The Family (sketch)
"The Family" is a series of comedy sketches featured on The Carol Burnett Show, with one final installment airing on Carol Burnett & Company. The Carol Burnett Show introduced the skit starting in the 1973-1974 season. Overall, it aired new installments of the skit for the last five seasons of its total 11-season run; the skit aired from the 1973-1974 season to the 1977-1978 season on the show. The final installment of "The Family" aired on September 8, 1979, after Burnett's CBS show had concluded, on a four-week summer series entitled Carol Burnett & Company. This was the only installment of "The Family" that did not air on The Carol Burnett Show. Altogether, there were 31 appearances of "The Family" sketches.
Not only was "The Family" well received to become a recurring skit on The Carol Burnett Show, but its success saw it developed into a 1982 TV movie titled Eunice, and then later spun off into a full-fledged sitcom in 1983, Mama's Family. Mama's Family first aired on NBC until it was cancelled in 1984, then revived in 1986 in first-run syndication, lasting until its series finale in 1990.[1] Carol Burnett, whose Eunice Higgins character was central in "The Family" sketches, did not appear in the sitcom's second incarnation, due to her acrimonious 1984 divorce from The Carol Burnett Show and Mama's Family producer Joe Hamilton, who owned all the Mama's Family characters.[2]
Along with Burnett as Eunice Higgins, "The Family" skits also featured Vicki Lawrence as Mama, Thelma Harper,[3] and Harvey Korman as Eunice's husband Ed Higgins. In "The Family" sketches, Mama has five children (in the subsequent series, she has only three): in addition to Ellen Harper (played by Betty White) and Eunice, there were three sons: Larry Harper (Alan Alda), Phillip Harper (Roddy McDowall in The Carol Burnett Show, Ken Berry in the TV movie Eunice), and Jack Harper (Tom Smothers). There was just one son, Vinton Harper (also played by Berry) in the spin-off television series. Tim Conway played recurring character Mickey Hart, Ed's employee.
Background[edit]
"The Family" sketch was created and written by Dick Clair and Jenna McMahon. They originally had Burnett in mind to play Mama and have a guest star to play Eunice. However, Burnett decided that she wanted to play Eunice and wanted to give the part of Mama to Lawrence. Burnett also decided to do the sketch southern because of her own Texas background. The writers were so displeased with these adjustments that during the first run-through, they threw down their pads and pencils and stormed out of the rehearsal hall. They complained that the sketch was ruined and that it would offend the South. After airing to an enormously favorable viewer response, however, Clair and McMahon wrote the sketches for the rest of the run of the show.[4]
Premise[edit]
Among plot techniques, "The Family" uses: (A) satire and observational comedy, as the sketch subtly pokes fun at real-life occurrences and real-life human behaviors, inflating them and making fun of them; (B) comedy of manners, as the characters satirize the behaviors of blue-collar, working-class southerners and speak in exaggerated southern drawls.
Unlike Mama's Family, the central character of "The Family" sketches is Eunice. "The Family" sketches are about noisy, quarrelsome couple Eunice and Ed and their unwelcome houseguest who only adds to the drama: Eunice's catty elderly mama. There was a great deal more squabbling in "The Family" sketches than on Mama's Family. It was stated many times that Eunice and Ed had two young sons, Bubba Higgins and Billy-Joe Higgins (though in one skit, Eunice calls her children Bubba and Raymond). They are unseen characters in "The Family" sketches; however, the Bubba Higgins character appears as one of the main supporting role in the first-run syndication version of Mama's Family, played by Allan Kayser. Mama, Eunice, and Ed often have uproarious verbal wars over petty issues, such as board games (they played Monopoly, Sorry!, and Password), how much butter has been used for the bread, what exactly happened 30 or 40 years ago, etc. The final "Family" sketch to air on The Carol Burnett Show had Eunice talking to a psychiatrist trying to figure out what went wrong with her life.