Here’s a Scene From the Second Episode of ‘Up All Night’ That Illustrates Why It’s Really Good So Far

The pilot for "Up All Night" premiered last week, but everyone knows comedy pilots don't usually tell us anything about the quality or tone of the actual show. So I was excited (and a little anxious) last night to see if "Up All Night" was going to continue to seem promising with its second episode (the first "real" episode in my personal world view). And guess what? It really did!

The show's biggest strength so far is the cast, of course, but also the revolutionary-for-2011 thing they're doing with them: making them likeable, funny people who you might imagine wanting to be around! And, get this: the characters like each other as well. I'm loving that the choice of ultimate conflict (so far) is "Reagan and Chris Against the World," rather than the tired husband-and-wife-against-each-other trope. Here's an example of that (and of the show's sensibility): Reagan and Chris rush to update their Facebook pages to seem cooler after meeting a cool neighbor they know is about to friend them. Actually, this is probably as annoyed-with-each other as they were in the entire episode, but you can tell it's constructive Facebook-page criticism! (And it's funny):

Also, completely unrelated: Jennifer Hall, who plays an office assistant, has a face that's been driving me crazy. After examining her IMDB page, it became clear why: it's not because of her appearances on other shows, many of which I've seen. It's because she looks EXACTLY like Tracey Gold from "Growing Pains." It's so distracting!