10 & 9. Stan Walker (Will & Grace) and Enid Kelso (Scrubs)
These characters are the reason I have 11 entries on the list. Together they're both very similar - the offscreen spouses of brilliant, scene-stealing sitcom characters, who have a big effect despite us never seeing them. I can't choose between the two, so let's have a look at both... Stan Walker was a character we got to know a lot during the first five seasons of
Will & Grace but was never seen.His wife Karen, of course, was the highlight of the whole thing. While the show wasn't really my thing a lot of the time, she did make me laugh. Stan was the love of her life. She gave up a trio of relationships to be with him, married him and settled into an unhappy / happy relationship. What we knew of him was that we was an obese topee-wearer who was fantastically rich up to the point that he went to jail for tax invasion. Despite her bold, sarcastic nature she showed a genuine soft spot for her man, spending most of his imprisonment committed to him despite his protests (off screen) that she date other men. And then it went tits up when she discovered Stan's mistress, played rather drolly by Minne Driver, a waitress from the prison cafeteria. Their relationship never recovered and as soon as they begun divorce proceedings, he died tragically of a heart attack. All this drama for a central sitcom character, whose husband never had an onscreen appearance. Like many great unseen characters it was left up to the imagination. Why would Karen love an obese, balding man? Was it just his money or was it something more? Was he as charismatic as his wife? I guess we'll never know...
Enid Kelso was another character that was probably more interesting because we didn't see her. The long suffering blind, obese wife of the 'devil with a heart' Doctor Kelso was a source of many great stories. She might have hated him and her mental faculties were certainly failing but there was a fondness in the way Kelso spoke of his wife that mixed humour and mental illness in a such a touching way that only
Scrubs could. My favourite story? Kelso recanting how Enid would get randy come springtime so he would give his neighbour's Guatemalan houseboy Churo? $20 to go in the basement and let Enid chase him around until the juice ran out in her wheelchair. Like Stan, she died too, leaving Bob Kelso a widow. And again, she left a huge mark in this character's life.