Family Guy Fans Are Wondering: Where Is Mort's New Wife?
Any good animated sitcom worth its salt needs an eclectic cast of supporting characters. "Family Guy" has them by the barrel-full, and one of the side characters who has gotten the most development over the years is Mort Goldman, one of the show's most popular characters. The owner of Mort's Pharmacy went through a tragic loss when his wife, Muriel, died in "And Then There Were Fewer."
This character's death actually stuck, and Mort remained a widower for quite some time. That all changed in Season 19's "The Marrying Kind," when Mort invites all of his friends to New Orleans to see him marry his new girlfriend, Rachel. It seemed like a new beginning for the character, but despite that episode coming out several years ago, viewers haven't seen much of Rachel since then.
Redditor u/MainHead8409 pondered precisely this: "She got married to Mort 2 seasons ago and yet she hasn't appeared again." Other "Family Guy" fans had theories about why Rachel hasn't become a prominent player on the series.
Fans haven't seen much of Mort either
There's not much we know about Rachel Goldman. She fills her home with potatoes and applesauce, and she's the niece of Madeleine Albright. But she hasn't really had much of a role in future episodes of "Family Guy." Fans have taken notice of this and have pointed out how Mort isn't used as much as he used to.
In the Rachel Goldman thread on Reddit, u/wfwood wrote, "I [honestly think] morts being phased out. The jew jokes were super edgy 20 years ago. They aren't landing the same anymore." It deserves to be said that Mort does basically exist as a Jewish caricature, and the same kind of joke can get old after a while. The same could be said of Herbert, who basically made a bunch of pedophile jokes. While they still show up every so often, it seems the show is trying to pull back on relying on them as much.
The show's even received backlash in the past. A spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League in New York had this to say of one episode, "There are times when [Seth] MacFarlane's proclivity for dabbling in classic antisemitic motifs, such as the charge that Jews are money-grubbing and greedy, or the notion that Jews control Hollywood, which he used in the Oscars sketch last year, clearly cross a line."
Redditor u/jaydimes10 could see real-world influences impacting Mort and his new wife popping up: "It would make sense to tamper down on the Jew jokes in a current era when anti-Jewish crimes have risen, literal Neo-Nazi presence has risen, and antisemitism is on a rise in general." Many of the other comments are from people who didn't even remember the episode. But u/deadmallsanita was just happy that Mort found another wife: "Aw I know it's just a show, but I want to see mort happy." Even if Rachel doesn't come to the forefront again, at least viewers can rest easy knowing Mort found happiness ... just so long as the show doesn't kill off his wife again.