TV REVIEW: ABC's "In the Motherhood"

I was originally bummed that when ABC chose to bring "In the Motherhood" to television that they also chose to cast different actresses. (Chelsea Handler, Leah Remini, Eileen Galindo, and Jenny McCarthy were the original stars of the web series.) It wasn't that I wasn't confident that Cheryl Hines ("Curb Your Enthusiasm"), Megan Mullally ("Will & Grace"), and Jessica St. Clair ("Worst Week") would deliver the funny, but that it didn't bode well that the series needed a complete cast revamp. Who knows? Maybe those ladies were too pricey per episode. Either way, I gave it a shot.

The promos have given you the impression that these are unorthodox mother figures and that impression was most certainly correct. Perhaps if their backgrounds were better fleshed-out I could do a better job of laying these character descriptions down, but there wasn't much to go on, so here goes.

Hines plays Jane, a single mom with a baby girl, who's juggling her full-time job and getting back into the dating game. I probably missed whether she was divorced or a widow, but since she wasn't overly depressed, I'm guessing she was jilted. Mullally plays Rosemary, who if I'm not mistaken had her kid a very long time ago, while she was in the Peace Corps, is in her fifties, but still acts like a leather-wearing wild child. St. Clair plays Jane's younger sister Emily, that mom that everyone hates. You know, the one who has the perfectly-behaved, quiet children, a clean home, free time to excercise, an understanding husband (RonReaco Lee from "Worst Week"), a healthy sex life, and...morals. Horatio Sanz ("SNL") is Hines' manny and possibly Rosemary's boyfriend/lover/husband/partner-in-crime when it comes to goofing off all day and having weird role-play sex (i.e. Santa Claus suit and fake pregnant lady).

While their one-liners are pretty funny, like when Emily whined that her husband should've pushed their daughter on the floor so she woundn't miss her first steps, and scenarios, like unintentionally ruining Christmas for your kids, is pretty hilarious, the major question is always: How long can they keep these shennanigans up?

Rachael Harris, who plays Hines' boss, used to be on another baby-centric ABC comedy called "Notes from the Underbelly." I thought it was hilarious and I'm not even in the pregnancy stage of my life, but I guess the idea of a baby-centric plot every week for half the year got tedious. So, how long before people stop caring about the plight of the every-mom?

After a 2nd Viewing: I discovered that Horatio doesn't play Mullally's boyfriend, and Hines has another daughter and she's divorced. Still no word on whether it has staying-power.