The freshman NBC sitcom Up All Night rang in a new year and a new timeslot last night, replacing Whitney in the spot right after NBC’s current highest-rated comedy, The Office. It’s a big move for the show and one that should put a lot more eyes on it. A position in NBC’s Thursday night comedy block is just what Up All Night needs as the show continues to discover and utilize its strengths in what’s been, so far, a successful first season.
After taking a few weeks to finding its strengths and work out the kinks, Up All Night is hitting a mid-first season stride, with last night’s episode becoming the latest in a string of solid episodes that have improved significantly from where the show started. The biggest issue the show’s had is that Maya Rudolph’s character Ava, whose role in Up All Night was beefed up in response to the overwhelming success of Bridesmaids, spends most episodes in her own plotline that feel like an entirely different show from the one Reagan and Chris are in. Maya Rudolph was once again confined to her own storyline in “First Time [...]
So much of Up All Night has been about Reagan and Chris trying to hold onto their youth while dealing with being new parents, so it’s about time that we get a glimpse of what their lives looked like before Amy was born – even if it’s just a few hours before this life-changing event. Doing a flashback episode – and one with little explanation besides the quick opening title “Sometime last year” – is a risky move for a show that hasn’t tried anything this conceptual yet, but it paid off in spades. Audiences tuning in a minute or two late may have been a bit confused at [...]
One of the benefits of Up All Night's cast and crew being full of TV veterans is that they can call on their friends and colleagues to drop by every now and then to spice things up. Last night’s episode featured appearances by Will Forte and The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone, both of whom worked on SNL with Up All Night producer Lorne Michaels, creator Emily Spivey, and star Maya Rudolph. (Forte also co-starred with Will Arnett in The Brothers Solomon.) Up All Night's three-person cast is extremely tiny — smaller than any network sitcom in recent memory*, and because of this, guest turns by comedy stars like Forte [...]
I'm no Matlock (yet), but the evidence sure is mounting that Will Arnett will not replace Steve Carell, despite guest-starring in The Office finale. As Splitsider reported last week, Will Arnett will co-star in NBC's Christina Applegate pilot. The show still has no name, but continues to slowly assemble a more and more excellent cast. Deadline confirms that Arnett will be playing Applegate's husband, the stay-at home dad to her "acerbic" working mom. That plus co-star Maya Rudolph basically guarantees we will watch this show praying it survives, but it seems more and more likely our Arnett/Creed slash-fiction will remain solely in the word of fantasy. [...]
Holiday episodes are a sitcom staple, allowing shows to spit out fun and exciting one-off installments that place all of the characters in unusual and high-stakes circumstances. Since Up All Night skipped Halloween this inaugural season, last night’s Christmas show was its first holiday-themed episode, and I’d say it was a success. The show seems to have cured itself of that early problem of Ava seeming like she was stuck in a different show than Reagan and Chris, the writers wisely remedying the situation by implementing her relationship with their neighbor Kevin (recurring guest Jason Lee) and having Chris drop by Reagan’s work more often. With that particular issue [...]
With all the time Up All Night has spent showing how obsessive a parent Reagan is, it was only a matter of time before her mom and dad were introduced to us to explain her mothering style. Guest stars Blythe Danner and Richard Schiff play Reagan’s mother and father, an author and a psychologist, respectively, and their overbearing nature accounts for the excessive care Reagan brings to her parenting duties.
“Parents” opens with Chris and Reagan at the computer when Chris receives a Skype request from Reagan’s parents. Reagan pressures Chris to ignore the call, but he gives in, fearing that Reagan’s dad can read his mind (“He’s a [...]
This week’s Up All Night sees Reagan in direct conflict with two people in her life – her best friend/boss Ava and another mother in her daughter’s baby class. The “emotional chess match” between Reagan and Ava begins because Ava feels Reagan is putting the emphasis on her newborn child instead of her. It’s expected that a little bit of Reagan’s attention will drift away from her work – what with being a parent for the first time being a big deal and all – but the level of involvement Chris and Reagan show with Amy’s baby class is a little much.
There are often moments when I'm watching family-based sitcoms where I think to myself, "I'd sure like to get married and have a baby." Not out of some personal need, but in an attempt to understand what exactly is so nightmarishly horrible about it. Because that's basically the premise of many, if not most, sitcoms: marriage crushes your spirit, having kids destroys your soul. And do not even get me started on those succubi they call our in-laws! Maybe family life is secretly a fiendish pit of despair, but in the meantime I'd like the fantasize that it is as hopeful as Up All Night, though if it was [...]
Can a show that still doesn't have a name and is still merely an ordered pilot become appointment television? Because the new show starring Christina Applegate, produced by Lorne Michaels, written by SNL/Parks and Rec's Emily Spivey and featuring Will Arnett somehow just got better: Maya Rudolph is now signed on to co-lead with Applegate. So can we just skip the whole pilot thing and give this show a full-season order already? Might as well save ourselves some time and energy.
It’s a big week for Up All Night, with news coming in that the show will be joining NBC’s Thursday night comedy block come 2012 (It’s the big programming change at NBC that everyone’s buzzing about!). The Thursday night block is where the show should have been all along, as it fits in with the rest of the single-camera, laughtrack-free workplace shows on Thursdays much better than the multi-cam, studio audience-pleasing relationship show Whitney, which will be taking Up All Night’s current timeslot. Up All Night has been able to post decent ratings on Wednesday, but with a likeminded sitcom like The Office as a lead-in, it should only [...]
To honor his winning the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Will Ferrell's celebrity buddies put together a heartwarming video about how the man has touched their lives. If you don't want to watch the entire video, the short answer is: by manipulating them with cold, calculating, empty flattery. And effective. Effective, cold, calculating, empty flattery. I mean, who wouldn't want to be told that they were the inspiration for Anchorman? No wonder the man gets so much work.
It’s a big week for Up All Night, as the show received a full season pickup on Tuesday, along with fellow NBC sitcom Whitney. Up All Night is very much in its early stages, and, like most sitcoms in their first few episodes, it’s still finding its footing. The good news means that the show will have 18 episodes left in its season from this point forward, giving it plenty of time to figure out how all of its pieces fit together. As in previous weeks, last night’s Up All Night found strength in its likeable stars Christina Applegate, Maya Rudolph, and Will Arnett, giving them material that’s [...]
After realizing that they were sitting on a comedic goldmine (or having watched Bridesmaids blow up all over the world), Maya Rudolph's character on this fall's Up All Night has been changed from Christina Applegate's publicist buddy to her diva boss. According to TVLine, Rudolph will now be “a larger-than-life talk show host, and Christina will play her producer,” in a move that seems particularly evocative of TGS With Tracy Jordan. Explained NBC's Robert Greenblatt, “We decided to change the workplace all together, to give Maya a better platform to do her thing.” If her thing is a pitch-perfect mix of Oprah, Donatella Versace and Nuni [...]
