Up All Night - 1x13 - Rivals

Betrayal! Infidelity! Morbidly Obese People! A not-completely-annoying Megan Mullaly! Join me as I try in vain to find something to say about a perfectly enjoyable episode of a very sweet show that I otherwise have nothing to say about. Also, I may have discovered a new fetish.

So apparently Ava's got her own Dr. Phil, and it's Megan Mullally. She plays Shayna, a prior guest who they literally pried from a trailer park with a forklift (I assume), put on a diet, and made into a celebrity in her own right. She parlayed that into her own competing talk show that has a bad habit of stealing episode ideas from Ava's show (karate, salsa dancing, eh). A little schmoozing and boozing is attempted to smooth things over, but Shayna is a slimy you-know-what, and just keeps on stealing ideas. Oddly enough Reagan actually manages to guilt her out of it. I'm actually a little surprised that Shayna legitimatey succumed to the guilt trip. I honestly thought we were going to get some kind of wacky sabotage hijinks. I like it better this way.

Though if you turned on Closed Captioning, you'd read the vilest,
most disgusting insults ever uttered under one's breath.  

See, I have a complicated relationship with post-Will-and-Grace Megan Mullally. She was horribly shrill in Happy Endings, but kind of awesome on Parks and Recreation. She was sorta okay on Party Down, but utterly forgettable on 30 Rock. I should probably check out how she's doing on Breaking In, but only so many hours in the day, you know? Here, though, she works great. Maybe it's because she's allowed to be the most normal she's ever been. Her character note is "ambitious woman with tragic past". It doesn't have olympic level alcoholism in it, or staggeringly naive stage mother, or insane librarian. The more normal she's allowed to be, the most nuance Mullally is able to inject into the character, and it's that nuance that makes her so compelling. The end of episode's Heel Face Turn wouldn't have made sense without it.

Chris cheats (!!) on Reagan...well, tv-cheats, but that's arguably worse (not really). After getting discblocked enough times by an exhausted Reagan he ends up watching the season finale of Friday Night Lights with friendly play date mom, New Christine. Actually I really liked her. She was cute, funny, fun, everything New Chrstine wasn't...maybe Reagan should be worried. She gets an awesome seduction scene centered completely around the act of turning on the tv. I was ready to decry it as too on the nose, when all of a sudden it was over and I realized I was still literally laughing at it. Also, possibly a little turned on.

If anyone asks, it was just because of the girl, and not at all
because of how she was fondling that filthy, dirty TV...

Reagan starts marking her territory at play group when she hears Chris laughing with this other woman on the phone, and somehow levels that up into the single most awkward couples dinner ever. The way New Christine's husband has all of two lines and yet manages to convey such an all-consuming displeasure at the Brinkley's very existence deserves some kind of Emmy (Best Seething in a Supporting Actor?). When the FNL bomb drops though, Reagan just straight up flips her lid, and it's safe to say neither of these people will be coming to playgroup anymore. It doesn't matter though, because our kids make up and try to find a common interest they can both share in. Like...football?

I hate football.