The Conners Continues A+ Guest Star Streak With Mom’s Jaime Pressly And 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer, Check Out The First Clips

 Darlene in the Lunchbox on The Conners
Darlene in the Lunchbox on The Conners

How To Watch

The Conners airs new episodes every Wednesday night on ABC at 8:00 p.m. ET, which are available to stream the next day on Hulu.

The guest star gods have been quite kind to The Conners thus far in Season 5 — that’s how TV casting works, right? — with the arguable highlight being the double dose of Shameless vet William H. Macy appearing in the same episode as throwback Roseanne vet Eric Allen Kramer. (No disrespect to the spectacular Jane Curtin as Louise and Neville’s mom, of course.) Fans can expect another excellent cameo pair-up, too, as My Name Is Earl vet and Mom fave Jaime Pressly and 30 Rock’s ever-smiling Jack McBrayer are popping into Lanford as hurdles for Darlene to leap over on her quest to find a new job.

Thankfully, nobody will be waiting very long to see Pressly and McBrayer's latest network TV efforts, as they’re guest-starring in tonight’s episode, titled “Adding Insult To Injury.” Let’s take a look at what to expect from each of this comedy stars’ debuts on The Conners, as well as our first look pics and clips for each!

Jaime Pressly

Darlene meeting with Jaime Pressly's tire shop manager in The Conners
Darlene meeting with Jaime Pressly's tire shop manager in The Conners

While we’ll have to wait and see what Jaime Pressly’s character will be named upon her Conners debut, we do know that she’s playing a business owner in town that has an opening that Darlene is attempting to fill. Context clues from the image above, as well as the clip below, make it easy to glean that the Joe Dirt vet runs a tire company, which doesn’t exactly sound like a perfect fit for the…non-tire-enthusiast that is Darlene.

Now hit play to see Jaime Pressly using one of the most groan-worthy management-speak euphamisms, and how Darlene reacted in kind.

Something tells me Darlene isn't going to land this gig. Which is probably fine, since she's probably get...tired of it...pretty quickly.

Jack McBrayer

Darlene meeting with Jack McBrayer's candy shop owner in The Conners
Darlene meeting with Jack McBrayer's candy shop owner in The Conners

A similar narrative path is in place for Jack McBrayer, who shared the screen with another sticom icon already this year on Call Me Kat. Although this guest spot seems to be a bit more bittersweet, in that The Conners manages to successfully offer up a McBrayer character whose beaming smile is eventually upended by his distaste for Darlene's personality. Which is kind of like comedy blasphemy, even if she doesn't know it.

Check out McBrayer's small-town quasi-Willy Wonka in the clip below!

Now that you know the kind of fun Darlene will be having on her job hunt, don't forget to tune into The Conners tonight on ABC to see Jaime Pressly and Jack McBrayer in what'll hopefully be the first of several appearances as time goes by. Actually, if there's a petition to sign for a spinoff entirely centering on Jack McBrayer as the owner of a candy company, I will start canvassing neighborhoods.