Piama Wilkerson (née Tananahaakna), (portrayed by Emy Coligado), is the wife of Francis. Her first appearance is in the episode "Hal's Birthday", in the third season. She was 19 years old when she married Francis (she is a bit older than him) and is of Inuit Native American descent.
Biography
Piama's life has been less than ideal; her mother left when she was only three years old, and her father kicked her out when she was fourteen for throwing away his liquor. She once spent three weeks in jail but claims it "wasn't her fault." and has been married once with no children. At first she and Lois do not like each other at all, as shown in 'Hal's Birthday' when Francis introduced her as his wife. Lois absolutely refused to acknowledge her as part of the family. Piama was the only one who didn't back down from a fight when she went after her. When the boys visit the dude ranch, she fakes a sickness just to have an excuse not to talk to Lois when she thought she came as well. After Lois is mistreated by Hal's family, she starts treating Piama better, seeing that the actions against her by her husband's family reflect that she was being rude to her. Their relations change permanently after Hal and Francis take a motorcycle roadtrip against their wives' wishes, where they happily break all of Francis' gifts as punishment.
She later comes to work for the Mannkussers at the dude ranch with Francis. She mostly serves as a voice of reason between Francis and his family. Although it has never been directly stated (Francis says she is "fiery" in "Hal's Birthday"), the series hints that both her attitude towards Francis and others, and her mannerisms, are very much like Lois'.
During Season 3, Piama was in a heated conflict with Lavernia for the way she mistreated Francis at the logging camp. She even took her pet parakeet hostage to force Lavernia to treat him better, or else she would have killed it.
Piama has been shown to be against the idea of having children, but grew out of this in the finale after Reese's prank with Ida for graduation goes awry, claiming that she and Francis might as well have kids as the resulting mess had desensitized her to diaper changing. She even supports Francis' decision not to tell Lois about his permanent stable job at Amerysis as a programmer since he enjoys making her life miserable by telling her that he's unemployed.
It was also shown in the episode "Baby", Ida is a bigot towards Piama. However because she wasn't dark enough to scare her, Ida considers Piama, a minor nuisance. She was instrumental in helping her reconcile with Susan and move out of the Wilkerson home. She suffers bigotry a second time in "Malcolm Films Reese", when a reporter who wrote a bad review of Otto's ranch, has scathingly insults her because of her Native American decent. This ended with Francis and Otto beating him senseless for his racial insults on Piama, even though Piama (given her fiery personality) could have easily done it herself.
Episode Appearances
- Hal's Birthday
- Hal Coaches
- Poker #2
- Cliques
- Monkey
- Zoo
- Family Reunion
- Stupid Girl
- Malcolm Holds His Tongue
- Boys At Ranch
- Grandma Sues
- Academic Octathalon
- Future Malcolm
- Baby Part 1
- Baby Part 2
- Vegas
- Thanksgiving
- Malcolm Films Reese
- Christmas Trees
- Malcolm Dates a Family
- Polly in the Middle
- Experiment
- Reese Joins the Army: Part 1
- Reese Joins the Army: Part 2
- Hal's Christmas Gift
- No Motorcycles
- A.A
- Graduation
Trivia
- Francis and Piama's relationship is much like the relationship of married couples from other sitcoms, like Basil and Sybil's relationship, from Fawlty Towers, of Frank and Betty's from Some mothers do 'Ave 'Em.
- Francis and Piama also resembles Hal and Lois, since the husbands tend to love their wives for their fiery, pushy personality, much to the detest of the other family members.