So what if her son got tossed out of the CIA—it brought him close to her Miami safe house. A chain-smoking hypochondriac with overbleached hair, retiree Madeline’s there to hinder Jeffrey every criminal-catching step of the way.
What could be worse for baby Hope than a serial killer mother who was executed when the child was only six months old? A grandmother who gave birth at age 15. Waitress Virginia is a raucous case study in maternal don’ts.
Was it her husband’s infidelity that turned her so mean? She creepily warmed up to the kid next door, but dealing with troubled daughter Sally, Betty’s got ice in her veins.
Gloria Delgado-Pritchett, Modern Family (Sofia Vergara)
“You are so han-sommm,” the bombshell second wife declares, forever buoying the confidence of her pudgy genius of a son, Manny—and making sure nobody forgets their Colombian heritage.
Brutal, brittle, brazen—this domineering grande dame is the mother Jack deserves. Besides, who else is gonna tell him to ditch both the steamy Latina and the “white geisha”?
Five minutes with her, and you even feel sorry for Sue Sylvester. Doris skipped out of “stifling” Ohio, abandoning her kids to hunt Nazis (in, remarkably, places like Niagara Falls).
Evelyn Harper, Two and a Half Men (Holland Taylor)
A bad mother to both her boys when they were growing up, the multimarried Evelyn is still something of a sleep-around slut—and proud of it. Forget grandmotherly golf and knitting: Her hobbies are shopping, sex and booze.
A widow who’s definitely walking on the wild side, Nancy (aka Lacey, aka Nathalie) not only makes dope dealing the family business, but she also stands up (none too wisely) to rival drug cartels.
It takes a tough mama to go up against medicine’s formidable curmudgeon. For the sake of her daughter, she wants him to convert (as she did) to Judaism. And Arlene’s sure not above pointing out that neither Dr. House nor Dr. Cuddy is getting any younger.
