Mail-order Bride
A lonely, single man gets fed up with dating and orders a wife from a catalog. Usually the bride-to-be comes from another country.
My Name is Earl
Appearances
- The Addams Family: Season 1, episode 3, "Fester's Punctured Romance" (1964). Uncle Fester is lonely, so he writes a letter to a "lonely hearts" column, mistaking it for a mail-order bride service. When a cosmetics saleswoman comes to the door, everyone mistakes her for Fester's mail-order bride.
- The Munsters: Season 1, episode 10, "Autumn Croakus" (1964). Grandpa is lonely, so he decides to order a wife from a "matrimonial agency."
- Barney Miller: Season 8, episode 5, "Stress Analyzer" (1981). Inspector Luger asked Barney to write some letters to a few prospective mail-order brides for him, but he's not happy with how Barney made him sound.
- Barney Miller: Season 8, episode 14, "The Arrival" (1982). Luger's mail-order bride from the Philipines turns up at the precinct to get married, and Luger has second thoughts.
- Wings: Season 6, episode 14, "Fools Russian" (1995). Roy ecstatically announces to the gang that he's getting married. When they ask how he met his bride-to-be, he says he ordered her through a Russian mail-order bride catalog.
- Beavis and Butt-Head: Season 7, episode 20, "The Bride of Butt-Head" (1997). Butt-Head tries to buy a mail-order bride, but he doesn't have any money, so the guy from the service sends him Katya, an angry Russian woman who yelled at him because the husband he gave her didn't work out. He lies and tells Katya that Butt-Head is rich, and she's understandably pissed when she realizes he's broke.
- Malcolm in the Middle: Season 3, episode 9, "Reese's Job" (2002). Pete tells Francis and the guys that his fiancé is coming soon. When they express skepticism, he explains that he ordered a mail-order bride from Russia named Svetlana, but it turns out he accidentally ordered a blow-up doll through the mail.
- My Name is Earl: Season 1, episode 12, "O Karma, Where Art Thou?" (2006). Earl is making up for robbing Jasper's pawn shop, and Jasper proudly tells him that he's "online" now and introduces Earl to his "Russian bride," Tatiana, whom he ordered over the internet.