Nancy Gribble

Nancy Hicks-Gribble (age 40)^[1] is Dale's wife, Joseph's mother and weather-girl-turned-anchor for local news station Channel 84.

Appearance[]

Nancy is a beautiful, curvaceous woman. She has peach skin, a strongly-defined chin, and wavy blonde hair. Additionally, she wears a wide variety of clothing, but is seen typically wearing a pink collared shirt, purple studded earrings and blue jeans.

Personality[]

While Nancy is generally nice to most people, it is revealed in "Nancy Does Dallas" that left on her own, she is ambitious, viciously competitive, backstabbing and nasty to anybody who gets in her way, but looking after Dale keeps her so busy that she does not have the energy to fight with people. Nancy feels that she "needs Dale more than Dale needs her" because he softens her into a likable person with friends.

She tends to call everyone "Sug" (pronounced "Shug", a shortened form of "sugar"), including God in the episode "My Own Private Rodeo".

As a television personality, Nancy's hair and appearance are extremely important to her, which shows she has a great sense of vanity. Nancy seems to not react to stress well, as she began to experience devastating hair loss, and her mother (voiced by Rue McClanahan) reveals that she also had hair loss and that it was caused by the stress of breaking off her own love affair. From this, it is surmised (though only through to her mother's assumption) that the only cure for Nancy's hair loss is to continue the affair. Nancy decides to wear a wig, and be faithful to Dale. In the episode "Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow", it's revealed that Nancy won the "Best Hair Award" in high school.

Unlike her husband, Nancy is successful in her job, making enough to pay the bills, though Dale pays the cable bill. Dale admits that Nancy earns more money than he does, and she keeps a tight rein on their household expenses, thus revealing she is good at managing money. In one episode, Dale exclaims "I support this family!" and Nancy replies truthfully "I support this family; You pay the cable bill.". This is supported in "I Don't Want to Wait..."; Joseph says that The Bugabago does not have enough fuel. In fairness, Dale was probably talking about the time he spends at home to be there with Joseph. He resigned an executive office position for that reason, and probably worked a high paying job before Joseph was born.

Relationships[]

John Redcorn[]

Dale took an Oath Of Celibacy, and usually sleeps in the basement. They have little in common with each other, such as Dale joining The Gun Club, and their careers involve long hours away from each other. Dale felt comfortable to recruit John Redcorn as their personal bodyguard.

Nancy had a fourteen-year affair with John Redcorn, which produced her son, Joseph, although he eventually broke off the affair and she became a more faithful wife to Dale. The affair is known by almost all the neighbors. Peggy, however, was oblivious to this, being finally told by Hank. Dale and Joseph are seemingly the only ones who clearly do not know - which adds to the humor, since Dale is extremely paranoid, and Joseph is obviously of Native-American descent. Nancy broke up with John Redcorn in the season 4 episode "Nancy's Boys" when she and Dale began to reconnect. She also felt guilty when she realized Dale made it clear that, in spite of his strange behavior, still loves her to the point of sacrifice. Her past relationship occasionally leads to concerns about her marriage. At one point she was afraid that a pretty female exterminator was trying to steal Dale away from her. Nancy's suspicions were later confirmed. This could have been a dramatic reversal of fortune for Nancy, who had cheated on Dale right under his nose for many years. Much to her surprise, Dale remained extremely faithful. In this episode it was revealed that Nancy smokes, although her having a cigarette while observing Dale's comfort with the female exterminator may have been a one-time-only reaction of nerves. In the episode "Untitled Blake McCormick Project", Dale discovers a neighbor's child is Joseph's half-sister (John Redcorn's daughter through a brief affair with the girl's mother, around the time Nancy became pregnant with Joseph). This revelation makes Nancy jealous or more or less angered that she was apparently not his only lover in the past. Dale believes both children were fathered by him because he thinks aliens stole his sperm.

In Nancy Does Dallas, it is revealed that Nancy is as equally unethical as Dale Gribble, and even John Redcorn. She had taken advantage of a lonely hunk, not knowing that he was doing the same thing. Without Dale around, she would make even more mistakes in her life. Being far away from Dale resulted in her becoming an alcoholic and harassing her coworkers. She gets a different job at her Television Station again, working with Luanne Platter, and once again with John Redcorn. While clearly having feelings for John, she knows she belongs with Dale instead, and tries to keep from beginning a second affair with John Redcorn. She calms down slightly the moment that Dale loves Nancy even if she might go bald.

Dale Gribble[]

Nancy's husband of roughly twenty years. She appeared entirely loyal to him but, according to Hank, she met John Redcorn about two years after she married Dale and began having an affair. During majority of this time, she kept the affair hidden by using Dale's trust against him by claiming John Redcorn was healing her headaches. While she appeared to show some guilt about cheating on him, she continued the affair for several years until she fell in love with Dale again. Since falling in love with him again, Nancy is once more entirely devoted to Dale to the point of being labeled as clingy. Despite her love for Dale, Nancy does not ignore his antics and has tried numerous times to get him to obtain a regular 9-5 job. She appears accepting that he is into conspiracy theories but tries to keep him from out of control when looking into several theories. Nancy does love how Dale is a loving father to Joseph and finds this one of his most endearing qualities.

Trivia[]

Nancy is a former beauty queen, a fact which helped her get her job as a news anchor, and thus takes great interest in maintaining a youthful appearance.^[2]
It is revealed in "Peggy's Pageant Fever" that Nancy bleaches her hair blonde.
- Furthermore, in the episode "Gone With the Windstorm", she exclaims "I don't want to go to heaven with brown roots!" proving she is actually a brunette.
The scholarly article The Heart of Lightness: Hollywood's Wild West Show Revisited from UCLA's Journal of American Indian Culture and Research Journal mentions her relationship with Redcorn.^[3]
In Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow, Nancy reveals that in her family, big hair become bigger in every generation when she learned that she was going bald.