Why was Mom canceled by CBS? Allison Janney’s theory

Why was Mom canceled by CBS? It’s a question we’ve wondered — or technically, we should say that we wondered if it was canceled at all.

We’ve long tried to be delicate in specifying the difference between a cancellation and a show ending — we tend to use the latter if we learn that it was a creative decision to shut a show down. When it is a network decision, however, we opt for the former — and this does seem to be the case here.

In an interview this week on The Late Late Show with James Corden, series star Allison Janney made it clear (via TVLine) that she was hoping for at least one more season of the show — and while it does seem like the writers have the time to craft a proper ending, it may not be what they once planned:

“I’m sad … I wish we’d had at least another year for the writers to have that much time to ramp up to the ending. We sort of found out sooner than we thought we would hear. We thought, ‘Surely they’re going to want more Mom,’ and they decided not.”

As to why the show is ending now, Janney speculates that it may have had to do with money — we know that series do tend to cost significantly more money once they get past season 6 or 7, and this could be the case here. Even though losing Anna Faris may have cut down on some cost, that may not have been enough.

Personally, we are still hoping for Faris to return for the end of the series — given that so much of the early seasons was especially about Christy, we only think it’s fitting that we get one last update on her before Mom drops the final curtain. Time will tell, as the finale should air this spring.

Are you still sad that Mom was canceled by CBS?

Be sure to share right now in the attached comments! After you do just that, remember to stick around — we’ll have some other news coming as we approach the end of the series.