Only in Our World

SCHEFFER
This is a scene that could only happen in the world of our television series - one of the wives is sort of trying to steal the mother away from another one of the wives. I don't think that happens in many worlds. You're not usually trying to steal your mother-in-law, you're trying to get rid of her.

OLSEN
But the dynamic is universal. What I can tap into with it is that every son or daughter holds a primary connection with their parent, even when they're married, and they want to know the parent is on their side. I think there's a lot of jealousy that happens, you know: Does my mother like my spouse more than me?

Outing Margie

OLSEN
The scene is a dance between mother and child. Ginger is going out of her way to punish Margie. She's a very insecure woman, and her strongest objection to Margie being a polygamist is that Margie didn't tell her first. She feels like second banana, and that upsets her tremendously. Because this is her daughter who she's turned into a devoted fan.

That, truthfully, comes out of my mother. She was so upset that she was the last to find out that I was gay, that she was the last one that was told...

SCHEFFER
That that was the main issue -- it wasn't about being gay, it was about being the last to know.

OLSEN
She felt it was such a violation of our relationship that she was not the first to know. I think the line Ginger uses on Bill, "You kept it a secret... you didn't tell me because you're ashamed of it," that's something my mother said to me. She was just so angry.

Nicki's Story

SCHEFFER
And there's also Nicki's story. She's been disowned by her own mother and so she is kind of vulnerable to everything that Ginger is playing. She's eating up Ginger's attention.

Ginger Horns In

OLSEN
In the writers' room last year, we kind of came up with the backstory of Margie's relationship with her mother: that Ginger was kind of a serial monogamist, that she had a lot of boyfriends, and it was kind of an unstable home for Margene. There was a divorce - at a minimum one - in the back story. They moved around from place to place, just a bump up from being very blue collar.

SCHEFFER
This year what really came out when we were discussing the character was a more competitive relationship that she had with Margene. Margene specifically felt that Ginger had kind of horned in on her relationships in the past.

Delicious Moments

OLSEN
I think the day we really landed Ginger was the day of the final cut. We had to wrestle with our tendencies to write over the top, we had to wrestle with delicious moments, one after the other, to make her as credible as we could.

Most of the little ornaments we hung on Ginger were all pretty much taken from real life. That applique sweater, with the lights, was something that was very popular in Nebraska, where I'm from.

SCHEFFER
And we were just talking about her shoulder pads and her New Jersey way of dressing. The fact that she's trapped in the disco music of the 1970's. It's kind of a mixture of Mark's background and mine.

Cutting Back on the Booze

OLSEN
Between the first draft and the final shooting script, we pulled back on the amount Ginger drinks. We did not want to saddle her with that label. We didn't want Margene's issues to be, oh, my mother's a drunk. We wanted them to have a real song and dance that they do together - their co -dependency and their mutual love, and yet their mutual hurt.

A Turning Point for Margie

OLSEN
We could write Ginger and Margie scenes until the cows come home, because they're funny in their situation and all, but the question came up in the writers' room: What is the point of it, what is the story we're leading up to?

It was only after we were tabling the script with the writers that got an answer: It's the turning point for Margie in the season. It's where Margie grows up. It's where Margie hears from Ginger, honey, wise up, it's always about power. And that washes over Margie in the final cut.

You define characters, but they can't stay in that place forever. Margene could not stay the clueless, babydoll, naive wife forever.

A Lot of Ammo

SCHEFFER
After a table reading we get a lot of great suggestions from the writers in the room. I remember one of our favorite lines is when Margene wakes Ginger up after her drunken dance with Bill and Ginger says, "Crap, oh, crap. I'm still here." Jeanette gave us that one.

And I think the 'March of the Penguins' line is from Eileen. That's a great moment: Ginger says you don't have to see it, because I already saw it. When you write a mother, you do get a lot of ammunition from all the other writers, so it's fun to sit in the room. You hear all their stories.

A Lost Moment

OLSEN
One thing I regret did not make the final cut is a payoff moment. In the backyard, Nicki had sidled up to Margie to tell her that Ginger has lost her job, that her boyfriend's was moving out. And the camera pans over to Ginger, who is just giving Margie a look.

In the very last scene, when Margie is throwing her out, she asks Ginger, what are you going to do, Mom, you lost your job? And Ginger just kind of dismissively wags her head and goes, "Oh, I just made all that up." We had to go out on a deeper point, but I'm sorry we lost it because I think it's so funny.