Samantha Who?

Former Married. . .With Children costar Christina Applegate returned to television in the slightly schizophrenic ABC sitcom Samantha Who? Applegate played title character Samantha “Sam” Newly, who after being stuck down in a traffic accident, awakened from an eight-day coma suffering from “retrograde amnesia,” with no memory of who she was nor what she’d been. Slowly but surely, Sam confirmed that she was 30 years old, the vice president of the real-estate firm Chapman and Funk, and the ex-girlfriend of a photographer named Todd (Barry Watson). Sam’s post-coma personality was one of pure “sweetness and light”–which greatly confused her friends, family members, and business associates, who recalled the pre-coma Sam as mean, overbearing, manipulating, vitriolic, and a hard-drinking, promiscuous party animal. It was up to Sam to remain as nice and pleasant as she now was, or to revert to her previous nastiness. Helping her put the pieces together was apartment-house doorman Frank (Tim Russ), who had often been the recipient of the “old” Sam’s bitchiness and had a lot trouble reconciling himself to the “new” Sam, but was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Others in the heroine’s orbit were her resentful mother Regina (Jean Smart) and her too-affable-to-be-true father Howard (Kevin Dunn); her best friend Andrea (Jennifer Esposito), an accomplished conniver and back-stabber in her own right; and her former childhood buddy Dena (Melissa McCarthy), who had her own special reasons for hanging around to see which of the “two” Sams would ultimately prevail. Cocreated by novelist Cecilia Hearn, Samantha Who? premiered October 15, 2007., A woman suffering from amnesia is forced into finding out just who she really is. Samantha’s back at work following her illness and is shocked when she finds out how cutthroat and competitive she used to behave., An accident victim awakens from an eight-day coma with amnesia and must start over. As she does, she learns she wasn’t a nice person., Brand new to Comedy Central. Sam tries to appear environmentally friendly to impress her new man, and Andrea discovers she’s not top pick for a date with the basketball player.