Maeby Fünke
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Maeby Funke | |
|---|---|
 Alia Shawkat as Mae "Maeby" Fünke |
|
| First appearance | "Pilot" |
| Last appearance | "Development Arrested" |
| Cause/reason | End of the series |
| Portrayed by | Alia Shawkat |
| Information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Age | 16 (at the end of the series) |
| Date of birth | September 22, 1990 |
| Occupation | Student |
| Family | Tobias Funke (father) Lindsay Bluth Funke (mother) |
| Spouse(s) | George Michael Bluth (cousin/husband) |
| Relatives | George Bluth Sr. (adoptive grandfather) Lucille Bluth (adoptive grandmother) Michael Bluth (adoptive uncle) GOB Bluth (adoptive uncle) Buster Bluth (adoptive uncle/first cousin once removed Oscar Bluth (great uncle) Steve Holt (cousin) Hel-loh "Annyong" Bluth (adoptive uncle) |
Maeby Bluth (nee Fünke) is a fictional character on the television series Arrested Development. She is a troublemaker and a frequent love interest for her cousin George Michael. She is played by Alia Shawkat.
Contents |
[edit] Fictional biography
Mae "Maeby" Fünke (born September 22, 1990) is the teenage daughter of Lindsay and Tobias. She does not demonstrate much of a scholarly acumen and has a penchant for acting out.
Maeby's origin is an unanswered question and running joke throughout the series. Lucille Bluth tells George Michael that she was "made in a cup, like soup"; this comment (coupled with Tobias' prolonged difficulties regarding heterosexual congress with Lindsay) implies that she is a test-tube baby. In the final episodes of season three, it is revealed that Lindsay delivered Maeby, though she is not blood-related to the Bluths because Lindsay was actually adopted.
Maeby attended a progressive school called "Openings" before her parents moved in with Michael. At the school, she wasn't graded, but received crocodiles and Elvis instead (though she did receive one C-). Once she enters the public school system, she is not able to compete. She loses interest in grades and starts creating new opportunities to get into trouble, where she "always gets caught".
Maeby receives charity money on false pretenses by pretending to be a wheelchair-bound girl named "Surely" (a spin on "maybe") that suffers from a rare, debilitating illness called "B.S." She takes part in fundraising events to draw attention to the condition and invents a fake charity. As Surely, Maeby draws attention to the fact that there are no ramps going up to the bleachers at school.
George Michael discovers her at a charity fundraiser held in Surely's honor. She makes a lot of money from her false charities without punishment for her deception. In season three, Maeby gives Surely a last name, "Wolfbeak", and enters her in an inner-beauty pageant in an attempt to sabotage it. She is foiled when the organizers gladly accommodate Surely's disability.
Maeby cons her way into being a movie executive while searching around an office, and is able to maintain the charade for many episodes. She often deflects questions about her youthful appearance (she is the third youngest movie executive in Hollywood) with the phrase "Marry me!". She frequently uses the studio's readers to do her homework, assigning them classic novels to read and write up. She is also involved in the American remake of the French film Les Cousins Dangereux, which she is forced to cut down to 52 minutes. Thanks in part to George Michael, who half-heartedly protests the movie with his girlfriend Ann, it becomes a hit when media coverage of the protest draws people's attention. Another project she is involved with is the critical flop Love, Indubitably. Eventually, her age is discovered when her cousin George Michael sends invitations to her 16th birthday party to all the other studio executives in her address book, but this actually helps her career, because the movie studios make a film about her. She drives a Mercedes-Benz company car, although she does not have a driver's license.
Maeby is occasionally receptive to George Michael's affections. However she starts dating Steve Holt, who is discovered near the end of Season Two of the series to be the son of G.O.B. While increasingly desperate to end the relationship, she continues to date him, at one point slipping him one of G.O.B.'s "forget-me-nows" to avoid having sex with him. George Michael tells Maeby at the beginning of Season Three that Steve Holt is also her cousin.
Near the end of Season 3, George Michael convinces Maeby to participate as the bride in a mock wedding hosted by a hospital to entertain Alzheimer's patients. Unfortunately, a switch in the "fake" priest produced a real one, thus lawfully wedding the two cousins. Also, after drinking fake wine and thinking they were drunk, Maeby took George Michael "head first" into second base. There is no indication that the two ever divorce. In the series finale, it is revealed that Lindsay is adopted, and therefore that Maeby and George Michael are not actually related. Throughout the series' run, Maeby has changed in her opinion of wishing she "wasn't even a part of the family". Overall, she has a sense of belonging in the family, although she is very frequently neglected by her parents.
[edit] Concept and creation
Creator Mitchell Hurwitz named the character after his daughters May and Phoebe.[1] Hurwitz acknowledged the peculiar result of this blending, saying "It just seemed like crazy extra fun to think of weird names. I don't want us to become too self-conscious about it but, yes, we do have some strange names."[2] Maeby was initially imagined as a pseudo-conservative, to be a deliberate foil to her activist mother Lindsay, but eventually re-imagined to be a troublemaker in other ways.[1] In making Maeby an opposite to George Michael (she is bolder and not as reverent towards her father), Hurwitz thought this also contributed to the idea of George Michael and Maeby developing a romance.[3]
[edit] Alia Shawkat
Maeby is portrayed by Alia Shawkat. Shawkat tried out for the part with Michael Cera, who plays George Michael, in Los Angeles, and the creators thought they both did well. Thus, Shawkat and Cera joined the cast before the other performers.[4] For her role as Maeby, Shawkat won a Young Artist Award in 2005 and was also nominated for Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2005 and 2006.[5]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b Audio commentary. "Extended Pilot." In Arrested Development: Season One- Disc One, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc., 2004.
- ^ Alex Strachan, "Arrested Development has a thing for weird names," Edmonton Journal, July 20, 2004, p. C.2.
- ^ Breaking Ground: Behind the Scenes of Arrested Development. In Arrested Development: Season One- Disc One, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc., 2004.
- ^ Benjamin Leszcz, "The essence of adolescence," National Post, January 4, 2006, pg. AL.1.Fr.
- ^ Awards for Alia Shawkat. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 2007-04-14.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
