The only Rugrat without two parents, Chuckie was always the giant, sniveling pussy of the group as he was the only one who seemed adverse to getting in trouble and going on adventures. Total boner in the making. Maybe it was because his hair is red, or maybe it was because he didn’t have a mom that the kid was a grade A boob – come to think of it, why didn’t Chuckie have a mom? All the other kids have moms, why is the loser ginger kid the only one stuck with a single parent?
According to Rugrats co-creator Paul Germain, it wasn’t because they were hellbent on making this kid the most pathetic creature to ever grace your television screen. Nope, it was because they were lazy and didn’t feel like animating/hashing out yet another parent:
‘We developed the baby crew, and we developed Chuckie, and then we thought, “This kid magically appears at the house, but where are his parents?” So we thought, let’s do Chuckie’s dad – but we decided not to do a mom. We just didn’t want an extra character there.
‘But why? Why would there not be a mom? By the second or third season, we were saying, “What actually happened to Chuckie’s mom?”‘
Paul notes to Entertainment Weekly that they thought about making Chuckie’s parents divorced, but that Nickelodeon thought the idea was “too heavy a subject.” So, they went with their only other option – Chuckie’s mom is dead. WHAT A FUN ALTERNATIVE IN A KID’S SHOW.
‘If you watch the first 65 half-hours ofRugrats, they never mention Chuckie’s mom – or if they do, it’s a tease,’ said Paul.
We mention that she exists but we don’t tell you what happened to her. We even made a joke out of it in one episode. But we weren’t allowed to go into the subject.’
There is an episode later, however, after the original writers had left, where the show runners decided it was time to tackle the subject of death. “They did a whole thing about Chuckie’s mom, and that she died, this whole very maudlin thing,” Paul said, “I just sat there thinking, ‘We weren’t allowed to do this, and now you guys are doing it.’ That’s something I regret.”
[H/T Entertainment Weekly]