Like a pregnancy test or gas station sushi, Mother's Day can go one of two ways: pleasantly surprising or life-changingly traumatic. With that holiday quickly approaching, Movieline has compiled five matriarchs on television today that will make your mother's judgmental sniping almost palpable. So order an edible arrangement for the woman who birthed you and thank JC you didn't have to grow up with one of these ladies.
5. Celia Rhodes, Gossip Girl
Portrayed By: Caroline Lagerfelt
Both Lily's mother and Serena's grandmother, Celia is manipulative, cold and the person responsible for breaking Rufus and Lily up decades ago by making her daughter choose between her beau and her inheritance. She later lied to Lily and Serena about having a terminal illness to garner sympathy and also tried to break up Serena and Dan.
4. Colleen Donaghy, 30 Rock
Portrayed By: Elaine Stritch
Highly critical, affection-averse, overbearing.
Born into an Irish Catholic family that her son Jack calls "a bunch of mud farmers and sheep rapists," Colleen Donaghy harassed her son from a very early age -- blaming him for John F. Kennedy's death, trying to send him to Vietnam when he was 12 to "make a man out of him," and embarrassing him by forcing him to play the flute in front of his hockey team.
3. Celia Hodes, Weeds
Portrayed By: Elizabeth Perkins
Even though Celia got into the drug trade later than Nancy Botwin, she is the far worse parent. She sent her eldest daughter (who later kidnapped her) to boarding school in Mexico, taunted her youngest daughter about her weight (calling her "Isabelly") and once replaced her daughter's chocolate stash with laxatives.
2. Kate Gosselin, Jon & Kate Plus 8
Portrayed By: Kate Gosselin
America's most famous reality mom has been exploiting her eight children since their birth, allegedly even faking Christmases to get an honest reaction from her offspring before revealing to them that it is not actually the holiday. Additionally, Kate has whored out her children's memories in a series of books and has left her family for weeks at a time to compete in Dancing with the Stars and complete book tours.
1. Evelyn Harper, Two and a Half Men
Portrayed By: Holland Taylor
A self-absorbed woman, Charlie and Alan's mother Evelyn taunted Charlie growing up, telling him that since a penis never showed on his sonogram, she assumed he would be a girl. Charlie and Alan refer to their mother, who has a very active sex life and has been married three times, as the "devil." Charlie has her number in his cell phone saved as speed dial 666. While Evelyn planned on having her first son, Charlie, she told her younger son that he was "two pitchers of margaritas and a gas station condom."