Mom ends its eight-season run by going full circle

Deadline

"I know that the series began with a question, which was could we do a sitcom that was about hope and redemption? I think that the finale answers that question," co-creator and showrunner Gemma Baker said of Thursday's series finale, which was written with fellow co-creator Chuck Lorre. Was it always the plan to go full circle with the finale? "No," says Baker. "We didn’t have a lot of time to grapple with questions or really plan anything out too far in advance. We got a chance to write the finale with Chuck, which was great. We wanted to tell a story about how much Bonnie had grown and how much she had changed, so I think that for us it was not so much that her life has changed but her reaction to life has changed. Her focus in her life has changed. Yes, she had challenges before and she has challenges now, but the difference is that she is willing to help someone else in the midst of her own problems. She’s willing to celebrate a friend who’s having a dream come true, and she’s willing to ask for help from Marjorie and be honest about what’s going on for her. In the past, when she had a challenge, Bonnie would often either go off on her own or come up with her own solution that sort of made the original problem worse. I think we get to see how much she’s changed in the course of this series, which you don’t always get to see and she also gets to recognize that change in herself."

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• Allison Janney on Mom's evolution into a series exclusively about women: "It’s been an extraordinary thing to see the show move from being about a family to being a show about a family of women in recovery together, all of a certain age—I would say over 30," says Janney. "And they’re women who support each other; they don’t tear each other down. They come to the table with a lot of baggage and a lot of life and heartbreak behind them already, so to find friendships at these stages in their lives, with the backdrop of recovery—it makes for very deep and rich relationships. It’s been extraordinarily meaningful, and I’m very proud of what we’ve put out into the world."
• How Mom co-creator and showrunner Gemma Baker would like Mom to be remembered: "I hope Mom is remembered as a funny show that was really about something… It was a show that portrayed recovery as a place where there is light and laughter," she says. "And hope. And compassion. And friendships. And that chance at a better life."
• Mom producers didn't approach Anna Faris about returning for the finale: "It's funny, we didn't revisit it," says Baker. "We honored her decision to leave the show and it wasn't really a discussion. The last two seasons have really been about the ensemble and we were just putting our energy into, 'How do we wrap up these stories that we've been telling over the years, but also this season?'"
• Mom's final season didn't much resemble the first one, but it did illustrate a resiliency, appropriately, that has been one of the show's trademarks