A mother lode of entertainment
Television is famous for giving us idealized mothers, including June Cleaver, Carol Brady, and Olivia Walton. But there are quite a few crazy mothers in our TV history, as well, and Mother's Day is a great opportunity to pay them homage for keeping us entertained. Here's a list of moms - from both comedies and dramas - who aren't exactly Disneyesque.
OH SNAP
Joy Turner, "My Name Is Earl"
Played by Jaime Pressly
Earl's ex is a trailer trash princess who is manipulative, selfish, and rude. And jealous. And stupid. And trampy. And she steals things. And she has a rage problem. And she is addicted to her BeDazzler. Love her! Loyal mother of Dodge and Earl Jr. and wife to Darnell, she has fabulous nails. Emmy winner Pressly is an endless kick.
COLD WAR: FAMILY EDITION Irina Derevko, "Alias" Played by Lena Olin
So let's get this straight. Daughter Syd grew up thinking her KGB spy mom was dead. Then, it turned out, Mom was alive and heading an evil organization. Then, it turned out, Mom put a hit on her daughter and so Dad killed her. Then, it turned out, Dad had killed a double and Irina was still alive. Then, it turned out . . . You get the picture. Olin was fierce as the shifty lady who actually told her daughter that her birth was a KGB assignment.
BRITTLE BRILLIANCE Margaret Chenowith, "Six Feet Under" Played by Joanna Cassidy
She was a psychiatrist, and she was a narcissistic cuckoo bird. She took over every room she entered. She kept no parental boundaries with her daughter Brenda (Rachel Griffiths) and son Billy (Jeremy Sisto), who both emerged from childhood with serious emotional issues. After her husband died, she became lovers with her son's ex-lover and art teacher. And I loved watching her. Happy Mother's Day, you crazy thing.
IT'S ALL ABOUT HER Christine Campbell, "The New Adventures of Old Christine" Played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Could she be any more self-centered? No, and that's why I love old Christine. She makes living in a narcissistic bubble into a hysterical adventure. Christine treats her son, Richie, like an extension of herself, and she tries to control his behavior; and yet he is turning out well despite her influence. Louis-Dreyfus milks Christine's exaggerated self-absorption for all its worth.
GOTH GREATNESS Morticia Addams, "The Addams Family" Played by Carolyn Jones
The original Goth mom, she was crazy in the best way. Her favorite color was black, and her recreational activities included getting stretched on a rack. She was an excellent mother to Wednesday and Pugsley, and a loving wife to her "Bubula," Gomez, whom she would drive wild by using French phrases. Her mother was played by Margaret Hamilton - yeah, the Wicked Witch of the West - but she was all elegant eccentricity.
FUMING Betty Draper, "Mad Men" Played by January Jones
She's warped, in a 1960s depressed, oppressed kind of way. A Bryn Mawr grad and former model, Betty is a complex woman who has been culturally programmed to be patient about her husband's infidelities. Gradually, she is learning to take control of her life, but she still inappropriately vents her anger at her two kids, Sally and Bobby, and particularly Bobby. About her mother, Betty once said: "She wanted me to be beautiful so I could find a man. There's nothing wrong with that, but then what? Just sit and smoke and let it go till you're in a box?"
BY GEORGE Estelle Costanza, "Seinfeld" Played by Estelle Harris
Overbearing? Check. Shrill? Check. Critical? Check. Funny? Oh yes indeed. George's mother was a Freudian nightmare who never failed to humiliate her son, and she is clearly at the root of his problems. She was known to hinder his dating life on occasion. When she caught George pleasuring himself in her house, in the classic episode "The Contest," she fell over in shock and landed in the hospital.
MAD MATRIARCH Lucille Bluth, "Arrested Development" Played by Jessica Walter
Vain and decadent, she was as nurturing as an icicle. Her domineering relationship with son Buster - they attended the annual Motherboy dance and won "Cutest Couple" a number of times - was bad. Her abusive treatment of everyone else, from her other children to her housekeepers, was even worse. And she had an affair with her husband's brother. Like so much about "Arrested Development," she was completely inappropriately hysterical.
GUILT TRIP Marie Barone, "Everybody Loves Raymond" Played by Doris Roberts
Wow. She was a walking instruction manual on bad mothering. Her two sons were adults, but she treated them like little boys, and she openly favored Ray over Robert. She put down her daughter-in-law Debra at every opportunity, and she used guilt to manipulate everyone around her. She was the funniest thing about this sitcom, and the Emmy-winning Roberts played her to the hilt.
OH YES SHE DID Tara Gregson, "United States of Tara" Played by Toni Collette
Rather than take medication for her dissociative identity disorder (DID), Tara lets her alternate personalities emerge. And they make home life kind of difficult for her two ever-patient kids and her saintly husband, Max (John Corbett). The Gregsons never know who's going to show up at school events - Tara or one of her growing coterie of alters. Good times.
SPACE MOM Mary Hartman, "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" Played by Louise Lasser
You don't get much further from "Father Knows Best" and "Leave It to Beaver." Played by a zoned-out Lasser, Mary Hartman embodied post-Watergate America - utterly unfocused and fixated on materialism. With her pigtails, looking like an oversize little girl, Mary struggled with her waxy yellow buildup while raising daughter Heather in a haze of consumerism.
MOTHERLY HICCUPS Edina Monsoon, "Absolutely Fabulous" Played by Jennifer Saunders
Being self-absorbed was the least of Eddy's issues. As she endlessly followed self-help trends, she was a drunken, pill-popping mess, a shopping addict, and a fashion disaster. Despite Edina's decadence, her daughter disappointed her by being a major Miss Goody Two-Shoes.
SIR YES SIR Lois, "Malcolm in the Middle" Played by Jane Kaczmarek
The mother of five boys, she had the temperament of a drill sergeant and treated child-rearing like war maneuvers. To say she was "strict" is to understate the case. She had to be crazy, just to keep the house from blowing apart. But she was also loyal and would go to any length to protect her family.
MURDEROUS ANGER Livia Soprano, "The Sopranos" Played by Nancy Marchand
She was a nightmare, to put it mildly. At one point, she actually tried to have her son, Tony, killed, after he put her in a nursing home. Scheming, depressed, paranoid, guilt-tripping, always complaining, Livia made everyone around her unhappy. And Marchand's dissonant, whiny voice made the character even more unbearable. She takes the prize for crazy mothers, hands down.
photo credits: nbc; anthony neste/hbo; adam taylor/warner bros.; brian ritchie/bbc; jordin althaus/showtime; saeed adyani/fox; vivian zink/abc; carin baer/fox; carin baer/amc; doug hyun/hbo; photofest; michael yarish/ap; richard cartwright/cbs 