If TV dads run from goofy to monstrous, TV moms occupy an even richer spectrum — because television has so often asked its mothers to be everything at once: provider, protector, peacemaker, and, when the moment demands, the most dangerous person in the room. Here, with great affection and zero objectivity, is a salute to the small screen's greatest mothers.
Television asks its mothers to be everything at once — and the great ones somehow are.
The hearts of their homes
At the warm end of the spectrum sits Tami Taylor of Friday Night Lights — counselor, wife, and mother whose fierce, grounded love made her the gold standard for TV parenting. Beside her, Rebecca Pearson of This Is Us carried a family across decades of joy and grief, and Lorelai Gilmore turned single motherhood into the best-friendship at the heart of Gilmore Girls.
The ones you don't cross
And then there are the matriarchs who rule through sheer force of will. Gemma Teller of Sons of Anarchy is TV's great Lady Macbeth, a mother whose love curdled into something terrifying — proof that maternal devotion can be the most dangerous motive of all. These are the moms who'd burn the world down for their children, and sometimes do.
What makes the great TV moms endure is the same thing that makes the dads endure: they're never simple. The nurturing ones have spines of steel; the fearsome ones are driven by love. Every great TV mother, in the end, is a study in the fierce, complicated, unkillable bond between a parent and the children they'd do anything to protect.