TV Review: Up All Night

In Up All Night we've got another show with a premise that has definite potential but which makes its debut with an underwhelming pilot.  Will Arnett and Christina Applegate are Chris and Reagan, new parents to baby Amy, who has some kind of weird thing going on with her hair (or does all baby hair look like that?).  Whatever the case, the hair was distracting.

I really enjoyed the cold open with Chris and Reagan waiting for the pregnancy test results (and especially Reagan's monologue about her bleak future in a nursing home), and the reversal of the stereotypical roles (Chris stays home with the baby while Reagan goes back to work).  Maya Rudolph's character freshens things up a bit with her trademark over-the-top humor.  She plays an Oprah-like talk show host, complete with inflated self-importance, who is heavily dependent on Reagan to do basically all her work (example:  "we're going to put our heads together and Reagan's going to come up with something"). 

We see some of Chris' adventures in childcare, which are amusing but which don't dominate the episode, which I think really does it a favor.  He also busies himself coming up with an elaborate plan (and a fantastic invitation/itinerary) for his and Reagan's 7th anniversary celebration, which of course never come to fruition.  Reagan gets caught up at work and Chris stays home and apparently eats an entire pizza by himself (I really liked the shame he played this scene with).  They eventually decide to go out later in the evening to reclaim their lost "idiot" years, bar-hopping and singing karaoke which, despite being an obvious play for laughs, works because who wouldn't enjoy Arnett, Applegate, and Rudolph performing a drunken rendition of "It's Raining Men"?  That's right, no one.


While this show has to prove itself by showing a little more range in its subsequent episodes, there is a definite motif here begging to be explored.  What all three of the main characters have in common is a kind of perpetual adolescence, a desire to remain their young, hip selves even whilst they navigate the waters of adulthood and the responsibilities therein.  This obviously isn't going to work, at least for the new parents (as they learn when they wake up to vicious hangovers and a screaming baby), and I am interested to see how this development continues as the show wears on.  It's not a lesson any of them will learn overnight, and it will be fun to watch these hilarious actors try to find their way toward maturity.