TV moms used to be a saintly lot: June Cleaver (Barbara Billingsley), Donna Stone (Donna Reed) or Harriet Nelson. They knew when their kids needed a hug, a reassuring word or a gentle reprimand. Well, those days are long gone. Many a traumatized screen writer has unleashed a catalog of Mothers From Hell upon TV families and viewers. They’re colder and meaner than ever. They use their kids to help sell drugs. They feed them out of vending machines. You get the picture. Here are 15 reasons to be thankful that these moms aren’t yours.
1. Livia Soprano
“The Sopranos”
When you try to rub out your only son, Tony (James Gandolfini) through a mob hit, no less, you earn your place right at the top of the list of TV’s Worst Mothers. Livia Soprano was a wretch her whole life. Whenever anyone complained to her, she immediately shot back, “Poor you!” As masterfully played by Nancy Marchand, Livia ushered in a new era of bad behavior among TV moms. She laughed when Tony realized she was the one who tried to kill him. She laughed again when he tripped and fell down the steps in front of her house. Grandchildren were not spared her gloomy outlook. When A.J. (Robert Iler) visited her in a nursing home and asked her for life advice, she sneered, “It’s all a big nothin’. What makes you think you’re so special?”
2. Nancy Botwin
“Weeds”
Suburban mom Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) turned to casual pot dealing when her husband, Judah (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), dropped dead. Her devotion to her new career eventually turned her two sons — Silas and Shane — into drug dealers and pot growers. Shane, who began the series as a precocious boy, has proven himself a sociopath and a murderer. Nancy did redeem herself, a bit, by taking the rap for Shane and serving three years in a detention center. But still.
3. Shirley Partridge
“The Partridge Family”
Don’t be fooled by the sunny, middle-of-the-road AM radio hits recorded by the spawn of Shirley Partridge (Shirley Jones). OK, she was a widow. As Livia Soprano would say, “Poor her.” But did Partridge have to use her kids to make a living? She subjected them to bad musical arrangements, life on a tour bus and a legacy of mediocre music.
4. Helena Cassadine
“General Hospital”
This villainous matriarch, originated by Elizabeth Taylor and now played by Constance Towers, has a habit of matter-of-factly disposing of her progeny when they disappoint her in her long, convoluted vendetta against the Spencer family. She kept firstborn Stavros on ice (literally) for years, repeatedly tried offing second son Stefan and stepdaughter Alexis, and this year revealed she had a daughter years ago whose only purpose was to seduce a Spencer — and when it didn’t work out, had the girl shot to death.
5. Betty Draper
“Mad Men”
In her next life, Betty Draper (January Jones) will probably come back as an ice machine. Big, cold cubes dispense from her Grace Kelly mouth every day and most of these fall into the lap of her daughter, Sally. “Sally looks fat,” says Betty, looking at a family photo. When she caught Sally smoking, she pulled her by the hair, forced her into a closet and locked the door. “Dad left you because you’re stupid and mean,” Sally says in defense. Does Betty think she’s too harsh on Sally? Not a chance. “She’s a child, she’ll get over it.”
6. Estelle Costanza
“Seinfeld”
With a voice shrill enough to dislodge your fillings, Estelle Costanza (Estelle Harris) was the Jewish mother to end all Jewish mothers. Nagging? Demoralizing? Annoying? Estelle had all three in spades. In a classic episode, she came into a room where her son, George (Jason Alexander), had taken down his pants to, shall we say, take matters in hand. The shock was so severe for Estelle she wound up in the hospital, in traction. George hung his head in shame as Estelle berated him: “I go out for a quart of milk. I come home and find my own son treating his body like it was an amusement park. Too bad you can’t do that for a living. You’d be very successful. You’d sell out Madison Square Garden.” Oy.
7. Jackie Peyton
“Nurse Jackie”
Jackie (Edie Falco) is a big-city nurse with a monkey on her back: a huge pill habit. As such, her kids, Grace and Fiona, will never come first. Jackie once almost dropped one of her pills inside one of their lunches. Even after Jackie finally went to rehab, she lied to her counselor to get out early. Grace finally got wise to her mother and decided to live with her dad. who had already moved out of the house.
8. Lucille Bluth
“Arrested Development”
A three-martini mom, Lucille Bluth (Jessica Walter), pitted her offspring against each other to retain her fortune and stave off boredom. Although she claimed to love her four children equally — “except Gob, I never liked him” — Lucille reserved her vitriol for her youngest son, Buster (Tony Hale). She forced the grown man to attend icky “Motherboy” dances in costume and gloated when he lost his hand in a seal attack after he defied her rule about swimming in the ocean. Assuming his decision to join the Army was a vengeful ploy, Mama Bluth hung a banner at his going away party that read “You’re killing me, Buster.”
9. Lynette Scavo
“Desperate Housewives”
Stay-at-home mom Lynette (Felicity Huffman) engaged in some truly terrible behavior. She ditched her kids by the side of the road to teach them a lesson about following orders. She let people think her bald son had cancer (she shaved his head after gum got stuck in his hair) so she could put him in day care while she went for yoga — and then had to explain to him that he wasn’t actually dying. It only got worse when she started working full-time: She killed her son’s imaginary friend by running over its physical manifestation — an umbrella — with her car and then paid someone to kidnap her twins to prove that her husband was an irresponsible parent.
10. Peg Bundy
“Married With Children”
Lazy. Funny. But Peg (Katey Sagal) never cleaned up her bimbo act, spending most of her time planted in front of the TV, watching dopey talk shows. She didn’t clean. She hated cooking. She set a poor example for her children, running through her husband Al’s savings while taunting him about his salary and even sexual prowess.
— Additional reporting by Paige Albiniak, Tiffany Wendeln Connors and Maxine Shen