Monica Burke

Monica Burke is the soft-spoken but immensely passive-aggressive and selfish mother of Mel Burke and Meredith Scanlon. She is wife to Russell Burke and grandmother to Lennox and Ryder Scanlon. She is portrayed by Rita Rudner in Season 2, Episode 12: "Mother of All Problems".

Monica appears to be in her early 50's and is accustomed to a luxury lifestyle. Like all Burkes, she has a strong affinity for alcohol, though it is implied that her level of drinking and her non-prescription use of the drug, Valium, heavily borders on substance abuse.

Mel and Meredith
She was never an attentive mother to either Mel or Meredith and openly stated that she thought of children as an inconvenience. After Mel was arrested for the third time in high school, Monica pressured Russell into getting a vasectomy.

Russell Burke
Monica shares a dysfunctional relationship with her husband; both of them have had numerous extra-marital affairs during the course of their 40 years of marriage but still regularly manage to fall back together and go traveling.

Ryder
Monica does not even remember his name as she calls him "Tall Boy".