Rita and Paul Connelly were created by Harding Lemay as new characters enlarging the cast for AW's expansion to 90-minutes in 1979. Both were ill-conceived characters, in my opinion -- especially Aunt Rita who was essentially a working-class version of Liz Matthews. Aunt Rita was a shrew to her husband (Paul), and meddled terribly into the lives of her niece and nephew, Eileen and Morgan Simpson, who were late-teens or early-adults at that time. Aunt Rita was simply nasty, with not an ounce of humor, and no redeeming qualities -- unlike Aunt Liz, who had an established background on AW as a lonely widow with plenty of money, but no one to love.
By adding Paul and Rita Connelly to the cast, I believe Lemay was attempting to add some sort of serious religious conflict to AW, as he had done so successfully with social-class conflict. But his attempt was an utter failure, because Aunt Rita was nothing more than a stereotyped religious bigot. And because Rita and Paul were Catholic, the entire story arc gave rather anti-Catholic vibes. I'm not Catholic, but even I was uncomfortable seeing a devote Catholic woman being portrayed as such a nasty interfering bitch. Yes, Lemay's least successful character creation was Aunt Rita Connelly.
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Tisy-Lish ·
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