TLDR --- i liked season 8 more than christy’s seasons. the show felt more mature, but i wish they’d found another way to keep the mother-daughter dynamic.
it's long , kinda me ranting.
i actually kind of liked season 8, and i wish we’d gotten more of it. honestly, i didn’t really miss christy’s absence, or anna faris leaving, because it felt like christy’s character had stopped growing. sure, she went to law school and got a job, but it still felt like we were getting the same version of christy over and over again. even if we weren’t expecting some perfect, happily ever after storyline for her, it still felt like the writers never really gave anna faris anything new to work with. every time i rewatch season 8, the show just feels so much more mature. yes, it’s still a funny sitcom, but it feels like a sitcom about adults. even though christy was an adult, she never really came across as one. she always felt more like the destructive spoiled teenage daughter, and that made the show a little less relatable for me.
so yeah, i guess that’s my hot take.
at the same time, i do realize that the mother-daughter dynamic, which was such a huge part of mom in s1-s3 (mom, roscoe, violet grandma) was lost after christy left.
i think there were a few ways they could’ve kept that part of the show alive. maybe they could’ve moved the story forward by giving jill a daughter around the same age violet was at the beginning, while showing jill becoming a better mother because she had bonnie’s guidance. i think that could’ve been a really interesting storyline.
or maybe they could’ve had jill adopt a child, which would’ve preserved that mother-daughter relationship in a different way.
another idea is that they could’ve brought violet back. maybe she starts missing the daughter she gave up in season 1 and tries to reconnect with her. i think something like that could’ve worked too.
but only for some kind of an episode. not more than that. violet is definitely better than that. really wanted to know how her interesting life turned out.