Megan Mullally in 'In the Motherhood'
ABC

In The Motherhood: The talented Megan Mullally can't prop up this very bad new show.

I'm a big fan of Samantha Who?, which returns to ABC tonight at 8:30 p.m. Unfortunately, it's airing after the premiere of In The Motherhood, which is painfully, wretchedly bad.

Despite the presence of talented actresses like Megan Mullally (Will & Grace) and Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm), Motherhood is pretty much a total loss, unfunny, boring and insulting all at once. And it features Horatio Sanz, not exactly the Saturday Night Live alumnus viewers were most eager to see again.

ABC has been making slow inroads into non-laugh-tracked half-hour comedies for a while, and they've had some good ideas — not only Samantha Who?, but Better Off Ted, which bowed last week.

But trying to program a comedy block against what will usually be not only NBC comedies My Name Is Earl and (starting in two weeks) Parks And Recreation, but also the still-powerful Survivor? That seems overly ambitious.

It also seems a bit cursed. Whatever good effect there is from the fact that Survivor is out of the way this week (because of NCAA basketball) got totally trounced by the fact that the Obama press conference Tuesday night shoved the American Idol results show to tonight. This is a really, really tough position to put these two shows in, and while In The Motherhood will get what's coming to it, it's a real shame for Samantha Who?, which deserves better.