THE 25 GREATEST TV MOMS, PART 2

Welcome back to Part 2 of my list of the 25 Greatest TV Moms!  Without further ado, let's get to the list...

15. Phyllis Lindstrom
Show: The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Long before Amy Poehler played the “cool mom” in Mean Girls, there was Phyllis Lindstrom.  Phyllis was an enlightened 70s supermom: she had her daughter Bess call her by her first name, talked openly about their feelings, and even let Bess perform in a middle school production of Hair (they played the nude scenes with their clothes on).  But the real joke was that behind her efforts to play it cool Phyllis was as neurotic and overprotective as any other mother.

Episode to Watch: “The Birds…and…um…Bess”  
Phyllis turns to Mary when it comes time to tell daughter Bess about the facts of life.

14.Thelma Harper
Show: Mama’s Family & The Carol Burnett Show

After posting her picture online in honor of Mother’s Day, I was thrilled to discover how much people still love and remember Mama.  Spinning out the popular Carol Burnett Show skits, Mother Harper (played by the significantly younger and uber-talented Vicki Lawrence) ruled the roost.  She was constantly putting her children, daughter-in-law and nephew in their place but when the chips are down who wouldn’t want Mama on their side?  Her particular brand of crotchety common sense reminds me of another icon of mine: Judge Judy!

Episode to Watch: “Mama Gets Goosed”
Mama plans on killing a live goose for Christmas dinner, much to her family’s dismay.

13. Endora
Show: Bewitched

If I was doing a list of TV’s greatest mother-in-laws Endora would have to be number one.  While she gave her son-in-law hell, Endora was actually a great mother to daughter Samantha.  She always challenged Samantha to aim higher and not to abandon her magical heritage.  Think of what a boring show Bewitched would have been without Endora causing trouble! She was also separated (divorced?) from Sam’s father Maurice, making her something of a feminist TV pioneer: a powerful, liberated, single mother.

Episode to Watch: “Trick or Treat”
On Halloween Endora transforms herself into a trick-or-treater (played by a young Maureen McCormick!) and curses what’s-his-name.

12. Aunt Bee
Show: The Andy Griffith Show

Aunt Bee is the second “mom” on the list who isn’t biologically a mother, but anyone who watched The Andy Griffith Show knows just how wonderful a surrogate mother she was to Andy, Opie and even Barney.  Slightly ditzy but full of heart, Bee was the beating heart of Mayberry.  I for one would kill to be invited to one of her Sunday suppers… minus the pickles, of course.

Episode to Watch: “The Pickle Story”
Aunt Bee’s loved ones can’t bring themselves to tell her that her homemade pickles taste atrocious and go to great lengths to protect her feelings.

11. Lorelai Gilmore
Show: Gilmore Girls

Lorelai Gilmore is the cool mom that Phyllis Lindstrom longed to be.  Of all the moms on this list Lorelai is probably closest to her kid; their relationship was more like that of sisters than mother and daughter.  At times Lorelai’s expectations and attempts to keep others out of their lives bordered on the pathological, but at the end of the day she’s a model single mother who got her daughter to the Ivy League and simultaneously became a successful businesswoman, and she did it (mostly) on her own terms.  

Episode to Watch: “Road Trip to Harvard”
After ditching her fiancé Lorelai takes daughter Rory on an inspirational trip to Harvard.

10. Lucille Bluth
Show: Arrested Development

Don’t get me wrong: Lucille Bluth is a terrible mother.  She’s monstrously selfish, hard-drinking, and highly critical.  Her adult children are a mess of neuroses, insecurities, and resentment as a result of her “style” of parenting.  Still, Lucille makes for some damn good TV, as she’ll stop at nothing to get her way and her children are her favorite pawns.  The most recent season of Arrested Development hinted at some growth for Lucille, but I personally hope she keeps up her evil ways in the future.

Episode to Watch: “My Mother the Car”
In which Lucille exploits her own son’s head injury to guilt him into getting closer to her and turn him against his siblings.

9. Charlotte Pickles
Show: Rugrats

Rugrats showed us several different modes of motherhood, as displayed by child-psychology addict Didi and feminist bruiser Betty.  However workaholic Charlotte will always be my favorite.  Charlotte always had her cell phone glued to her ear, barking orders at beleaguered assistant Jonathan and doing her mothering in short, concentrated bursts.  She left the majority of the parenting to her husband, which I always thought was rather neat.  Plus she wore a really killer blazer-skirt combo that Ally McBeal herself would lust after.

Episode to Watch: “Mommy’s Little Assets”
Charlotte brings Angelica and the babies to work with her, with both disastrous and surprising results.

8. Kate Gosselin
Shows: Jon & Kate Plus 8 & Kate Plus 8

Okay, I know Kate Gosselin is probably going to my most controversial choice, especially at #8.  I’m not endorsing her televised exploitation of her children or her bitchy behavior, but I also just can’t get enough of watching of her.  I’ve written before that Kate’s brand of suburb bitchery is right up my alley and no one can deny that when it comes to motherhood or her marriage, Kate makes for some memorable not-so-guilty pleasure TV.  I can't wait to see her on Celebrity Apprentice (I'll feel actually guilty about watching that one, but I can't stay away!).

Episode to Watch: “Shopping for Ten”
Kate memorably emasculates then-husband Jon while Christmas shopping at Toys’r’Us.

7. Sophia Petrillo
Show: Golden Girls

If Kate Gosselin’s inclusion on this list proves controversial, Sophia Petrillo not making the Top 5 may also rub some people the wrong way.  Despite her tiny frame Sophia dominated her daughter Dorothy; she was the ultimate truth teller, and her little old lady appearance let her get away with saying and doing a lot of otherwise shocking things.  Despite being described as a “vindictive little sea monkey” by her own daughter, you never once doubted the fierce maternal love that lay beneath Sophia’s acid disposition.  

Episode to Watch: “The Housekeeper”
Sophia is actually absent for most of this episode, which shows that things can go quickly go off the rails without her around.  When she does arrive back home she quickly cuts through the bullshit.

6. Helen Morgendorffer
Show: Daria

Like Charlotte Pickles, Helen Morgendorffer does not have a good work-life balance.  Also like Charlotte, Helen is usually seen on the phone or on her way out the door, heading to her job as a lawyer (maybe she worked at one point with Clair Huxtable?!). Unlike Charlotte, however, Helen makes more of an effort to connect to her two teen daughters, whether it’s mandated family dinners (with frozen lasagnas or husband Jake doing the cooking) or concentrated interrogations.  At the end of the day, however, Helen really was a great mom who genuinely cared for her family and managed to be there for them when it counted, despite her heavy workload. 

Episode to Watch: “Psycho Therapy”
Up for partner at her firm, Helen drags her family for a weekend of psychoanalysis, where she must own up to some of her failings as a mother.

Check back tomorrow when I reveal the Top 5!

VALENTINE'S DAY

Jon & Kate Plus 8
Season 3 (2008)

This month I used some Christmas cash to buy the first three seasons of Jon & Kate Plus 8 on DVD.  Nick was okay with it once he learned each season only cost around $3 and therefore Kate Gosselin wouldn’t be profiting much from my shopping spree (if spending $6 counts as a spree).  This Valentine’s Day episode comes from the show’s third season, meaning it’s pre-divorce, pre-Kate on Dancing with the Stars, pre-everything is horrible.   The kids are very young and unaffected and Jon and Kate are only gently bickering, as opposed to engaging in outright warfare.  

During the course of the episode Jon and Kate represent the two opposing views of Valentine’s Day.  Jon thinks it’s a fake holiday invented by greeting card companies.  He waits until Valentine’s Day itself to go out and buy Kate a present, which he “wraps” in the car.  He also throws a tantrum when she asks him to wear a festive tee-shirt.  “It’s a medium!” he yells in disgust before hurling the shirt on the ground.  Knowing the cheating, lawsuits and acrimony that lie just a couple of years ahead, the image of the discarded “I Love Kate” tee-shirt on the floor seems more than a little prescient.  Plus it really bothers me that the shirt actually reads “I Heart Love Kate” and therefore makes no sense.

I Heart Love You Too

Kate, on the other hands, goes all out for the holiday in a way that I can only admire.  She decorates, puts together little gift bags for the kids, and proudly wears her “I Heart Love Jon” shirt.  She also themes all of the kids' food, making heart-shaped pancakes, heart-shaped grilled cheese and even cutting cucumbers into hearts.  I am a sucker for themed holiday food of any kind, so I highly approve.  

Heart-Shaped Grilled Cheese & Cucumbers for 6

Kate also creates edible Play-Doh for the kids (the one kid that tries to eat everything also tries to eat paper hearts at one point) and organizes a scavenger hunt in the house.  Every single thing seen and done in this episode is somehow themed to the holiday, thanks to Kate’s efforts, and this is a pre-fame version of Kate that’s quite likeable.  She seems to be doing everything to genuinely make a nice holiday for her kids, as opposed to doing it for the sake of the cameras.  This truly is the show at its peak, and by the next season it would all start to grow tainted by fame, money and out-of-control egos.

While decorating, it's best to coordinate one's outfit with the paper cut-outs

I know a lot of you are probably more sympathetic to Jon’s view of Valentine’s Day as a sort of bullshit holiday, but I of course am all for it. And I say that as someone who actually worked at a greeting card store for a couple of years and witnessed the hordes of last-minute husbands and boyfriends, like Jon in this episode, desperately buying whatever they could lay their hands on to alleviate the romantic pressure.  But I believe that we need Valentine’s Day to break up the doldrums of February and rather than ignore it, I agree with Kate in trying to make it even more of a big deal than it already is, replete with decorations and themed food and outfits.  As Kate says in this episode, it’s all about love-- whether that’s love for your kids, your soon-to-be-ex husband, or simply the holiday itself.

Recurring Themes: Jon runs out to the mall and does some Last Minute Shopping (which is also a Christmas trope!).

Valentine’s Day Quotient: 5

See It, Skip It, Own It?
This is a charming episode and chockfull of Valentine’s goodness.  Watch and enjoy!

HALLOWEEN

Quints by Surprise

Season 3 (2011)

I’ve already written about my fondness for Jon & Kate Plus 8 (most of it, anyway) but I’ve always asserted the appeal lay not in the kids but in the personalities of the parents.  That theory has certainly been proven true now that I’ve watched Quints by Surprise, TLC’s tame replacement for the delicious Gosselin train wreck. 

And boy was TLC playing it safe when they cast this show!  After the Jon and Kate implosion they went in the extreme opposite direction, trading bitchery for extreme niceness.  The Bland McBlandersons are the most boring family on television.  Think of the moderately good-looking couple in high school that hung with the popular kids but had zero personalities except for the fact they dated each other steadily and seemed destined for marriage.  Well, they got married, moved to Austin and had quintuplets (plus one other kid).  The end.

Generic Blonde Wife and her slightly Cavemanish Generic Husband spend this episode half-heartedly decorating for Halloween, going to a pumpkin patch and dressing their kids as the characters from The Wizard of Oz before taking them trick-or-treating.  Everything they do in this episode is Halloween-related but everything they do is also mind-numbingly boring so who cares?  Seriously, the most exciting thing that happens in this episode is when one of the quints falls down and bleeds but then is fine.  Ho hum.  I’m not saying I wanted the kid to be permanently injured but I wanted SOMETHING interesting to happen.

Even I am not immune to this level of adorableness

One of the little girls is obsessed with scarecrows, which I thought was a cute little kid thing to be obsessed with.  I was temporarily impressed that the parents were at least going to let two of the girls go as Glinda (one was “Good Witch” and one was “Good Witch Princess”) rather than make them each fulfill a different role but then sure enough the mom brainwashed one of the two Glindas by suggest-ordering her with “You want to be the bad witch, right?”  So much for that brief moment of non-conformity.   

Halloween Quotient: It honestly probably deserves a 3 based on how Halloween-centric it is but I was so bored I’m giving it a 2.

See It, Skip It, Own It?

Skip it and go watch a Jon & Kate Plus 8 Halloween episode (or any episode) instead.

GOSSELINS, GOBLINS & GHOULS

Kate Plus 8 (2010)

I am an unapologetic fan of Jon & Kate Plus 8 and to a lesser degree Kate Gosselin herself, despite her many glaring flaws.  She’s a type of bitchy that I can appreciate and that makes for good TV.  Even I must admit, however, that past the first few seasons the show degenerated into a fame-whoring mess, going from a realistic look at parents navigating the challenges of having eight young kids to a shrill single mom posturing for the cameras.  Unfortunately this episode falls into the latter half, as it was part of a series of specials that came post-divorce.

Kate has replaced Jon with a plastic pumpkin head.  Upgrade?!

Kate is living in the manse, sporting the extensions, manicured nails and fake tan that mark her post-fame transformation.  Any sense of reality is lost as she stops to sign autographs while shopping and when it comes time to decorate the basement she’s helped solely by the camera crew in lieu of a husband, family or friends.  A fair amount of the episode is taken up with non-holiday related things like the return of the family dog.  It gets dull fast; so dull that halfway through Nick elected to go do the dishes rather than watch the rest of the episode.  Now that’s dull!  Despite these flaws, however, there is some Halloween goodness to be found. 

First Kate lives out one of my fantasies by going on a Party City shopping spree, randomly stuffing three carts full of Halloween decorations in order to create a haunted basement for her kids.  Clearly Party City is footing the bill; indeed you get the sense that throughout this episode Kate doesn’t actually pay for anything, whether it’s pumpkins, dog treats or hay rides.  Still it’s fun to watch her navigate the aisles and later return with the kids to pick out costumes amid the usual last-minute costume mob.

Other Halloween highlights include a trip to the pumpkin patch, a game of toilet paper mummy wrapping, a hayride, pumpkin carving and a trick-or-treating finale.  Cara forgoes a costume and goes as “Cara Gosselin” which violates every tenet of Halloween decorum that I value.  She is forever disqualified from Halloween! 

The kids and their costumes.  And Cara.

All of the above scenes are enjoyable but cracks constantly appear to remind the viewer that this family is living anything but an ordinary life.  While on the aforementioned hayride, in one of the episode’s more surreal moments, Kate recalls the very first episode of the show, in which the family also went to a pumpkin patch.  She asks the kids if they remember and they respond by saying that of course they do because it’s all on the tapes. They’ve traded actual memories for taped episodes of their own show. 

Now that’s scary!

This post brought to you by the good people at Party City.

Recurring Themes: Alexis wears the ever-popular Cleopatra Costume while Kate designs a basement Homemade Haunted House for the kids.

Halloween Quotient: It would be a 4 if not for the bloated running time and non-Halloween stuff crammed in, so this rates a 3.

See It, Skip It, Own It?

This episode is up on Netflix so see it if you have the time and can tolerate this tainted version of Kate Gosselin.  Otherwise you can skip it in favor of the superior Season 1 episode “Ten Little Pumpkins.”