The new Up All Night placed Reagan in her home all week after the set of Ava was flooded. And by having Reagan hang out in the Brinkley household, we got a chance to observe some of her quirks that we don’t normally see when she’s interacting with the lunatic Ava at work.
For example, she became obsessed with reorganizing the junk drawer that Chris, who’s at home all day with their daughter, said was fine, that he liked it in the jumble that it was.
Then Reagan told him that from now on, Amy’s clothes would be folded her way, not Chris’, because her way was “better.” “Better” was a big word for Reagan during her time off.
Any time you have a spouse walking around and correcting everything you do, telling you that her way is superior to yours, bliss does not normally follow. In this case, Chris was pretty patient with Reagan, didn’t snap at her like many of us would have. Though her guerrilla chopping of the neighbor’s overgrown weeds and bushes — which stunned Chris — reinforced that Reagan made the right decision to be a working parent because if she directed all that toxic, Type-A energy toward stuff in her house, all her neighbors and Chris would hate her.
As for Chris, even when he was tempted by the siren call of returning to his law practice, at which he’s apparently really talented, he didn’t take the bait. He wants to be an at-home dad and that means being the king of his domain, which includes a messy junk drawer and balls of socks.
This was the first time Up All Night gave Ava some depth when she was trying to suck up to her boyfriend Kevin’s daughter in order to impress him. With typical tweenage eye rolls, the kid dismissed her as a gas bag until they found common ground in music. When the girl didn’t exactly blow the doors off with her singing, Ava, surprisingly, was warm and encouraging, not at all snarky.
Not a wildly humorous episode — other than Reagan’s manic weed whacking — this installment served as one in which we got to know the characters a little better, like understanding why a male lawyer would want to be the at-home parent when hardly any of his peers make that same choice.
Clacked by Meredith O'Brien 
on Nov 24, 2011 @ 09:45 EST5EDT
