What’s Worth Watching: Singing the Motherhood Blues on ‘Mom’

Mom, “Fun Girl Stuff and Eternal Salvation,” Thursday, April 30, 9/8c, CBS

Life can be a buzzkill on this unusually pungent and relevant sitcom, where the hard knocks rarely stop. Mom wraps a strong second season with Christy (Anna Faris) marking her second year of sobriety, a rare moment of jubilation soured when her young son Roscoe (Blake Garrett Rosenthal) decides he’d rather live with dad Baxter (Matt Jones) than with his squabbling mom and Grandma Bonnie (Emmy winner Allison Janney), who’ve been at odds since Bonnie’s relapse on painkillers put their already fractious relationship back on the rocks. The discord has gotten so out of control that when Christy’s sponsor Marjorie (the terrific Mimi Kennedy) learned she was cancer-free last week, she had to shut them up by barking, “You’re ruining my remission!”

Christy’s response to the latest domestic crisis involves turning her back on her own aggravating mom. “C’mon, back me up here. I’m the lovable underdog,” she says, pleading for sympathy from Marjorie. Even if no one else listens, we’re rooting for her, and also for Bonnie, to make necessary amends. That would a step in the right direction for next season.