Bonnie Kelly

Bonnie Kelly is Charlie Kelly's mother, and a recurring character in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Personality[]

Charlie's mom is a sweet and timid woman who is attracted to cruel men like Frank or Luther. ^[3x11] She is not attracted to Dennis ^[2x5].

She is quite neurotic and emotional and is prone to dramatic episodes ^[1x7]. She seems to harbor many irrational fears. For example, she won't let Mrs. Mac bring her dog when she moves in because she is afraid dogs will "eat her face." She also says she doesn't go to the supermarket because "shopping carts are dangerous." She seems to have a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. She has to flip light switches three times and spin or else she believes Charlie will die ^[6x6].

Her brother, Jack Kelly, is implied to be a pedophile who would sneak into Charlie's room as a kid. Jack rents a room from Bonnie in Season 5 but, by Season 6, he has moved out and Mrs. Mac moves in as Bonnie's roommate ^[6x6].

Bonnie also has twin daughters, Bunny and Candy. They now live in New Jersey and they don't interact with her much, but Bonnie still sent them the Kelly family heirloom–a jar of teeth.

Biography[]

Early Life[]

Bonnie was born in 1949. Around 1975, she spent some time in Ireland sleeping with multiple men, including Shelley Kelly, who may have been Charlie's biological father. She also had a one-night stand with Frank Reynolds thirty years prior to the end of Season 2, possibly making him Charlie's biological father as well. Frank insisted she terminate the pregnancy. They went together to have the procedure done, albeit in a back-alley cheap way. The abortion "didn't take", and Charlie was born three months later. ^[3x1]

When Charlie was a child, men dressed up as Santa would present him with gifts (which were rarely toys) before going upstairs to "cheer" his mother up, as Charlie puts it. This has convinced Mac that Charlie's mom was a prostitute. ^[5x13]

Season One[]

When Dennis and Dee assume Charlie was molested by a gym teacher, they tell Mrs. Kelly, who breaks down in hysterics. She helps them hold an intervention for Charlie, complete with a doll where she instructed Charlie to point where he was hurt. Since he wasn't actually molested, he had to pretend so the McPoyle brothers didn't get angered. ^[1x7] Alternatively, he could be referencing Uncle Jack’s implied molestation of Charlie when he was a child.

Season Two[]

To get back at Charlie, Dennis attempts to bang Mrs. Kelly, but she rejects him because she says she is not attracted to him. ^[2x5]

Frank tells Charlie that he is going on a date with someone he had a one-night stand with about 30 years previously. The date turns out to be with Mrs. Kelly, and since the date would have taken place around the time he was conceived, Charlie comes to the conclusion that Frank must be his biological father. ^[2x10]

Season Three[]

Charlie continues to try to figure out if Frank is his father. Frank tells him he took Bonnie to get an abortion after she told him she was pregnant, but later Mrs. Kelly tells Charlie that while that's true, he survived the abortion. ^[3x1]

Mrs. Kelly later reconnected with Frank, enjoying his harsh treatment and becoming his "bang-maid," but she quickly transferred her affections to the luring Luther McDonald after meeting him at a dinner party thrown by Charlie and Mac. ^[3x11]

Season Four[]

Mrs. Kelly is at Charlie and Mac's "funeral" (which they are watching from the heating ducts.) Mrs. Kelly cries through it, but Mac is bothered that his mother "watched a whole episode of Mama's Family then fell asleep." After the funeral, Frank tries to get her to go into the men's bathroom (for gloryhole purposes), but she insists that she “doesn’t need to go potty”. ^[4x6]

Season Five[]

After he loses his job at Paddy's, and Frank informs him that he has sublet their apartment so he can no longer live there, Charlie asks Mrs. Kelly if he can move back in. She tells him she's already rented the room to his uncle Jack, but if he wants to share the room with Uncle Jack, that's fine with her. Uncle Jack likes the idea—probably a bit too much. Charlie doesn't, so he leaves, and ends up sleeping in a box by the river. ^[5x3]

Dee hosts a bachelorette party for The Waitress, which she hopes will drive her away from her fiancé, Brad Fisher, who Dee wants to start dating. Part of the plan is to have Mrs. Kelly there, so that she will get very drunk and make a scene about Charlie being hurt. It works too well: she gets very, very drunk, blurts out "Everyone's trying to take my Charlie girl!", and she throws her drink in Dee's face. The Waitress and Brad leave, Dee's plan apparently thwarted. ^[5x5]

Charlie and Mac go to visit Mrs. Kelly for Christmas, which leads Charlie to reminisce about Christmases of old, when a parade of Santa's would come "cheer up" Mrs. Kelly and bring Charlie presents. Mac tells him that sounds like his mother was a prostitute. Charlie does not take the news well, and takes it out on a Santa at the mall ("Did you fuck my mom, Santa?") ^[5x13]

Season Six[]

After Uncle Jack moves out, Mrs. Kelly constantly calls Charlie asking him to do things for her, such as vacuum the ceiling. When Mrs. Mac burns down her house, Charlie and Mac, with assistance from Dennis, decide it would be good for them to move in together. It doesn't go smoothly at first: Mrs. Kelly is offended by Mrs. Mac's smell, and her smoking, and Mrs. Mac is offended by Mrs. Kelly's obsessive-compulsive need to turn off all the lights in the house three times, which wakes her up. In the end, though, they bond over their shared racism towards the Muslims who live next door. ^[6x6]

Season Eight[]

Mrs. Kelly tells Charlie that she has lung cancer, probably from Mrs. Mac's smoking. She says she needs $4,200 to get treatment from a "Dr. Jinx". The Gang hosts a "beef and beer" at Paddy's to raise the money, and as part of that, they ask her to give a speech about her cancer. They also put a bald cap on her and Artemis paints lesions and sores on her face to make her look sicker. Mrs. Kelly objects to the graphic nature of the speech, and immediately after giving it, she says she can't continue the act, and admits that she and Mrs. Mac ran over a statue of the Virgin Mary at their church, and she told Charlie she had cancer to get the money to pay for having it fixed. ^[8x6]. In episode 13 of season six it is made clear that on Christmas day every year she exchanged sex for small presents or knick knacks and money with many people dressed as various Santa Clauses.

Season Ten[]

In their effort to clear Luther McDonald of murder charges, Mac and Charlie see that Mrs. Kelly has been visiting Luther in jail. When they ask her about this, she reveals that Luther had been staying with her. She tells Mac and Charlie a rather uncomfortable story about having a threesome with Luther and a guy named Eduardo Sanchez, who then killed someone afterwards. Both Charlie and Mac express their preference that she'd just told them about the murder, and not included the part about the threesome ("Eduardo was in my mouth, and Luther was in my butt") first. ^[10x7]

Bonnie, along with Mrs. Mac, gets involved in Ass Kickers United, the cult that Dennis founds in an effort to keep Mac from eating his Thin Mint cookies. She finds the intense exercise regimen, which Frank is hoping to take advantage of to offer "physical therapy" (i.e. banging) to women in the cult who get injured, to be exhausting and says she is in intense pain, which Frank doesn't particularly care about. Later, when Frank does manage to get a very hot woman in the cult to let him give her some "hydrotherapy" (i.e. bang him in the bathtub at Dee's apartment), he finds Bonnie and Mrs. Mac already in there, soaking in the warm water. ^[10x10]

Season Twelve[]

Charlie receives a distressing letter from Bonnie that leads him to believe that Mrs. Mac is abusing her. Dennis offers to set up his camera system in Bonnie's house to see what's going on. When Dennis sees the footage they're getting back, he decides that they could make a sitcom out of it. He is especially impressed by Bonnie, and says that she could be a star out of this. It turns out the letter was simply Bonnie telling Charlie she misses him, and Mrs. Mac is not abusing her at all. Dennis pulls the plug on the sitcom. ^[12x3]

Season Thirteen[]

Bonnie attends the Boggs Reboot with Mrs. Mac, Dee, Artemis, and the Waitress. While on the plane en route to a women's march in California, she freaks out about the all-female crew, drinks nine beers and about twenty-nine wines, hooks up with Frank, and tries to open the emergency exit mid-flight when Mrs. Mac smokes in the bathroom and the smoke alarm goes off. At one point, she gets strapped into the wall. She makes it to California with Mrs. Mac, where she drinks yet another wine on the baseball field. ^[13x3] Though she does not appear in the episode, Charlie tells The Gang in "The Gang Solves The Bathroom Problem" that Bonnie would have him cross-dress in order to go to the bathroom in the women's room when he was younger.

Appearances[]

Notes[]

She learned from her son how to pretend to have cancer in order to get what you want. ^[8x6]
In "Charlie's Mom Has Cancer", on her "save Bonnie from cancer" poster boards it reveals that Bonnie was born in 1949.