan doped up on meds mumbling "kiss me Lillian" to Rob who was standing close by looking for the script. Later when Alan threatens to fire everyone, Mel says that Alan won't dare do such a thing, because "his wife's name is Margaret" and he (Mel) could/would blackmail Alan to keep their jobs.

DVD experts out there, tell me I'm remembering this correctly.

Btw, I have a vague feeling that there's some other episode where his wife is given a different name, but I could be wrong about that.

Scott

[Duster76]

Originally Posted by treky

I wonder why they never showed them? They never even mentioned their names. I wonder why? And why they never showed Alans kids? And they only showed Pickles a couple times?

DVD had a large cast usually sitcoms of that era had between 4 and 7 regulars DVD had 8 (playing Rob, Laura, Buddy, Sally Mel, Richie, Jerry and Millie). That's a lot of characters to keep track of and story possibilities. The producers need to bring order to all that defining the show in clear terms is a must. Mel's function on that show was primarily two fold, give Buddy somebody to goof on and that of a supporting character to various story lines. Buddy's insults might have started coming across as hurtful if there was a more complete picture of Mel. A supproting character functions in the role of bringing news of some type to the main characters or to help set up a bit of business and then step aside and let it play out or just to give the main characters someone to talk to or react to.

The character of Alan had one purpose that of a ticking time bomb. Coast to Coast Big Mouth was the classic example of this. Hell, it was suggested in more than one episode that Alan had other women on the side, can you imagine dealing with that in a 1960's sitcom if the wife and children had defined identities.

This is one of the greatest shows of all time, the producers knew exactly what they were doing bringing order to all this and using each character to get the best results.