Submitted by LJ_909 t3_1278754 in television
A lot of tv parents are bad. Some are written worse than others of course. But there are some doozies out there. My vote goes for Franke Heck from The Middle. She was a horrible mother. Forgetting her kids birthdays, never cooked. The list goes on. But what sealed it for me was an episode where her and the father win $1,000 in a game of bingo.
If you haven't seen the show, they'r a struggling lower middle class family with serious money issues, so this thousand dollars would be a big help. They sat down with a financial adviser who told them they need to do things like pay down their credit cards. The husband is pretty reasonable and one morning understood a statement she had made to mean that she wanted to use the money to pay down their cards. So he writes a check and sends it off. Instead, she wanted to pay down their cable bill because it had been disconnected, then called her husband "un-American" for having a problem with it.
So who else would you say was a horrible tv mom?
BalsamicBasil t1_jed4oak wrote
Just want to put it out there that the standard for tv/movie moms is SO much higher than for tv/movie dads. If Dad never cooks meals no one notices. If he forget's his child's birthday it's bad but not damning. Sometimes it's even played off as charming, in a doofy forgetful dad kind of way. If Dad cooks meals sometimes and gets his kid a thoughtful birthday on their birthday - automatically Dad of the year. For tv/movie moms, this is the bare minimum. It should be the bare minimum for any parent, but alas....
That said...
Lucille Bluth of Arrested Development
Stepmom from Fleabag (if she even counts as a mother...I don't think she really does)
Marianne's mom in Normal People
Eleanor and Tahani's moms in The Good Place...although we get to see both moms grow into better people...