Unexplained important absences at a TV / Film wedding or funeral

[caj]

Maybe I get too involved with tv / film sometimes, but a pet peeve of mine is when there is an unexplained absence of important characters at a funeral, wedding, or special occasion. Important relatives (like children or parents) or close friends who not only don't bother to show but no one even bothers to explain why they're not there.

What are examples you can think of that just drove you nuts or made you scratch your head?

[Valentis]

Hank Summers. The father of Buffy was not present at the funeral of Joyce Summers.

[MyriVerse]

He'd been gone since S2, anyway. Buffy had said earlier, while Joyce was sick, that she couldn't contact her dad. After the fact, I think Dawn said she had talked to their dad, but she kept it a secret from Buffy.

Michelle, Aunt Becky, Nicky & Alex weren't at the triple wedding finale of Fuller House for obvious real-world reasons.

[caj]

On The Golden Girls, in season 6, Dorothy was about to marry her ex-husband Stan (she didn't go through with it), but oddly, none of their children attended the almost-wedding.

The same season, Dorothy's brother, Phil, dies. Not only did none of Phil's often-mentioned kids come to the funeral, but also Dorothy & Phil's sister Gloria did not show up either.

[Will Evans]

During the last episode of the Office. Dwight’s brother, sister, and nephew didn’t show up. Despite appearing earlier in that same season.

[LoganAlpha30X33]

Those characters don't show up to me mostly because then they'd have to pay the actors and such...it's cheaper to not have them...

[caj]

On The Brady Bunch, Mike Brady doesn't attend Greg's high school graduation on the final episode of the series. And there's no mention as to where he is.

Behind the scenes, actor Robert Reed threw a tantrum - so bad that it was the final straw for creator Sherwood Schwartz. He wrote Reed (and Mike) out of the episode. There was also rumors that if the show had been picked up for a sixth season, Reed would've either been replaced with another actor or Carol was going to become a widow.

[Dark Soul # 7]

In Scrubs they made a big deal in one episode how J.D. would have to share best man duties with Turk's brother. But then the brother never appeared during the actual wedding. No explanation was given.

[MyriVerse]

He could have been there, just not shown, because Turk and Carla didn't end up getting married normally. Turk missed the ceremony, and they ended up being married in the hospital by Turk's patient/a priest.

I do hope this subject comes up on the Fake Doctors, Real Friends podcast rewatch when they get to the episode. I wonder if DL Hughley wasn't available, so they came up with this story as a cover.

[Zero Hunter]

How about on The Big Bang Theory when Lenard got married and neither his brother or sister were there even though both had been mentioned many times.

[Cyke]

DS9, the Enterprise crew really should've been at Worf and Jadzia's wedding. It's understandable why not (it's in the middle of the ginormous Dominion War), but they didn't even get any lip service -- it simply could've been a couple lines of O'Brien asking if Picard and Co. were invited, to which Worf could say yes but they're too far/on assignment to participate. And so even if it's understandable, it's not actually canonically explained.

[Frontier]

Laurel Lance's funeral had her parents but not her best friend from the first two seasons who worked at the law firm with her.

[PCN24454]

Laurel Lance's funeral had her parents but not her best friend from the first two seasons who worked at the law firm with her.

To be fair, we wouldn’t have recognized them anyways.

[Frontier]

To be fair, we wouldn’t have recognized them anyways.

I mean, if you'd been watching the show up to that point, you'd at least expect her to be there.

[Sacred Knight]

Mee-Maw not being at Sheldon and Amy's wedding in Big Bang Theory was a huge omission, especially since the character had been previously cast and utilized. The explanation was that they didn't want to use her to clash with Young Sheldon's much different characterization of her. Unfortunately even a phone call between Sheldon and her in the episode explaining her absence had to be cut for time, so she just ended up not being mentioned at all, which was a shame.