Moms brought us all into this world, didn’t they? Mothers are always the first person that any child gets to know on a completely intimate basis. Feeding, clothing, nurturing, spending countless waking nights comforting you after a bad dream. To many, if not all of us, there’s just nothing our mothers can’t do, and nothing they can’t handle.
Perhaps that’s why plenty of TV shows over the years have taken this wholesome concept of mom and knocked it on its head with all sorts of crazy and lazy good-for-nothing moms. Moms like Peggy Bundy don’t seem to care about anything their kids are doing. Meanwhile, moms like Constance Langdon are literal horror shows. 10 Worst TV Moms Of The Past Decade, Ranked.
Cersei Lannister - Game Of Thrones
If incest with your brother wasn’t wrong, then how come not one of Cersei and Jamie Lannister’s children knew that Uncle Jamie was actually Papa Jamie?! Because even in Game Of Thrones, this is severely frowned upon.
Cersei was a vile evil woman all over and her mothering instinct matched that. It allowed her to raise a vile and evil son in Joffrey and when it would have been very beneficial for the sake of her unborn child to put the wine down and send her armies to help Dany and Jon, she chose to keep on drinking and allow the possibility of the White Walkers to make a beeline for King's Landing.
Skyler White - Breaking Bad
You just found out that your husband is a terrible drug dealer, shouldn’t you grab the kids and run straight to your DEA brother-in-law to put an end to the whole ordeal? Plenty of mothers might stay out of fear for their safety and their children’s safety.
But on Breaking Bad, Skyler didn’t have a lot to fear once she found out that Walt was dealing Meth. A lot of fans gave her flack, but for all the wrong reasons - she should have bolted straight to Hank and get Walt locked up.
Evelyn Harper - Two And A Half Men
In one episode of Two And A Half Men, one of Charlie’s ladies of the week is not so secretly putting curses on him and Alan. As she’s getting ready to make Charlie a sacrifice, their mother Evelyn puts a stop to it as she was actually the head of Charlie's lady's coven. That’s about all you need to know about Charlie and Alan’s heartless, soulless mother. She’s the head witch of a coven.
Gemma Teller Morrow - Sons Of Anarchy
Within a few moments of the premiere episode of Sons Of Anarchy it was clear that Katey Sagal would erase the memory of Peg Bundy with her portrayal of Gemma Teller Morrow.
As Queen Mother of sorts to SAMCRO, the series progressed to reveal just how dangerous Gemma actually was, especially when backed into a corner. Years before the show started, she conspired with Clay to kill her own husband, John. If that wasn’t terrible and horrible enough, when she thought her daughter-in-law had turned on the Club (even though it was actually Jax), she stabbed in her head with a cooking fork.
Beverly Hofstadter - The Big Bang Theory
As far as bad moms go, Beverly Hofstadter is probably the tamest on this list. But treating and using her children as experiments and observing them for her psychiatry books is still pretty out there.
Toss in the fact that Leonard constantly feels either manipulated, unloved, or both from his own mother, plus she seemingly loves Sheldon more than him and you get a bad mom who could conceivably exist in real life.
Monica Gallagher - Shameless
Having a few disorders and addictions is no excuse for how you treat all of your children, but on Shameless, that’s just mom. Monica Gallagher didn’t just leave her loser husband, Frank, she bailed on the litter of children she had with them.
That left oldest child Fiona in charge of trying make sure all of her brothers and sisters were raised as properly as they could be. Instead leaving behind any semblance of a real inheritance, when Monica died, she left a ton of drugs instead.
Norma Bates - Bates Motel
Giving birth both literally, physically, and emotionally to the entertainment’s world most well-known killer is a big hallmark in the pantheon of terrible mothers. It’s one that Norma Bates wears with pride.
She murders anyone who she thinks is a threat to her relationship with her son, Norman. Between mom’s over-the-top possessive personality and the terrible things Norman has seen during his formative years led Norman to become the...Psycho we all know him to be.
Selina Meyer - Veep
Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won several awards for playing Vice President Selina Meyer on Veep. When it comes to politics, it’s an all or nothing game and Meyer plays it to a tee.
Even when it comes to her own daughter, Catherine. She’s the type of politician that if it got her more votes, she’d happily have another kid. Meyer has even broken up her daughter’s relationships via press conference; even though there was nothing wrong with it.
Dorothy Walker - Jessica Jones
Dorothy Walker was abused by her alcoholic husband. But then she became your typical wild stage mom, forcing on her daughter Patsy, a future that Dorothy wanted but Patsy never had a say in. Nor did it excuse her from hurling names at her own daughter like “Fatsy Patsy.”
Walker did the right in leaving her husband and getting Trish out of there. But she pretty much made Trish feel responsible for it ever since and shoved the burden of making money to her.
Mother - Lost
When you help a woman deliver her twins and then murder her, you’re probably a terrible mom in the making. It took years of watching Lost to finally get an answer or two as far Jacob and the Smoke Monster. Mother would raise Jacob and The Man In Black as her own, never telling them about their true mother.
She did her best to convince both of her boys that there was nothing “Across The Sea,” even though MIB eventually found out. Mother would murder all of the people MIB was working with to get off the Island.