Up All Night – When the SNL shtick doesn’t work out so well

It’s one thing to watch Molly Shannon ham it up when it’s past midnight on a Saturday and you’re pretty tired or just returning home from a night out. It’s quite another to watch her do her thing in the 8 o’clock hour when you’re still wide awake.

What works on SNL doesn’t necessarily translate so well in a primetime sitcom.

Believe me, I wanted to find humor in Shannon’s god awful Nancy, the struggling single mom who sucks at her job on The Ava Show. I wanted to laugh. But I didn’t. Instead, I was simply annoyed by her over-the-top character for whom subtle humor and intelligent snark are wildly foreign concepts.

It wasn’t just that Nancy was unfunny, it was that Reagan’s tolerance of Nancy’s gross incompetence wasn’t an apt, comedic illustration of how Reagan is different at work now that she’s a mother. They could’ve done a better job both in making the point that Reagan had changed and with Shannon’s material.

You want a comedic depiction of how parenthood changes a person? Watch Chris, whom at-home parenthood has turned into a man who acts like he’s packing TNT and a dry book of matches in the back pocket of his skinny jeans. Will Arnett’s Chris accusing his infant of knowingly trying to taunt him and blowing him off in favor of Mommy, now that was funny. Also funny, watching the normally thoughtful, sweet, goofy Chris become a checking maniac on the ice as he took his frustrations out on the unlucky saps on the hockey rink.

Chris’ paranoia — searching  the new babysitter’s purse for drugs just because she was playing the Grateful Dead for the baby — was an amusing twist on the largely unfounded fears which plague new parents who think they see dangers for their babies everywhere. But Reagan, a supposedly fabulous TV producer, putting up with repeated, atrocious mistakes from a clearly moronic employee … that’s not the stuff of which funny scenes are made. When Ava is the only one talking sense on the set, you know you’re in trouble.

Best lines of this Up All Night episode:

Ava, rightfully livid about Nancy’s errors and Reagan’s refusal to fire her, said, “She is a MILF, Reagan, a Mother I’d Like to Fire.”

“Yes, she is a MILF, Ava, a Mother I’d Like to Foster,” Reagan responded.

***

When Chris was aggravated after a particularly bad episode involving the baby and some sweet potatoes, he handed Amy off to Reagan saying he needed to “not be with her right now.” Reagan said, “She’s so happy. What are you talking about?”

“It’s all an act,” Chris replied accusatorily. “She’s playing you, believe me … She knows what she did.”

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Nov 17, 2011 @ 11:34 EST5EDT