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Weddings tend to be a huge deal. They fuel a billion-dollar industry, they stress people out, and bring together a whole lot of strangers who'd never meet otherwise, which is why they make great fodder for TV writers. Quickie elopements in Vegas, ceremonies disrupted by exes, nuptials cut off by cold feet. If your favorite TV character is getting married, you can almost certainly bet it won't go smoothly, but it will be entertaining.
I'm Linda Holmes. And I'm Aisha Harris. And it's wedding season, so today we're talking about the comedy and drama of TV weddings on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Disney+.
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It's just the two of us today. So we're going to be talking about a whole lot of tropes and common themes that occur when TV shows decide to have a wedding. Just before we start digging into all the sort of different types of TV weddings we see, like, why do you think that we just keep coming back to this? Why is TV like the perfect setting? Well, there's a structural reason, right? Which is that especially back when shows were
structured seasons around sweeps periods where they would always have specific times of year when they were trying to have like a big event episode that everybody would watch. And some of this even goes back to like before people typically time shifted viewing. So it was much more common to watch some episodes of something and not other episodes.
They were always trying to find a way to make you sit down and tune into this particular episode. So things became at times very event-centered. Weddings were a thing that could be like a way to goose interest in the short term, get people to pay attention, even to a show they did not always watch.
The appeal of weddings, especially with long-running characters, is that there are markers that are very predictable that you can kind of alter and mix up that people look forward to finding out about, right? Like, what is the dress going to look like? What is the location going to be? What will the vows be? And, of course, like, a little bit of, like...
what will be the complications and what will go crazily wrong on this day. Yes. Like, will this wedding actually happen is always the question. And in real life, I mean, hopefully that's not usually the driving question going into any giving wedding. But that tends to be what it is, especially when you're talking about shows that have been on for a while and you've been watching couples for a while. You're invested in seeing what comes of that. Right. So why don't we just kick it off by starting...
to talk about what we would classify as like a big event wedding. What do you think about when you think about the event weddings of TV? So the first type that I think about are the straightforward kind of culmination of a long-term plotline weddings. One place where you used to see a lot of these, and they still happen, is on soaps. And so it used to be that you would follow a couple for years, and then they would build up to a big wedding, and the whole show would be about that wedding for a week.
For example, you know, the general hospital wedding of Luke and Laura, which followed a very problematic storyline that began with him assaulting her. And it's very upsetting to think about. I am not vouching for that storyline at all. But the wedding was a big enough deal that Elizabeth Taylor was
on it? Wait, I don't remember this. Elizabeth Taylor made an appearance on General Hospital at Luke and Laura's wedding, and that's how big of a deal it was. Was she playing herself? No, no, no. She was playing someone named Helena Cassadine. She was playing a member of the evil Cassadine family. But that's also like, you know, Monica and Chandler on Friends and things like that. Ones where you've been watching the couple for a long time. They build up to the wedding. The
And the payoff is it's the happy ending to a particular love story. So that's definitely one kind. Yeah, absolutely. When we were first talking about doing this episode, I had one event wedding that immediately came to mind. And I didn't even have to say it because, Linda, you were like, is it this? And I was like, Linda, yes. Am I that obvious? Yeah.
But it is true. When I immediately think of event weddings, I think of the season five finale of A Different World, which I was too young to be watching this live when it happened. But it was one of those TV weddings, like one of the first ones that I remember being very invested in when I finally did watch the whole show. This is kind of like the quintessential event.
Stop, like, whoever should, like, protest. Hold your peace. Yes. And so just to set this up a little bit, of course, you have Dwayne Wayne, who's played by Kadeem Hardison, and Whitley Gilbert, played by Jasmine Guy, who have had sort of this...
On and off again. Flirtation, then dating, relationship throughout basically the entire series. In this episode, Whitley is getting married to Byron, played by Joe Morton, Papa Pope from Scandal. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. And so what I love about this episode, which was directed by Debbie Allen, legend, legend, it kind of departs from the usual...
way the episodes are filmed, where it's like every once in a while as the wedding is proceeding with Byron, there'll be like a shaky cam and like a first-person style camera shot that kind of gives you this surreal out-of-body experience for the viewer. And then at one point, Whitley sees Dwayne appear as the pastor, and then as Byron, and then as her mom, it's like, oh my God, he's everywhere, he's everywhere. And then, of course, there's the moment where they're about to say, I do, and Dwayne...
And you heard it. You heard the way that the audience just like exclaims. Yes. That is like the culmination of years of investment of a live audience. And that is what everyone wanted. And that's what I love about that type of event wedding. It's just so fun.
Absolutely. Well, this is definitely one of the categories, right? Because in addition to the weddings that we already talked about that do come off, there's a kind of a culmination of a story. There are also weddings that don't come off where you know the wedding is wrong and the wedding gets interrupted and doesn't happen. Yes. And one of my favorites falls into that category too. At the end of the first season of ER –
Carol, played by Julianna Margulies, is getting ready to marry this kind of boring dude named Tag. She's still sort of in love with George Clooney, but she's trying to move on. And so she's all set to marry this guy. And he actually pulls the plug on the wedding because he realizes that she maybe is not
as in love with him as he wishes. But she still feels very rejected, and so she winds up in the church, and she has this conversation with Doug Ross, played by George Clooney. What's wrong with me? Why can't I fall in love with a nice guy? Someone who loves me, who wants to be with me, who's honest and decent. Mm-hmm.
You're boring. God, he was dope. The eternal question. I love that little exchange. I think the injection of humor into that conversation and the way that when he breaks that,
sadness, she then is able to say, yes, he's dull. I think that moment between them is really warm. And after that, there's a whole reception where she and her friends and family decide they're going to go ahead and eat the food and have the reception anyway. And there's a really lovely montage that shows a lot of the people from that first season and how close they are and what their relationships are. And it's a really nice tag to that first season and how good it is.
But like I said, you also have ones that maybe you want to happen. They don't happen. And it's sad when they don't happen. I think about this one with during the second season of the Fox show, Party of Five. Yeah. This show that was often quite good, I thought. Yeah.
there's a moment where Charlie, played by a very young Matthew Fox, gets cold feet on his wedding day. And by the time he pulls himself together, his fiance doesn't trust him anymore. And she leaves. And it's actually very sad. And you really get the feeling that this guy has kind of like blown his mind.
only opportunity to be happy. And they really play it as this very sad and difficult thing. And so that's one where you feel like, well, I kind of was hoping this was going to happen. And this is very sad the way that it didn't. Yeah, yeah. I feel like one of the ones that I think of that kind of falls into that category, depending on how you feel about the character's relationship, is the Grey's Anatomy season three finale between Christina and Burke.
Christina played by Sandra Oh, and then Burke played by Isaiah Washington. And, you know, Christina, she was very much not trying to have the traditional wedding. And then, of course, things turn out so that she does wind up having a traditional wedding that she doesn't like.
Like she gets the cold feet and then you have Burke like waiting at the altar and she's taking too long. And then like he finally realizes like I'm trying to fit you into this box that like you don't want to be in. Just like that whole entire sort of like conversation, that moment that they have when he like finally leaves the altar and walks outside and, you know, says to her like, I don't want to make you be something that you don't want to be. I love you. I need to let you go. I am wearing the dress.
I'm ready. And maybe I didn't want to before, but I want to now. I really think I want this. I really wish that you didn't think. I wish that you knew. It's so heartbreaking. And of course, like, Sandra Oh, she is so good at doing the most in the best way possible. And I love the scene later on where she goes back to the apartment and she sees that Burke has already taken the stuff out. She's still wearing her wedding dress. And she's like, he's gone. I'm free.
And it's like Meredith cuts off the dress with scissors and they wraps around her arms around Christina. It's just like I think some people might have been disappointed that it didn't happen. But it was very clear that Christina is not the type of person who was meant to be tied down in that traditional way. I love that moment. It's just it's a classic Grace moment. Yeah. And I do think that those thwarted weddings that don't happen are a big part of marriage.
wedding events, right, on TV, as are the sort of related phenomenon of weddings that
They end up happening, but they end up happening in a kind of an improvised way because everything goes wrong, right? That's your Jim and Pam on The Office where they were kind of losing control of the wedding that they had planned. So they ended up having a private ceremony on a boat at Niagara Falls before their official wedding with a lot of people. Mm-hmm.
This is also your Jake and Amy on Brooklyn Nine-Nine where they couldn't use their original wedding venue because there was a bomb threat. So the wedding got moved to the precinct. But I do have some bad news. There is a bomb at this wedding as well. What? Your butt.
Your butt is the bomb. There will be no survivors. This kind of, like, the plans went awry, but it was still beautiful is often used, I think, as a signifier that, you know, it's the love that really matters and not the trappings. Yeah. You know, you get the people saying, oh, it's not going to happen. It's not going to work. And then the friends are saying, we're going to do it. It's going to happen. Yeah. So that's kind of its own, I think, category. Yeah. I mean, I also think of the ones where, like,
There's the whole Mercury's in retrograde, like one thing goes wrong and then everything goes wrong. Yet at the end of it, it's kind of perfect that everything goes wrong. Like I think of Sex and the City, which had its fair share of marriages. But, you know, when Charlotte and Harry get married, Charlotte is convinced that the wedding is cursed because Harry saw her in her dress before the ceremony. And so like, you know, she's like,
She's the traditional one, even though she's already been married before. Everything that goes wrong does, like, Harry spills red wine on her dress while they're exchanging vows. The glass won't break because it's a Jewish wedding and it won't break. She slips as they leave the altar. Miranda's speech catches on fire. I don't know if you remember this, but, like, during her toast, it, like, starts catching on fire. The other backstory is, like, Carrie had a casual fling with the best man. And then, like, he took it way more seriously than she did. And he feels jilted. So he spends the entire wedding, like...
you know, scowling at her and then his toast is kind of a mess. You used me for sex. Thanks, Allie. That's nice. No, wait. Hey. Mazel tov. It was a mazel tov cocktail.
It's one of those things where it's like, this is the best case scenario. Like, I love seeing Charlotte, who is just always about perfection, like see that wrench get thrown in. And yet, you know, Harry and Charlotte are still together all these years later, as we know from And Just Like That. So perfect wedding does not necessarily mean you will be together forever.
And I feel like those are the lessons, some of the lessons that TV tries to teach us with those types of episodes. Oh, for sure. Definitely. And the funny thing about all of these things, I think, to me, is that the weddings that I have been to in my own life, very few of them are cataclysmic if you think of them as plot. You know what I mean? It's a ritual and it follows a kind of a ritual path.
But on television, it's always the kind of like, oh, my gosh, everything's going wrong. Or else it's the other kind of wedding that obviously exists on TV is the disastrous catastrophe wedding, right? Like the red wedding on Game of Thrones. Oh, God. Or on Dynasty, there was this wedding that happened in this fictional country called Moldavia. Mm-hmm.
And these gunmen came in and it was one of those like end of season things. It was like, who got shot at the wedding? And it's interesting how at a TV wedding, something wildly unexpected is usually going to happen. Whereas at a real wedding, usually it's been so like tightly choreographed and no one plans to call it off. And so you just kind of go and it's lovely and it happens and you love everyone and you take pictures and then you go home. Yeah. I mean-
I think one of my favorite examples of that, it's not quite as dramatic as like gunmen showing up. But I think of Cheers when Woody and Kelly get married in the season 10 finale, which is like a two-parter. And we don't actually even see the wedding. It all takes place behind the scenes. So like the entire Cheers crew has been hired to like help out basically in the second part of the episode already.
The entire episode takes place in the kitchen of the mansion where it's being held. And the minister who's supposed to marry Woody and Kelly dies right before the ceremony. And then the Cheers gang tries to keep everyone else from finding out. It's just like a kind of perfect sort of like
chaotic screwball where everyone has to have the perfect comedic timing and everyone does. At one point, you have Lilith played by Bebe Neuwirth who, if you remember Cheers, she was the very straight-laced, like, deadpan. There's a great moment where, like, she doesn't know what's happening yet and then she finds out. Let's actually hear a little bit of that. What?
What's taking so long? Shouldn't the wedding have started by now? Well, something came up, Lilith. I'm afraid I can't go into it, but maybe it'd be a good idea if you went out there and, you know, were to sing and dance and use some of your natural talents to entertain people. Oh, my God. Someone died, didn't they? Ha ha!
And it's like, it's perfect timing. It's like a truly great ensemble episode where everyone is doing their part to make it really fun. Well, and Cheers also ends with that really, a very bittersweet episode in which Sam and Diane are planning to get married. Yeah.
And as it gets closer and closer, they just kind of realize that they shouldn't, which is what I personally always wanted for the end of Russ and Rachel, honestly, is for them to be like, you know what? This is a bad idea. But Sam and Diane actually did that. And they said, you know, listen, we have other things we want to do. This is not the way to make both of us happy, even though we love each other, which is a really cool.
kind of mature and interesting decision for a comedy like that to make. And I have always really admired that ending as one of those weddings that ultimately isn't. Yeah, I mean, that show had so many botched weddings or people, Diane, especially leaving people at the altar. It starts with her running away from
from getting married. You know, there's a lot of shows where weddings are sort of like baked into the narrative that I think we should at least like touch on briefly because when we were talking about it, you mentioned the Brady Bunch and how that starts with the wedding. Yep. And then of course, there's Happy Endings, which starts with
a botched wedding and really sets the stage for the whole series where you have Alex played by Alicia Cuthbert and Dave played by Zachary Knighton. It's the pilot episode. It's the opening of the episode. They're at the wedding and then someone comes in and is like, You told me yourself that you don't even know if you still love him and that he let himself go and that the sex was bad. Hey man, my Nana's here. Alex, I love you.
Come with me. And then the rest of the series is kind of them trying to figure out, okay, how do I recover from the trauma of you leaving me at the altar, plus trying to keep our friend group together? It's rare that a wedding or a wedding that didn't happen can be so integral to the plot. The same is also true of something like How I Met Your Mother, where the entire final season takes place at home.
Yes.
And then the parents were going on their honeymoon and they ended up bringing all the kids with them on their honeymoon. I remember that. Which is sort of like you look at it and you go, hmm. Yeah.
Really? Blended families, am I right? That's sort of how they kicked off that show was this is a team now, right? And I think that wedding was the way that they sort of set the stage for that. Yeah. Don't get a lot of Brady Bunchy weddings anymore. No, no. But I mean, when you think about when that show came out at the end of the 60s, like that was a time where it was
becoming way more common for blended families to be accepted and presented in the mainstream in a way that it was. And so, yeah, it's kind of, I don't know, a little revolutionary in a way for such a really cheesy kind of awful show. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, blended family, a wedding in that sense was, it's probably one of the earlier ones on television that set up a blended family, although there were other ones later on. And yeah, I mean, you know, we're talking about sort of a landmark sort of wedding when it comes to Brady Bunch, but we...
must not end this episode without also talking about the way in which queer and gay marriage kind of evolved and became a thing on TV. I think of something like the vow renewal, actually, of Captain Holt and Kevin on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. One of my favorite couples. Yes, yes. Favorite couple. Absolutely. I think in the lore of the show, they had gotten married in like 2011 when it became illegal in New York. Towards the end of the series, they go through a separation and they
Decide to renew their vows. But I finally learned what marriage really is. It's not something you can memorize or an equation you can solve for. It's the feeling you get when you look in your partner's eyes. And that feeling is all that matters. And also just like their previous wedding ceremony.
You know, it wasn't quite the same as having one, you know, in a time where gay marriage is now just completely normal. And by then also like Holt is so close with the team. And I think like he's opened up a lot and has a lot more friendships and stuff like that, at least in the work sphere. Yeah. I think it's nice for him to kind of also do this in the context of having friends.
kind of the life that he has now and to be able to do it, you know, like that. I think there have been some queer weddings that are among my favorites. I think of David and Patrick on Schitt's Creek who were, are also one of my favorite couples and one of my favorite, like, extremely romantic stories. Um,
That proposal episode is really awesome. That wedding episode's really awesome. The Tina Turner song, yeah. The Tina Turner song's really awesome. And there's so much character development, particularly of David, through those episodes and through that relationship. For a long time, there were queer weddings on TV that were a little bit... They often didn't involve central characters on shows, but they would begin to actually...
Yeah.
and meaningful did resonate. And I think you got a fair number of weddings like that before you started to get ones like the Schitt's Creek one and like Holt and Kevin. Yeah. Every time I say Holt and Kevin, it makes me so happy. Yeah.
Because I love them. Yeah. Cali in Arizona on Grey's. Cali in Arizona on Grey's. Alex and Piper on Orange is the New Black. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, you know, just like other weddings, the queer weddings run the gamut of, like, great idea to maybe, like, less great idea. Yeah. But, yeah, I think just, like, blended families, you know, queer couples or something where you did not used to see when I was growing up those weddings on TV as much. And now you see them all the time, genuinely. Well, absolutely. Yeah.
But, you know, obviously we couldn't get to everything. There have been so many TV weddings and I'm sure we might have missed like a very, very specific niche category that we're not even thinking of. Well, as I started to look back at this, I was like, oh, I'm going to miss a bunch, including a bunch that I cared about deeply when they happened. Yes, yes. As soon as we hit
hit stop on this I'm going to think of at least three more but it's okay we couldn't get to everything you should let us know what your favorite TV wedding is find us at facebook.com slash bchh and that brings us to the end of our show Linda Holmes thanks so much for being here I can't think of anyone else who would have been as wonderful to talk to about TV weddings as you I absolutely agree I would never want to chat about TV weddings with anybody except my favorite different world fan thank you
This episode was produced by Hubsa Fathima and edited by Mike Katziff. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy and Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Ayesha Harris and we'll see you all next time.
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