"30 Rock" cannot come back fast enough. Last night NBC launched two new additions to its Thursday-night comedy line-up, the sitcom "Kath & Kim" and the special Thursday "Saturday Night Live" election specials. One fared better than the other, but neither were particularly funny. And isn't that the point?

"Kath & Kim" is an Americanized version of a popular Australian sitcom, so that's strike one right there. The advanced buzz for the show was awful, but I remained hopeful since I like leads Molly Shannon and Selma Blair, who play suburban white trash, a super-spoiled daughter and her clueless, enabling mother.

The situation is that the codependent women have been split up now that Kim (the daughter) has finally married and left the nest with the intention of living as the "trophy wife" to her retail clerk husband (I can't remember the name of the actor or character). Kath (the mother) has embraced her newfound freedom and started seriously dating Phil (John Michael Higgins, genius in tons of supporting roles, most notably "Best in Show"), the owner of a sandwich shop at the mall. Both Kath and Phil are, well, pretty lame, but they clearly love each other. Then Kim busts back into Kath's house, announcing that her marriage is over because her husband wanted her to do things, such as cook, clean, or at least show an interest in his day. Kath wants Kim out, since she knows Phil is about to propose to her, and Kim has a history of sabotaging all of her relationships --- which she promptly does with Phil by crashing their romantic dinner, being blatantly disrespectful, and pushing her mother to "cheat" on him with another sandwich shop.

I know that first episodes can be rocky - look at "30 Rock," "Gossip Girl," and "Six Feet Under," all of which had pretty terrible pilots - but this was DREADFUL. I wondered if perhaps the laughs were being put on hold while the exposition was laid out, but no, that's not it; the situation isn't THAT complicated. And the actors were doing their very best to wring laughs out of the script, but you can't get blood from a stone. This was one of the single worst comedy shows I've watched in a long time. Comedies are supposed to be funny, right?

I think the central problem is this: people like Kath and Kim exist. We all know them. They are so shallow they're practically elevated, so focused on superficial bullshit - celebrity gossip, the opinions of other people, really hideous mall fashions - that they can't be bothered to do any self-assessment and see how lazy, stupid, and useless they are. "Kath & Kim" seems to think that just having actors behave like insufferable twits is funny in and of itself. It's not. Reality is not parody (well, except for our current political system.) You have to have them say or do funny things. You have to create a joke that we're in on. You can't just expect us to laugh at these People-obsessed nimrods, because some of us live next to/are related to said nimrods. And there's nothing funny - or likable - about that. (Kim is especially awful; despite Blair's best efforts there was almost nothing redeemable about that character.)

The "SNL" special fared somewhat better, although it just underscored how truly f'ed that show is right now without Tina Fey, who sadly did not make a cameo as Sarah Palin. It opened with a re-creation of the Tuesday debate, which had some highpoints - Chris Parnell (who is ALSO no longer on the show) was hilarious as crotchety Tom Brokaw, and although he looks nothing like him, Darrell Hammond did a pretty dead-on McCain impression, down to his meandering around the stage like a drunken zombie. But it also had one major weak point, namely Fred Armisen as Obama. Does "SNL" really not have anybody better to play Obama? Can't they HIRE someone specifically to play Obama? Armisen's delivery got better as the skit went on, but he looks so unlike Barack that the connection is tenuous at best. It's like those awful Dish Network commercials with that morbidly obese comedian doing impressions of Bush, Donald Trump, and Shatner - if you're markedly physically different from the person you're impersonating, you'd better be AWESOME at it. And Armisen is not, not by a longshot.

The rest of the 30-minute episode was a drawn-out Weekend Update segment, which is by its very nature hit or miss. Amy Poehler is fantastic, but Seth Meyers is pretty forgettable. The skit came to a screeching halt when both of the "special correspondent" segments started, specifically Kenan Thompson's creepy financial analyst who just kept screaming "FIX IT!" over and over again, as if it was going to get funnier over five minutes. (I turned to my friend and said, "It's just going to go on like this, isn't it?") And then the VERY TOPICAL musical number, in which "Hall & Oates" (Will Forte and Armisen) re-did "You Make My Dreams Come True" and made the lyrics about Obama and McCain. Total fail. First of all, does anyone under 40 even KNOW who Hall & Oates are? Their last chart hit was more than 20 years ago. Could they really not come up with a more relevant artist for this skit? And I say that as someone who dearly loves his H&O greatest hits disc.

The whole evening was majorly underwhelming - even "The Office" kind of sucked - and it's going to take a lot for me to tune into "Kath & Kim" next week. I'll probably stick with "SNL" until the election, and be crossing my fingers that Tina Fey stops by from now on.