TV moms we love, warts and all

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 that changes here. You were a great mom. A great mom to watch.

As we prepare to celebrate Mother's Day on Sunday, isn't it just a little bit too easy to people a list of best TV moms with the usual suspects? You know them almost by heart:

-- June Cleaver (Barbara Billingsley) on "Leave It to Beaver."

-- Margaret Anderson (Jane Wyatt) on "Father Knows Best."

-- Marion Cunningham, a.k.a. "Mrs. C" (Marion Ross), on "Happy Days."

-- Donna Stone (Donna Reed) on "The Donna Reed Show."

-- Caroline Ingalls (Karen Grassle) on "Little House on the Prairie."

-- Clair Huxtable (Phylicia Rashad) on "The Cosby Show."

All very familiar, loving mothers. All big vote-getters on every "best moms on TV" list. And let's not forget two-time candidate June Lockhart, eligible for "Lassie" and "Lost in Space."

Worthy, no doubt, because they represent some kind of ideal, some kind of longing for the perfect, loving parent. But part of the appeal of watching mothers on the small screen - and there have probably been more moms than doctors and cops in the history of television - is to embrace the breadth of what it means to be someone's mom. Not just the sweetness but the rage. Not just the fixing of boo-boos but the fixing of drinks. Sometimes you need a mom to blend the family, like Carol Brady (Florence Henderson) on "The Brady Bunch." Sometimes you need a mom to start the band, like Shirley Partridge (Shirley Jones) in "The Partridge Family." And sometimes you need a mom who can drive her Mafia-linked son to therapy, like Livia (Nancy Marchand) on "The Sopranos."

The point is, moms are all different. We should celebrate the fact that sometimes they bake big pies, offer up huge hugs and run the house with loads of love - and sometimes they turn out to be Mrs. Cartman on "South Park" (the less said about that, the better).

Here's a list of great moms. It is not definitive. Not every mom is "great" in the traditional sense. Great to watch, yes, but maybe not great to have as your mom. But they all deserve some attention in honor of Mother's Day.

-- Marjorie Bouvier Simpson (Julie Kavner): Incredibly well rounded. 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. Lois is probably known to many people as "just like my mom."

-- Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman in "Desperate Housewives"): Perhaps the dramatic equivalent of Lois is Lynette, though Lynette shoots a little 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"): Not to be outdone in the animated-mom contest, 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 than Florida? 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): Who doesn't like a hot mom? Of course, 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 - and also hot). Must count for something, no? In "Weeds," Parker makes the show - period.

-- Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), Nicki (Chloë Sevigny) and Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin). Three, three, three times the motherhood! Technically, in "Big Love," all the kids have a mom, then two more kind-of moms. It's the polygamy thing. And HBO's take on the complications of that is always riveting (if underappreciated).

-- Who's your favorite TV mom? Go to Tim Goodman's blog, the Bastard Machine, on SFGate.com to post and comment away ...

E-mail Tim Goodman at tgoodman@.... You can read his blog, the Bastard Machine, at www.thebastardmachine.com.