Up All Night

Up All Night

Episode 13: Rivals

By: Carlos Uribe

Up All Night is a show about two new parents.

Spoilers Ahoy!

It turns out that Ava has a sort of rival in her daytime television program. That person is someone with a big personality called Shaina. It turns out that Shaina used to be a morbidly obese woman that Ava managed to help to get skinny. Shaina was a regular guest on the show, often doing cooking segments with Ava. One day, when offered a contract extension, Shaina decided to take her popularity and her inspiring background and went into her own daytime talk show that competes straight with Ava. When Shaina starts to steal the ideas from the Ava show, it feels like she didn't just betray them but that she's also stealing from them and taking advantage of them. This sets forth a plot in which Reagan tries her best to stop the stealing. This eventually leads to Reagan making Shaina feel bad for actually breaking Ava's heart. There's a nice ending at the episode which suggests that Shaina is going to have her own ideas instead of taking them from Ava's talk show.

It was an overall funny story with a great character from Megan Mullaly. The one problem I had with the show is that as it continued, I realized that I didn't care if anyone was stealing from the Ava show. Even worse, I actually liked Shaina in this episode than I liked Ava. Don't get me wrong, I have grown to like Ava. When she's being a slightly over-the-top human being, she can be really great. The problem is Maya Rudolph. Don't get me wrong, I like the actress. She was great in Bridesmaids and in other productions. I think the problem is that this wasn't a good role for Maya Rudolph, at least not in the beginning. Some roles, no matter the talent, don't necessarily work with a particular actor or actress. I think the original Ava didn't fit with not only the show, but the actress. As Ava has grown more human, Maya Rudolph has managed to make Ava work and Ava has managed to fit with the show better. Shaina managed to essentially be the original Ava character with some minor differences, but Megan Mullaly managed to pull it off almost perfectly. She was bigger-than-life and she pulled it off. It makes me wonder that if the show had started with Megan Mullaly as Ava, if it would have had a better show from the beginning? That's not a question that the show should have led me to ask.

As for the Chris story, he's getting close with his playgroup mom friends and that makes Reagan jealous. To be specific, she's jealous because she hears Chris laughing and having inside jokes with one of the moms, Laura. This makes Reagan think that Chris may no longer be her best friend, which doesn't please her. At the end of the episode she's assured that she will always be Chris' best friends, even if she isn't always in on the inside jokes. It was a pretty funny storyline and it was especially great to see how important watching a TV show together was to both the characters. Watching TV with other people, people you're close with, can be a great experience. It's like metaphorically being able to share a journey together. When Chris shares the journey with Laura instead of his wife, it truly felt like he was cheating on Reagan.

Overall, this was the funniest episode of the show that I remember in a while. That's because the B-story with Chris and Reagan really worked (that scene at the park in the very ending was extremely sweet) and the A-story definably brought some laughs from Megan Mullaly. The problem is that this episode simply reveals how big of a mistake it was to have casted Maya Rudolph as Ava from the beginning. She may have grown into the role, but it took too long for Rudolph to get there.