On the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast this week, Aisha Harris and I talked about one of the staples of television: the TV wedding. My takeaway? I miss them.
Back when seasons ran from September through May, before streaming and premium cable changed the shape of scripted series, weddings were a TV staple, especially during sweeps periods. Often, they were the culmination of a beloved romance of some duration, like Chandler and Monica on Friends or Jim and Pam on The Office.
But not always. Some weddings were important precisely because they don't happen. One of Aisha's picks was Whitley's wedding at the end of the fifth season of A Different World, where she decided not to marry Byron and married her longtime love, Dwayne, instead. If you start asking people about memorable TV weddings, this one will come up fast, especially because Dwayne interrupted the wedding The Graduate-style, begging her to marry him with his now-iconic "Baby, please!"
We also talked about Christina and Burke on Grey's Anatomy, who seemed like they would get married but didn't, despite a long run on the show as a couple. Weddings are sometimes used this way as well, to end relationships that have run their course. Well — at least temporarily, as happened on Party of Five when oldest brother Charlie's wedding to Kirsten fell apart in season two, and the two didn't get married until season six. (Sometimes these things have to percolate for a while.)
Some weddings are the catalyst for an entire series, as with Happy Endings, which began with the collapse of Dave and Alex's wedding and the question of who would get custody of their friend group. The Brady Bunch started with Carol and Mike's wedding, which ended up being very chaotic because Tiger, the dog (who remained with the show) and Fluffy the cat (never seen again) were chasing each other around. They ended up yelling at the kids, and then feeling so guilty, they took them on their honeymoon, which is the beginning of an advice-column letter about a lack of boundaries if ever I heard one. And remember, Friends begins when Rachel, dripping wet in her wedding dress, having left her fiancé at the altar, comes rushing into the coffee shop where people she hasn't seen in years (or doesn't know at all) are, as always, hanging out.
We should also take a moment to recognize the long and glorious history of daytime soap weddings — including the General Hospital wedding so highly anticipated that Liz Taylor showed up. Soaps have done all kinds of things at weddings, which used to go on for a week of episodes, highlighted by the biggest dresses and the most unexpected surprise guests. A good time was almost never had by all.
It's not that there are no TV weddings anymore, but they often look a little different. The most famous TV wedding of the contemporary era is probably the Red Wedding on Game of Thrones, which is a whole different kettle of fish from "Baby, please!" to say the least. (Although, in fairness, Dynasty also once ended a season with a mass casualty event at a wedding in the fictional country of Moldavia.) (Just another way in which Game of Thrones is the new Dynasty.) (Just kidding.) (Mostly.)
Successionspecialized in catastrophic weddings, too, with both Shiv and Tom's wedding (ended in a death) and Connor and Willa's wedding (delayed by a death) not going as planned. But a lot of shows — your Breaking Bad, Mad Men and The Walking Dead — just didn't go for weddings very much, if at all. Not a lot of time for catering during the zombie apocalypse or in the middle of your war with a drug cartel. And it's not like The Pitt is going to have two doctors married by a sick minister during the break between a broken pelvis and an allergic reaction to bees.
I miss big, splashy TV weddings, and as we're entering wedding season, I humbly suggest that we bring them back at full power. Surely, somebody can throw a wedding into The Last Of Us where the officiant doubles as the person who keeps the infected away.
And, I mean, ministers do get sick.
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