Friday, September 28

Must Seen but Unseen TV

Wow, I can't believe it has been a year since I covered trends from sitcoms like children characters mysteriously disappearing, mothers that are re-cast and children that magically grow up quickly. Now I am covering those 'unseen characters.' There are a lot of shows where a character is mentioned but never seen and never cast. There are for example Maris Crane from "Fraiser" and Stan Walker from "Will & Grace." There are different characters: Partially Seen like the Nanny from "Muppet Babies" where you just see her legs and feet; Heard but Not Seen like Charlie from "Charlie's Angels;" and Never Seen Only Mentioned like the first two mentioned. Now in the new shows, I noticed in "Hot Shots," Christopher Titus' character's wife Janelle is "Partially Seen." We only saw her back in the first episode but not her face or face.

One of the most famous characters never to be seen is in the TV series Columbo, where the wife of the main character is often mentioned but never ever seen. One episode, "Troubled Waters", featured both Columbo and his wife going on a holiday on a cruise liner, with various conventions and jokes being made about them constantly missing each other in passing. Maris and Stan that are the most interesting by their uncastable quirks. How Maris is described, she is pale and has an abnormally rigid vertebrae, slightly webbed fingers and an underbite. Stan is always described as fat and sometimes in strange positions.

Related Topic: Sitcom Trends: Different moms, rapid-aging kids and disappearing kids