Bonnie Plunkett's 42-year-old daughter on "Mom" has finally left the nest.
Thursday night's season eight premiere of the CBS sitcom revealed how the show wrote off Allison Janney's on-screen daughter Christy, played by Anna Faris, who made the surprise announcement in September that she wanted to pursue other opportunities and would not be returning for this season.
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The episode, titled "Sex Bucket and the Grammar Police," begins with Bonnie and her husband, Adam, played by William Fichtner, driving home from the airport.
"Every mom dreams of the day when they drop their 42-year-old daughter off at the airport to go to school," Bonnie deadpans. "And I did it all by myself. Not the dropping off, the raising."
Bonnie shares that Faris' character is off to Georgetown Law School on a full scholarship.
"A lot of parents would be in a puddle of tears right now, but you know what I think of them? Selfish," she says before dissolving into tears. "Not me, because I'm focusing on what she's gonna get, not what I'm gonna lose. Which is the most beautiful little girl a mother could ever have."
Bonnie and Adam then both start crying.
"You want to go back and watch the plane take off?" he says.
"I do!" she replies.
The rest of the episode features Bonnie and her friends getting together for a slumber party for the birthday of her friend Tammy, played by Kristen Johnston. After pillow fights, wisecracks, emotional moments and the women sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags, Bonnie's phone rings at 4 a.m.
"Hi Christy," she says. "No, I'm up. How's it going honey?"
The episode ends with those words, bringing Faris' seven years on the show to a close.
"It's a huge loss for the show to not have Anna because she was part of creating a character, Christy, that everyone fell in love with, who was so lovable and warm and gullible and funny and we will miss her so much," Janney told "Entertainment Tonight." "I think I'll miss the most, for me, the relationship between Bonnie and Christy, even though that will still continue. But she won't be present. That's what I'll miss."
While Faris will be out of sight, she will not be out of mind.
"I do want to say that it feels like she's still here because we do talk about the character all the time," co-star Jaime Pressly told "Entertainment Tonight." "And (Janney's) character is always calling her or vice versa. We still hear the name, we still talk about her. She's not gone as far as we're concerned, and we all spent so much time together over the years and love each other and support each other and we all want each other to be happy, so we're happy for her and we miss her no matter what."