List of Mike & Molly characters

Mike & Molly is a sitcom which premiered in September 2010. The show revolves around the lives of Mike Biggs, a police officer, and Molly Flynn, a schoolteacher, who meet at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting and fall in love. The series follows their relationship with each other and their two families.

Cast

Main characters

Mike Biggs

Officer Michael "Mike" Biggs (Billy Gardell), is the lead male protagonist of the series. He is introduced in the first episode as a Chicago police officer with weight issues who attends a meeting of Overeaters Anonymous. It is here that he meets Molly Flynn. After Molly asks Mike to come and speak to her class at the school where she works, they begin dating in the second episode. Mike is regularly accompanied by his best friend, Carl McMillan, his partner on the police force, whom he joins for breakfast to chat about the state of their lives at a cafe where their waiter is always Samuel, an African immigrant who likes to make fun of Mike's weight. Mike and Molly got engaged in the season 1 finale, are married in the season 2 finale, and are still trying to conceive their first child as of the Season 4 premiere. In Season 5, though, Mike finds out that Molly went back on birth control without telling him due to the pain and frustration of two years when she was unable to conceive a child, and they resolve to pursue avenues like adoption as they still love each other and want to raise kids.

Molly Flynn

Molly Flynn-Biggs (Melissa McCarthy) is the lead female protagonist of the series. She is a fourth grade school teacher who attends the same Overeaters Anonymous class as Mike. She lives with her mother Joyce and her sister Victoria, while her mother's partner Vince Moranto is often seen at the house. She is very sweet, intelligent and caring, but she can be hypersensitive and has a very bad financial history thanks to a large amount of credit card debt. She and Mike married in the season 2 finale. She and Mike spent two years trying to have a child but put those plans on hold in Season 5. In Season 4, she quits her teaching job to pursue a career as a writer, and in Season 5 she has a huge success when her literary erotica novel is published by a major company. It is later revealed in a session with a psychologist that Mike's stabilizing presence, something she hasn't had since her father died, has allowed Molly to finally feel comfortable taking risks.

Melissa McCarthy won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2011 for her portrayal of Molly Flynn.

Supporting characters

Carl McMillan

Officer Carlton "Carl" Enoch McMillan (Reno Wilson) is Mike Biggs' best friend/surrogate brother and fellow officer on the police force. He lives with his grandma until the middle of Season 3, as he has not been able or motivated to find his own place. Until the middle of Season 2, he did not have a steady girlfriend, and Mike has frequently alluded to Carl employing prostitutes or having one-night stands with strippers. He is quick-witted with a dry sense of humor, and offers droll remarks on various situations. Carl and Samuel become roommates in Season 3. After a rather depressing break up with his girlfriend Christina (she leaves him for her ex-husband), he goes through a string of random women until towards the end of season 4, when he begins relationship with Molly's sister Victoria. Near the end of Season 5, this relationship sours when Carl announces to Mike that he plans to propose to Victoria, only to change his mind. Carl then gets angry with Victoria when she is relieved that he didn't propose, and that leads to a spiral in the Season 5 finale where he has broken up with her. He ends up having a huge fight with Mike when he feels like his best friend is siding with Molly's family over him, and this ultimately leads him to request a transfer so he won't have to work with Mike anymore.

Victoria Flynn

Victoria Flynn (Katy Mixon) is Molly's dimwitted but kind, party girl sister who is often high on marijuana. (Policemen Mike and Carl take a "don't tell, we won't ask" attitude about her drug use.) She is employed as a beautician at a funeral home. She likes to have fun and sleeps around, frequently with married men, and her combination of not being particularly bright and being a pothead leads to her often losing or misplacing major items like her car. Harry has an almost obsessive crush on her, and she has on occasion gone on dates with him just to be nice. In Season 3, she starts to realize that Harry is the only man who's ever truly cared for her, and she finally kisses him. In an odd turn of events, he then announces he's gay. As of the end of Season 4, she is in a relationship with Carl, which lasts until the penultimate episode of Season 5.

Joyce Flynn

Joyce Marilyn Flynn-Moranto (Swoosie Kurtz) is Molly and Victoria's mother. Her two daughters live in her home. She is a widow who began dating a widower named Vince Moranto in Season 1, and later became his fiancée. She is very modern and often attempts to act or dress younger than her age, and she drinks heavily. She has a hair-trigger temper and is sometimes rude to Mike, but he doesn't seem to care and she ultimately respects that he doesn't let her get away with her worst behavior. She frequently teases Mike for his size and eating habits, even though it is revealed in multiple conversations that her late husband was also a very large man. In the Season 3 episode "Thanksgiving Is Cancelled", she marries Vince.

Samuel

Samuel (Nyambi Nyambi) is a sarcastic waiter at Abe's, where Mike and Carl eat. He is often seen hanging out with Carl and Mike, and despite frequently insulting them, he is considered their friend. He is from Africa and often refers to the suffering in his home country of Senegal (which he was apparently kicked out of^[1]). As such, he does not sympathize with most problems his restaurant patrons bring to his attention, believing them to be "petty". He becomes Carl's roommate in Season 3. In Season 5, Samuel's real name is revealed to be Babatunde when he becomes the owner of Abe's Diner, now Abe's Hot Beef. He states the previous owner was so cheap he wouldn't buy him a badge with Babatunde on it, instead giving him a former employee's badge. He notes that the high cost of replacing the sign will keep the Abe's name intact until he can afford to proudly put up a sign for "Babatunde's Restaurant".

Vince Moranto

Vince Moranto (Louis Mustillo) is Joyce's on-and-off boyfriend in Season 1, who thereafter becomes her fiancé. He is a widower and tends to be chauvenistic and sarcastic, and also likes to openly discuss his sex life, one of the main reasons neither Mike nor Molly seek out his company nor spend more time around him than required. He is a high school dropout and can come across as unintelligent, though the series has shown or mentioned he had made a lot of money in the past through his various enterprises (some of which may be a bit "shady"). In the second-to-last episode of Season 2, it is revealed he is technically still married (to a much older woman), causing Joyce to throw him out of Mike & Molly's wedding rehearsal.^[2] Vince actually hadn't seen the woman in several years, outside of a few attempts to get her to sign divorce papers, which she consistently refused because Vince still owes her $2,000 "plus interest." Mike negotiates with the woman to sign the divorce papers in exchange for $5,000 from Vince and the opportunity to kick Vince in the crotch. As of the Season 3 episode "Thanksgiving Is Cancelled", he is married to Joyce. In Season 5, he becomes an investor in Abe's Diner, after Samuel assumes ownership.

Peggy Biggs

Peggy Biggs (Rondi Reed) is Mike's mother. She is very controlling and traditional, as well as grumpy and cranky. Peggy frequently expects Mike to do her bidding at the drop of a hat, which made her initially cold toward Molly becoming a part of Mike's life. She has since warmed up some to Molly, and began working as a lunch lady at Molly's school in Season 2. Her tendency to lie when the truth isn't kind to her connected with that job when she told Molly she had "retired"; she'd actually been fired for being impossible to work with. Mike usually plays along with her revisionist history, but finally gets pushed too far in this case and tells Peggy she got fired because she is bitter, toxic and unlikable by anyone. She is divorced, living alone with her dog "Jim" (she even turned over Mike's old room to Jim) and often talks about her ex-husband, Jack, leaving her and running away with a "whore". Her longtime courtship of a sweet-natured and unsuccessful fellow Catholic named Dennis ended badly when she finally decided she was ready for them to have sex, only to realize he'd suffered a heart attack and died. A shocked Peggy tried to blame it on a sour lemon cake Molly had prepared for her birthday, only to have a no-longer-afraid Molly jab Peggy about her ham-fisted efforts to cover up her death-blocked seduction of Dennis. Despite her obvious disdain for Jack, the two sleep together after Mike and Molly's wedding rehearsal, but Peggy dumps him immediately after. She has a gift for writing that Molly surprisingly discovered during her own successful effort to start a career as an author, and Peggy's sordid past romantic exploits become the basis for Molly's second novel. Peggy reveals that she has always felt guilty for leaving her abusive home at an early age, while her mother was stuck with a drunken batterer for a husband. She also has a sister who still lives in their hometown with whom she has feuded since their teenage years, but they eventually reconciled in Season 5.

Rosetta McMillan

Rosetta McMillan (Nana) (Cleo King) is Carl's grandmother. She apparently raised Carl since his childhood, and Carl still lives in her house. She is very traditional and has professed that Carl is a very special part of her life, but she is outwardly annoyed by his immature behavior. She has a big heart and is very friendly toward Mike, who calls her "Nana." She has been known to treat Mike as if he were also her grandson, and Mike frequently goes to Rosetta for advice about his relationship with Molly, rather than to his own mother. Despite her advancing age, she is shown to have a large sexual appetite, including an ongoing relationship with the preacher from her church. (Being only seven years older than Reno Wilson in real life, King wears a wig and makeup to appear older.)

Harry

Harry (David Anthony Higgins) attends the same Overeaters Anonymous meetings as Mike and Molly, and becomes their friend. He is depicted as socially awkward and lonely, and tends to say whatever is on his mind, even thoughts that make him seem pathetic. Harry initially pursued Victoria as a love interest. The two dated once, and while it is suggested that Victoria does so out of sympathy, they attended a few other events as friends and Harry has been visibly happy to spend time with her in any capacity. In Season 3, after he finally receives a kiss from her, he announces that he's gay (to everyone's surprise except Joyce and Carl). Vince tends to speak for the group in one sense by constantly making fun of Harry and wondering why he's invited to any of their events, while Mike responds by saying they all basically like Harry even though he can be incredibly annoying.

Recurring characters

Christina

Christina (Holly Robinson Peete) is Carl's girlfriend, beginning in Season 2. She is a single mother with a young son, and works as an optometrist. When Carl runs away from her after learning about her kid, she lets Carl know that he's a coward and loser who isn't worth her time. However, she accepts his later explanation about never knowing his father, and they become a committed couple. She later becomes Molly's friend. As of Season 3, she has decided to try and reconcile with her ex-husband for the sake of their son, and breaks things off with Carl. After Christina makes several negative remarks about Carl during a conversation with Molly, Molly drops her as a friend.

Brother Heywood

Brother Heywood (Reginald VelJohnson) is the preacher at Carl and Rosetta's church. It is strongly hinted (and later openly revealed) that he and Rosetta are in a sexual relationship. He officiated at Mike and Molly's wedding, after Molly was too honest with the priest at Mike's Catholic church and the two were forced to look elsewhere.

Jack Biggs

Jack Biggs (Francis Guinan) is Mike's father, who left Mike and his mother many years ago to run off with a woman whom Peggy simply refers to as "the whore." He first appears at Mike's bachelor party in Season 2 and tearfully apologizes to his son for running away, to which Mike honestly tells his father he loves him and is glad he will be at the wedding. After Peggy and he sleep together, he decides he wants to reconcile with her (his marriage to "the whore" is rapidly disintegrating) but Peggy bluntly says she only used him for sex and has zero interest in him now that he's served his purpose.

Captain Murphy

Captain Patrick Murphy (Gerald McRaney) is Mike's boss on the Chicago Police force. Early in Season 3, he offers Mike courtside seats at a basketball game in exchange for Mike setting him up with Peggy. Soon after, Captain Murphy and Peggy begin dating. Peggy refers to him as "Paddy", though Mike doesn't dare call him that.

References

External links

• Official website
• List of Mike & Molly characters at the Internet Movie Database