But what does it really mean to be born again? Can we really, truly, comprehend what it means to have our mistakes, our regrets, our old lives wiped clean?

In a sense, that's the central premise of Christina Applegate's new hit comedy on ABC, Samantha Who?

"Every day, we are brand new, really," Applegate said during a recent Good Morning America interview. "The show is really about what would you do if you could start over, right in this moment—what would you do with your life, and how would you behave?"

Forget Me Not
Applegate—best known as the blond floozy from Married ... With Children—plays Samantha Newly, a pretty thirtysomething who, after popping out of an eight-day coma, discovers she has amnesia.

"Amnesia doesn't exist," says one character. "It's just a cheap and lazy storytelling device."

No, Samantha insists, amnesia is a real condition, and every episode revolves around her efforts to reconstruct some semblance of a real life. She learns that she was—and is—a high-powered real-estate attorney, that she's deathly afraid of elevators and that she's allergic to oregano. She also discovers that she was an unmitigated jerk—a ruthless, unfaithful, conniving, drink-swilling tramp who tallied $30,000 in shoe-buying debt and made her secretary take the first bite out of her apples. This woman would make Leona Helmsley look tenderhearted, Britney Spears look chaste.

But Sam is determined to change. She wants to make amends for past mistakes, not revisit them. She opens her life up to Dena, a nearly forgotten elementary school chum of hers. Dena is plump and awkward, but she's also the only person who visited Sam while she was in the coma. And Sam tries to patch things up with her eccentric parents, tagging along with her father on a hunting trip, and having heart-to-hearts with her mom over crossword puzzles.

Forgiven, Not Forgotten
This would all seem to set Samantha Who? up as a funny, sweet, even poignant sitcom—especially since Applegate plays Samantha as part Lucille Ball, part regressed tween and part Chicken Soup for the Soul author.

"The road to independence takes time," she muses in narration mode, talking about her mother. "But no matter where you come from or where you're headed, the journey's always better when you get to turn to someone and say, 'Thanks for being here.'"

And indeed, it is a witty show with a first-rate cast and fascinating premise. It frowns on too-casual sex, applauds kindness and responsibility, and even mentions the words "sin" and "forgiveness" a time or two.

But alas, while Samantha's heart might be in the right place, its mind is in the gutter.

The best example thus far can be found in an episode tellingly titled "The Virgin." Seems Samantha can't remember ever having sex (though flashbacks through several episodes make it fairly clear she has), and the show becomes a tawdry "will-she-or-won't-she" tale, with her friends and family egging her on to do the deed. Samantha's mother even shows up at a nightclub, grabs her by the shoulders and says, "Come on, let's get my little girl laid."

In the end, Samantha makes the kinda-sorta right choice. Remember the "frowning on too-casual sex" thing? She tells her selected lover-for-the-night, a 21-year-old college student who really is a virgin, that he should wait until he meets someone who "cares about you." But this not-quite moral conclusion falls several time zones short of a biblical stance on purity, and the episode doesn't land there until it's dropped scores of titillating sight gags, one-liners, double entendres and a wink-wink reference to underage girls kissing. It's like tacking a birds-and-bees lecture onto the end of a dirty joke.

Forgetting to Regret
Other Samantha Who? installments haven't been quite that suggestive, but there's still plenty of content to swim through. Episodes feature a handful of swear words each ("a--," "b--ch," "d--n") and even more misuses of God's name. Many contain sexual content, and Samantha wears dresses and blouses with some seriously dipping necklines. She also has a habit of stripping down to her underwear—always in front of the camera, and often in front of her ex-boyfriend. She and her gal pals guzzle alcohol with regularity.

And that's just what's going on in the life of new, nice Samantha. Flashbacks to Sam's old life can be downright dreadful. Not to mention the antics of the folks who surround her: most are self-absorbed and all are dysfunctional.

It's telling that Sam was thrilled when she found out (through hypnotherapy) she might be adopted. When she asks her parents why they're cleaning out the garage, her mother says, "We've been saving all the stuff that was sentimental to you, but now that you've forgotten why, we can throw it out." It's this dysfunction that makes the series amusing—but in so doing, Samantha Who? becomes a terrible conduit to illustrate how we all should interact with each other in real life.

If viewers could easily clarify the mixed messages and utilize some selective amnesia to block out all the sex and language (which, admittedly, would occasionally obliterate whole episodes), this sitcom would be an endearing, Monday-evening treat. But alas, we humans aren't blessed with computer-style delete buttons protruding from our brains. So I guess it'll be easier to "forget" to watch Samantha Who? altogether than try to wipe the memory clean after the fact.