Happy Mother's Day, Livia Soprano! Just because you were bitter and spiteful and agreed to have your son killed doesn't mean you should get left off all of these “best moms on TV” lists. Blind sentimentality and old-school notions of motherly love mean you never make the cut.
Poor you.
But you were a great mom. A great mom to watch.
Here's a list of other great TV moms.
Marjorie Bouvier Simpson (voice of Julie Kavner): Encouraging, fretful, clueless, angry but always forgiving. And with a colossal blue beehive. Marge is the glue in the “Simpsons” household.
Lois Wilkerson (Jane Kaczmarek): Four boys – later, when the ratings dipped, a fifth – and one very angry mom. Who wouldn't be? Lois loved those kids. And Kaczmarek's brilliant turn in “Malcolm in the Middle” made it one of the best family sitcoms ever.
Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman in “Desperate Housewives”): Perhaps the dramatic equivalent of Lois is Lynette, though Lynette shoots higher in the corporate world. The perfect modern-day frazzled mom who just gets it done and refuses to stay embarrassed.
Peggy Hill (voice of Kathy Najimy in “King of the Hill”): Peggy is earnest, gutsy, plain, Southern, prideful – and she's got enormous feet.
Lily Munster (Yvonne De Carlo): She never treated Marilyn any different, even if she was weird.
Florida Evans (Esther Rolle): Has any mom suffered harder times? And yet they were called “good times” because there was a lot of love to go around. You don't see many socioeconomic sitcoms these days. Who knew that struggling and failing, and struggling some more and working even harder, could be so funny?
Lucille Bluth (Jessica Walter): Needy, alcoholic, vicious, indifferent, loose with cash, Lucille may go down, along with Lois, as one of the great anti-moms in sitcom history. Like Kaczmarek, Walter was off-the-charts superb in this role, and she helped make “Arrested Development” a future classic.
Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham): Lorelai turns out to be more like her daughter than a real mom, but if you wanted a hipster mom – and that was part of the charm of “Gilmore Girls” – she was it.
Sharon Agathon (Grace Park in “Battlestar Galactica”): Uh, did someone say hot mom? Her daughter is half human, half Cylon and all cute (and medically helpful).
Joyce Summers (Kristine Sutherland): Sometimes you just have to let your daughter kill vampires. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” had no real need for parents, but Joyce never got in the way and helped save the world by letting Buffy be Buffy.
Rochelle Rock (Tichina Arnold): If “Everybody Hates Chris,” at least his mom loves him. But it's tough love. And you do not, under any circumstances, get out of line. Or waste money.
Estelle Costanza (Estelle Harris): Everybody needs a mother who overreacts to everything and who you let down at every turn. And who's shrill. And disapproving. But you're still her baby. Even on “Seinfeld,” a series not big on affection.
Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker). OK, sometimes your mom has good intentions and then, despite those, everything goes awry. Like when she starts selling (and growing) pot to make ends meet. But she's truly conflicted (and funny and loving). Must count for something, no? In “Weeds,” Parker makes the show.
Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), Nicki (Chloe Sevigny) and Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin). Three, three, three times the motherhood! Technically, in “Big Love,” each kid has a mom, then two more kind-of moms. It's the polygamy thing. And HBO's take on the complications of that is riveting.
