Antonia: Idiot Savant or Just Idiot?

Version 1.1 (minor update)

Antonia, a Mad TV character which made its first appearance in Season Two, has emerged as one of the most popular recurring characters on the program, although this character does not seem to be as popular as the Vancome Lady. Unfortunately, we know very little about the development and nature of this character. As far as I know, Nicole Sullivan, the cast member who plays Antonia, has not commented publicly about Antonia. [On the contrary, she has commented on the Vancome Lady - see A Beginner's Guide to the Vancome Lady for further evidence of this.] Moreover, Antonia, unlike the Vancome Lady, is not the garrulous type - her speech is generally limited to things like "okee" and "it es possible." Nevertheless, I find this character intriguing because of this relative lack of information; Antonia is essentially an enigma, at least at first. Through an analysis of what little information about this character is available, however, I will attempt to offer some insight into this very popular and very funny character.

The first Antonia sketch I remember was during Season Two. Antonia (Nicole Sullivan) is an apparently clueless fast food worker and Phil LaMarr plays her boss. In this sketch, Antonia places a tray on top of the food instead of placing food on top of the tray and takes a bite out of a hamburger and then tries to give it to a customer. Finally, she gives the contents of the cash register to a customer (Debra Wilson). In this sketch (and in later sketches as well), Antonia is not very verbose, so we do not learn very much about her. By way of comparison, in the last Vancome Lady sketch, "Vancoma," we learned the following:

• The Vancome Lady is Catholic (I think it is safe to assume this, since a Catholic priest was called in to deliver last rites)
• The Vancome Lady's mother hates her, and she hates her mother.
• The Vancome Lady is an illegitimate child.

That's a lot of information, and I don't think that, cumulatively, we have learned as much about Antonia in the past two seasons. Nonetheless, over time we are able to develop a profile of Antonia, albeit a rather sketchy one. For example, we find out that her full name is Antonia Timmens (sic?). In one sketch, she is introduced on a game show as "a former Miss July" (is this a commentary on calendar girls?). She continually mentions that she has a cat named C.C. (autobiographical? Judge for yourself; Nicole Sullivan does have a cat named C.C.), although the way she pronounces "C.C." sounds strikingly similar to "feces." (Scatalogical!) She sees a psychiatrist in one sketch, and thus may have mental problems. Nevertheless, she makes an effort to live a normal life, or as normal as she possibly can, as demonstrated by her attempts to perform relatively simple jobs (e.g., a fast food worker, an anti-suicide hotline operator). Her wardrobe usually consists of a sweater and courderoy pants (did her mother pick these out for her?). After viewing a few of these sketches, one invariably considers two broad alternatives concerning Antonia's intelligence:

• It is possible that Antonia is actually highly intelligent. One day, she reached the conclusion that even as we approach the third millenium, human beings can get along with a relatively limited vocabulary. Perhaps she was, like the inventors of Newspeak in George Orwell's classic novel 1984, motivated by firmly-held ideological beliefs, or perhaps she was just being pragmatic. In either case, she undertook to reduce her total vocabulary to somewhere between 50 and 100 words. Given the rather simple and uncontrafibulated nature of her speech, it would be easy to mistake her for a congenital idiot, when, in fact, her manner of speaking could be quite ingenious.
• The other possibility is that with Antonia, what you see is what you get, and she is, in fact, quite brainless.

Although at this point I do not feel comfortable with making a final judgment regarding Antonia, right now I am leaning towards the latter explanation. The former explanation might be plausible, but only if there were some other indicators of Antonia's intelligence, and in the sketches, I just don't see any. I suppose one could conclude, after screening the anti-suicide hotline sketch (aired on January 31, 1998), that Antonia showed signs of intelligence by attempting to "stop" the man who phoned in from committing suicide, but a person of average or above average intelligence would probably conclude that this was not a very good idea, so even this probably indicates stupidity.

In short, there is probably even less to Antonia than meets the eye, and although this is only a tentative conclusion, most evidence points to Antonia essentially being a simpleton. Still, as she struggles through life, she is fun to watch, and if we can't laugh with her, we can at least laugh at her.