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Mike Teavee
Mike Teavee.1
Gender: Male
Known Relatives: Mrs. Teavee (Mother)
Portrayed By: Paris Themmen (1971)
Jordan Fry (2005)
First Appearance: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

Mike Teavee is a fictional character in Roald Dahl's 1964 children's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Mike Teavee, ‘a boy who does nothing but watch television’, is the fourth Golden Ticket finder and the last child to be ejected from the tour. He is from Marble Falls, Arizona, in the 1971 film and from Denver, Colorado, in the 2005 film. His portrayal varies across the novel and films: in the novel, he is described as being adorned with eighteen toy pistols that he ‘fires’ while watching gangsters on television. In the earlier film, he watches Westerns and dresses as a cowboy. In the 2005 film, he plays video games and uses a complex method, involving consultation of the Nikkei Index, to find the Ticket. He is more bad-tempered than in previous incarnations, but also more intelligent.

In every version of the story, Mike makes many comments about the absurdities of the factory workings and of the reasoning of Wonka himself. Wonka dismisses almost all of these comments as mumbling. Mike is finally removed from the tour when he uses a machine Wonka created to transmit chocolate into televisions (where they can be plucked from the screen by the viewer) to send himself by television and is shrunk in the process. Wonka’s suggested remedy for this is to stretch him using the Taffy Puller (in the novel, he suggests a machine he uses to test the stretchiness of chewing gum). In the book and 2005 film, he is seen leaving the factory, but is now tall and thin.

A running gag in both books and movies is that Mike Teavee repeatedly tries to point out the factory system and the business' flaws to Willy Wonka but is always dismissed as mumbling by Wonka.

In the book, both of Mike's parents tour the factory with him and when he shrinks himself they cry that he will not be able to go to school anymore nor pursue hobbies. When Mike happily says that he can still watch television his furious father announces that the TV is causing his bad behavior and says that he will throw out the television when they get home much to Mike's anger. In the 1971 film, Mike is accompanied by his mother, who incorrectly attributes the piece Wonka plays on the musical lock to Sergei Rachmaninoff (the piece was actually by Mozart). Upon hearing Wonka’s proposed solution to Mike’s ‘accident’, she faints and is dragged away by two Oompa-Loompas. In the 2005 film, Mike is accompanied by his father, and when meeting Wonka he dismisses several snide comments or corrections of the factory of Mike as mumbling. In both films, Mike’s parent states that he or she is a geography teacher, during an argument with Wonka about the existence of Loompaland. In the book, this exchange occurs between Wonka and Veruca's mother.


Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Films vte
Main Films Willy Wonka & the Chocolate FactoryCharlie and the Chocolate Factory
Characters Augustus GloopArthur SlugworthCharlie BucketGrandpa JoeMike TeaveeVeruca SaltViolet BeauregardeWilly Wonka
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