Thursday 3 November 2011

Up All Night - S1 E7 - Parents

Reagan's parents come to visit, her mother promoting a book about Reagan's youth and upbringing. A crew member on Ava's show passes away and Ava botches rememberance for him leading to resentment from other employees.


Review after the jump.

"He's never gonna get to see iPhone 5!"
I wonder if they had already filmed this part before Steve Jobs died? In any case the death of Dale, Ava's soundman, brings into sharp focus for Chris his own mortality.Most of his musings however are very morbid and self-centred though. It would be typical in a situation like this, you would think about the baby which you just brought into the world. Twenty-one more years, he repeats a couple of times, which would also be the age of Amy on his supposed death date. The worst, or depending on how you see it, best part of going early like that would be not being able to walk his faughter down the aisle on ehr wedding day. As a guy who still thinks of himself as relatively young and hip, it doesn't even seem to occur to him.

Meet the Parents
The problem with many TV parents who appear infrequently is that you don't really get any kind of feel for how they act and spend their time away from their kids, but in the same way that Reagan and Chris exist somewhere for real, Reagan's parents, especially her mother played by Blythe Danner, also do. The bond between them is not some super-tight telepathic made for television relationship, it's a real one with miscommunications between people who love one another but don't really understand one another. While Reagan is reminded to appreciate what she has, they both get that less might be more.

They'd be fired if they worked on a real show
With how well the rest of the show is constructed, it's amazing how contrary to that spirit Ava is. I bang on this point every week so I won't go too hard but it's clear they have no idea what kind of character they are even writing for with her. The sooner they forget about any Oprah comparisons, the better. On another note, the poor performance by the crew following Ava's slip is the same kind of thing as "Suck for Luck". There's a lot of performers out there with huge egos and if you go around proving yourself to be a nuisance if moderately slighted, who will hire you? I guess it is a union thing though.

Conclusion
I liked this episode, it was solid all the way around. The one slip was the video tribute to Dale which started out funny but dragged on a little too long on the one-note premise. There's not anything unique or groundbreaking about this show but it does just enough.


"Up All Night" airs Wednesdays on NBC at 8:00 pm EST.

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