Mama's Family - Premise

Premise

The show, set in the fictional city of Raytown, revolves around a typical squabbling family, headed by Thelma Harper—a buxom, blue-haired, purse-lipped, 65-year-old widow, characterized as fiery, abrasive, smart-alecky, and full of snappy retorts. Living with Thelma originally was only her uptight spinster sister Fran (Rue McClanahan), a journalist for a local paper. Thelma's son, Vinton (whose wife, Mitzi, had left him to become a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas, Nevada) and his two children, Sonja and Buzz, moved in with her later.

During the first season, Vinton forged a relationship with the Harpers' flirtatious next-door neighbor, Naomi Oates (whom Thelma had a distaste for), and soon married her. After selling her house and losing the money in a bad business deal, Naomi and Vint are forced to move into Thelma's basement, where they remain for most of the show's run. Also seen on a recurring basis were Thelma's two daughters: the snobbish Ellen (Betty White) and the ornery Eunice (Carol Burnett). Harvey Korman, who directed many of the earlier episodes, made featured appearances as Eunice's husband, Ed Higgins. During the eleventh and final season of The Carol Burnett Show (1977), the Ed Higgins character was written out of The Family skits, having left Eunice. Korman also appeared at the beginning of each episode as the stuffed shirt Alistair Quince (an obvious parody of Alistair Cooke), who would soberly introduce the program in the style of Masterpiece Theatre. These monologues were cut out of the later syndicated reruns and the subsequent DVD release of the first season. Korman also did the voice of Thelma's unseen late husband, Carl, in flashback episodes.

While not a huge ratings success, the first season garnered good enough ratings to be renewed for a second season. The first episode finished among the Top 30 programs for the week, ranked at #28 and garnering a commendable 18.6/28 rating/share. However, during the second season, the show dropped to 59th place in the yearly ratings due to being forced to compete with CBS's Top 10 hit Magnum, P.I..