in the "Eunice" TV movie, they have three children: Ellen, Eunice, and Phillip Harper. In Mama's Family, they have three children, but the character of Phillip is replaced by Vinton. Thelma's husband, Carl, is a deceased character in all three broadcasts. He's only present in flashbacks as an unseen character, portrayed in voice only. In the movie Eunice Carl was voiced by Dick Clair and was heard from the main floor bathroom. Thelma is in her late sixties during "Mama's Family." (Vicki Lawrence was in her thirties during this time and would not turn sixty until 2009.) Thelma's squabbles, resulting from her ingratitude and spite for her daughter Eunice and Eunice's husband, Ed, was the ongoing theme of "The Family" sketches. In Mama's Family, Thelma lived originally with her sister, newspaper writer Fran Crowley. In the first episode, Vinton and his two children, Vinton "Buzz" Harper Jr. and Sonja Harper, move in with Thelma after being evicted from their house. Vinton has just gone through a divorce from a woman named Mitzi, who moved to Las Vegas to become a cocktail waitress. Vinton soon marries Naomi Harper, Thelma's next door neighbor, whom Thelma despises. Thelma becomes so enraptured and relieved to find out Naomi, Vint and the kids are going to move to Arizona to run a trailer park, that she consents to having them marry in her living room. Following the wedding, they all return to Thelma's house to stay because Naomi's partner in the trailer park venture has absconded with every cent of Vint and Naomi's life's savings and had never actually owned a trailer park. Thelma's relationships with her grandchildren are different than those with her children. She gets along rather well with Buzz, since he isn't always worrying her into the grave, the way his older sister does and Thelma's own children had done when they were younger. Thelma is best friends with her neighbor across the street, Iola Boylan, who is crazy about Vinton and agrees with Thelma that Naomi wasn't the right kind of wife for him. In fact, Iola, who did not appear in the NBC episodes but makes her debut in the first episode of the third season, thinks she would be Vint's perfect mate. Thelma and Iola spend a great deal of time together, and Iola often comes over for dinner when she isn't helping her eccentric and infirmed parents. Although