TVSquad

I just had a baby six months ago, so like all new moms, all I do is talk about him. I'm quite boring, really. So when I started seeing ads for In the Motherhood, a new series based upon stories from real mothers, I got excited. A comedy that centers directly around my new focus in life? Sweet!

I was hoping for a show that shared funny, ridiculous stories about pregnancy, after-baby relationships and parenting mishaps. While In the Motherhood had plenty of ridiculous stories about these topics, they were a little short on the funny. I wanted to like this show, I should have liked this show, but ... I just didn't.

For a series that is supposed to be based on real stories, it just seemed ridiculously inauthentic. The characters and storylines were hyperbolic versions of real-world situations, and while I accept hyperbole in the pursuit of comedy, In the Motherhood took it to such an extreme that nothing about it was in any way relatable.

Megan Mullally's storyline is a perfect example of where In the Motherhood doesn't work. With Angelina and all of the other young, gorgeous celebrities being constantly fawned over when they decide to reproduce, the impetus behind Mullally's character, Rosemary, deciding to fake a pregnancy is present and believable. As a 50-year-old woman who was pregnant before the current baby craze started, she feels left out of the heaping adoration she feels is placed upon pregnant women, so she decides to get a piece of the action herself.

There is a lot of comedy in this concept. They could have played it relatively straight and made it funny. Instead, they went completely over-the-top and made everybody around Rosemary completely stupid. Even though her pregnancy belly is made up of nothing more than a lumpy stuffed animal, nobody questions it--not even other pregnant women, when in reality, when you run into another pregnant woman, all you do is look at her body and size her up and compare her growth to your own. Yet not one of them them thought, "Man.That looks suspiciously like a stuffed bedbug?"

I very rarely ask for more exposition in a show, but Cheryl Hines' character is another point of confusion for me. She goes on and on about how it's been forever since she's had a date or had sex, but she has a baby who can't be more than about five or six months old. Who's the father?

Even if he was a one-night stand and that baby's conception is the last time she had sex or went on a date, that's not an untoward amount of time. Sure, a year or so is forever to a single person, but when you're dealing with a pregnancy and then follow that up with pushing another human being out of you, then it has definitely not been a long time since anyone has seen you "down there," as she says. Because, seriously? So many people have, that you may as well have a neon sign and a revolving door.

In the Motherhood really just feels like it was written by people who not only do not have children, but have probably never been in the same room as one. I was completely predisposed to liking this show, and it got maybe a single chuckle out of me during the entire episode. Megan Mullally is great and does the best she can with her role, but unfortunately, her talent is all but wasted on this show.

This afternoon, I was walking my dog while carrying my baby. I had just picked up my dog's poop, when my son managed to vomit on both of us. I'm power-walking back to the house in the rain with a dog, a bag of poop, and a baby, holding him away from me so the vomit doesn't get smeared around, and gagging because it got in my hair and it's right by my nose. That's not even a particularly bad day -- it's just Thursday. Motherhood is ridiculous enough as it is; there's really no need to try so hard.