25 incredible TV moms we love to watch

Bonnie Plunkett – Mom

Bonnie Plunkett doesn’t possess many traditionally maternal traits. She’s selfish, short-sighted, and extremely difficult. Both she and her daughter, Christy, are both recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, so their relationship is fraught with past baggage and damage. As part of their sobriety, they agreed to live together, with Christy’s two children, and even as sober adults, times were hard.

After years and years of sobriety, their lives are much more steady, so that means they have more time to sort through the emotional hangover from their lives as addicts. Bonnie was a neglectful and absent mother. She prioritized her addiction and as a result, Christy didn’t get the kind of love and nurturing children need. As often happens, she followed right along in her mother’s footsteps, becoming an alcoholic and neglecting her own children.

These days, Bonnie has a pretty good life. She’s learning how to be more selfless, she is engaged to a wonderful man, and she and Christy get along, for the most part. As a mother, she’s still not the safest place to land, like other mothers on this list, but she has softened quite a bit. She’s much more present — they share a bedroom, for Pete’s sake — and she’s recently started to acknowledge how crappy of a mom she really was.

This is a healing step in Bonnie’s relationship with Christy, and their new, adult, sober relationship has a promising future, which should give every mother a little inspiration. Most of us don’t have a past filled with drugs or jail time, but most of can relate to wanting to get to a better place with our loved ones. Besides, Allison Janney could make anything funny — even dysfunction and abuse.