Line #17 Series/UpAllNight


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/up_all_night.jpg]]
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3	''Up All Night'' is an Creator/{{NBC}} {{Sitcom}} starring Creator/ChristinaApplegate, Creator/WillArnett, and Creator/MayaRudolph. It managed to have three {{Retool}}s over the course of its two seasons.
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5	In the first season, Reagan Brinkley (Applegate) has just gone back to work after giving birth to her daughter Amy (played by twins Carly and Delaney Prince). Reagan struggles to [[FamilyVersusCareer balance her work and home life]], with the help of her supportive, stay-at-home husband Chris (Arnett). At work, she is the OnlySaneEmployee at ''Ava'', an ''[[Series/TheOprahWinfreyShow Oprah]]''-like TalkShow. She is also the best friend and LivingEmotionalCrutch of Ava herself (Rudolph), a somewhat neurotic and self-centered TV star. The first season cast is rounded out with quirky co-worker Missy (Creator/JenniferHall).
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7	Retool #1 happened before the show even aired. The pilot was originally filmed with Rudolph in a supporting role, playing Reagan's boss at a PR firm. After the success of ''{{Film/Bridesmaids}}'', it was decided that Rudolph needed a bigger and funnier part. Hence, the pilot was refilmed with the PR firm changed to the ''Ava'' talk show. This resulted in ''Up All Night'' being two shows at once, one a realistic {{Dramedy}} DomCom about new parents and the other a wacky ''Series/ThirtyRock''[=-esque=] WorkCom about show business. Critics and the show's creators felt the tonal dissonance was too much.
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9	Cue retool #2. The second season opens with the news that ''Ava'' has been cancelled. With this development, Hall is dropped from the cast, although Rudolph remains, as Ava is still Reagan's best friend. Joining the cast in the second season is Luka Jones as Reagan's lovable loser brother Scott. With his wife now unemployed, Chris goes back to work and, finding his old job soulless, begins a company with Scott as his partner. Essentially, the WorkCom aspects of the show were eliminated and it became a straight DomCom.
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11	Then came retool #3, which unraveled the show into oblivion before it could even take effect. NBC decided that ''Up All Night'', which to that point had been done in a single-camera format without a LaughTrack, would switch to a multi-camera format with a StudioAudience because why the hell not. They'd already tried everything else. Some truly nutty ideas were thrown around, such as baby Amy being able to see a portal connecting the single-cam world to the multi-cam world. In the end, they settled for the completely sane concept of having the entire show turn out to be a ShowWithinAShow, and from that point on follow the lives of the fictional actors playing Reagan, Chris, and Ava.[[note]][[https://web.archive.org/web/20130309014406/https://www.tvguide.com/news/Up-All-Night-Demise-1062227.aspx/ Seriously, we're not making this up.]][[/note]] Somehow, Applegate was unimpressed and jumped ship, followed by Arnett and Rudolph. The show was dead, but it still took several months before NBC acknowledged defeat and canceled the show officially.
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13	(Not to be confused with the '90s Creator/USANetwork series hosted by Creator/GilbertGottfried and Rhonda Shear that presented cheesy [[{{BMovie}} B-Movie]]s mixed in with even cheesier comedy sketches.)
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16	!!Tropes featured include:
17	* TheAce: Music/StevieNicks is portrayed as an almost Buddha-like figure. She can shush babies and dogs.
18	* ActorAllusion:
19	** There are several references to Creator/WillArnett's role in ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'':
20	*** Episode 17 has Arnett's character make the same chicken sound as when he played GOB.
21	*** Another episode has Arnett's character give some of his daughter's baby clothes to a friend, then change his mind. His excuse: [[{{Catchphrase}} "I've made a huge mistake."]]
22	*** A very obvious one is made when Chris meets the dentist who has been hitting on Reagan. He greets him with, "What's up, my brother?" The dentist is played by Tony Hale.
23	** One episode guest stars Megan Mullally as Shayna, who hosts a talk show rivaling Ava's. Mullally actually did briefly host her own talk show.
24	** Music/AlanisMorissette guest stars as a former bandmate of Ava's. Maya Rudolph, who plays Ava, was the backing singer and occasional keyboardist for the rock band The Rentals.
25	** A Website/YouTube "flashback" to the 1990s of Ava fighting with her boyfriend B-Ro in public shows Reagan trying to intervene, and looking remarkably like [[Series/MarriedWithChildren Kelly Bundy]].
26	* [[AsHimself As Herself]]: Music/StevieNicks is a guest on Ava's show at one point. This leads to an ImagineSpot in which Reagan fantasizes about the two of them singing a duet.
27	* BabiesEverAfter: A notable inversion in that Amy's birth is the ''beginning'' of the story.
28	* BetaCouple: Ava and Kevin.
29	* BewareTheNiceOnes: Do not make the mistake of letting Missy think she's been fired. One can only imagine how she reacted when Ava's show was canceled.
30	* BumblingDad: Inverted. Will Arnett, in an out of character role, plays plays a guy who is quite arguably [[Series/TheCosbyShow the second best father ever in a comedy series]]. Reagan is portrayed as a somewhat clueless mother.
31	* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Calvin (played by Nick Cannon) was originally billed as a supporting character; he's only in a few episodes early in season 1 and then he disappears without explanation.
32	** Missy in the second season. Kind of justified since she was mostly a work colleague and, without Ava's show, there's not really a reason for her to interact with the rest of the cast. Still, we never find out what happened to her after ''Ava'' was cancelled.
33	* TheDitz: Missy.
34	* DropInCharacter: Ava seems to be blissfully unaware of the boundary between Reagan's work and personal lives. Somewhat justified in that they were best friends long before Ava became Reagan's boss. Now that her show's gone, she's this trope entirely.
35	* DueToTheDead: Ava and Reagan completely fail at this when a crew member dies and they hardly even remember the guy's name, nor can they scare up anywhere near enough photos to make a decent slideshow.
36	* EducationMama: Reagan shows early signs of this when she goes to great lengths to get Amy into a prestigious preschool.
37	* EvilMatriarch: Played with in episode named "Parents". Reagen dreads a visit from her mother, and is annoyed by her. Also, Reagen's mother is proud of how she brought up Reagen and even writes a book about it, which annoys Reagen even more. Averted by the end of the episode, because Reagen's mother realizes what she was doing wrong after she has a Heart to heart talk with Reagen and becomes more supportive.
38	* FakeStatic: Reagan attempts the video chat equivalent of this to get out of a tiresome conversation with her parents. She has to freeze in place for several seconds at a time to maintain the illusion that the video feed is buffering.
39	* GettingTheBabyToSleep: Played with the parents can't get their daughter to sleep at all because of a loud party. Their solution is to call the police to get the party shut down, then quickly infiltrate the party so it looks like they weren't the ones who called the police. The irony is that baby Amy falls asleep immediately in the arms of the coworker they call in to babysit. Guess all they needed was to have Calvin hold her...
40	* HappilyMarried: Chris and Reagan Brinkley.
41	* HouseHusband: Chris in Season 1.
42	* InstantHumiliationJustAddYoutube: A "romantic" duet with Ava and B-Ro from the 1990s, although Ava seems incapable of shame. An even more embarrassing public fight between Ava and B-Ro, with Reagan trying to intervene. Again, no shame on Ava's part.
43	* LargeHam: Maya Rudolph as Ava.
44	* LaughTrack: One of a number of current NBC series that doesn't have one. This was planned to end after the mid-Season 2 hiatus (It would have had a studio audience, not a laugh track. The effect on the home viewers is generally the same, though.), but a series of shake-ups resulted in the show being canceled before any multi-cam episodes could be produced.
45	* MaamShock: The episode in question is titled "Ma'am'd".
46	* MindScrew: The third and last planned ReTool would've involved, among other things, an inexplicable shift from single-cam to multi-cam format, baby Amy somehow being able to connect the multi-cam world with the single-cam one in her mind, and the characters in the multi-camera universe ([[ARareSentence Never thought you'd hear that before.]]) being revealed to be [[ShowWithinAShow actors on a show]] with the focus of the real show following their lives. It's almost as if Creator/CharlieKaufman tried to take over.
47	* MistakenForCheating: Played for laughs in an episode where Chris befriends one of the neighborhood moms and they bond over a TV show that he was supposed to wait for Reagan to watch with him.
48	* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Ava = Oprah (denied by Creator/MayaRudolph, however)
49	* ObnoxiousInLaws: Sort of a subversion; Reagan seems to dread dealing with her parents more than Chris does. They're still obnoxious, though.
50	* QuittingToGetMarried: GenderInverted. The husband quits his job to care for their baby and the wife continues to work.
51	* RememberTheNewGuy: Done rather blatantly with Reagan's brother Scott at the beginning of Season 2. Despite Reagan's parents being introduced in Season 1, the brother has never been so much as mentioned up to this point.
52	* ReTool: Seems to get one about every half season.
53	** Midway through Season 1, Ava gets a new boss as a way of shaking up the work dynamic.
54	** At the beginning of Season 2, Ava's show is cancelled, Missy is dropped from the show, and Scott is added as a main character.
55	** Somewhat bafflingly, NBC had plans to convert the show to multi-cam format and film it in front of a live audience starting with the last few episodes of Season 2. Ultimately, the show was canceled before any mutli-cam episodes could be filmed.
56	* ScreamingBirth: Reagen is adamant about following a birth plan, and after trying to push unsuccessfully for a while, she tries to intimidate the doctor after he wants to do a C-section
57	* ShoutOut: the airline in episode 15 is Oceanic
58	* SitcomArchNemesis: Amy and Roger to Reagan and Chris.
59	* ThatCameOutWrong: In the rush to get Amy through the airport so that she can deal with a dirty diaper, Reagan tries to explain to a TSA officer why she's in such a hurry: "I'VE GOT A TICKING TIME BOMB HERE!"
60	* TyrantTakesTheHelm: Happens when Ava's idol, Yvonne, acquires the show and Luke becomes Regan's new boss.
61	* WholeEpisodeFlashback: "Birth", which is the sixth episode in the series, shows the sequence of events leading up to Amy's birth. Many people assumed that this was supposed to be the original pilot and that the episodes were aired OutOfOrder, but this actually ''was'' the sixth episode filmed.
62	** Also done in Season 2 with the flashback to Chris and Reagan's wedding.
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Context Series / UpAllNight