In Which The Third Wheel Is No Afterthought

Watching and Growing 

by QICHEN ZHANG

Up All Night
creator Emily Spivey

I've recently begun to realize that there's a slight possibility that I may be projecting my own self-proclaimed third-wheel identity onto my film and television choices. I'm shocked I could feel as much unadulterated loathing as I did for Keira Knightley when watching her steal Carey Mulligan's doomed loverboy in Never Let Me Go. Blame it on my ethnicity, but I can't help but see myself as the "supportive Asian friend" in rom-coms living vicariously through the obviously more sexy and more sex-having (and usually blond) main character. I liked Seth in The O.C. before it was cool to like him more than Ryan. Without getting too Freudian about it, I can definitely see myself chilling with onscreen tagalongs. 

Even without my inherent gravitation toward underdogs, though, Maya Rudolph wins my sidekick of the year award for her role as the pure embodiment of womanhood in NBC's Up All Night. Playing attention-loving TV personality Ava who hosts an eponymous, motivational show for women à la Oprah, Rudolph is initially and ironically portrayed as the single friend of the married couple, of which the wife is Ava's producer. Which is fine. Ultimately, someone’s gotta play the supporting role. But as a person whose YouTube habits accounts for half the views on Rudolph's national anthem video, I really cry at the prospect of her being relegated to the side. 

So when NBC first rolled out commercials for the debut of Up All Night I was initially disappointed that Rudolph was cast as the third wheel. The show mainly revolves around the hip married life of Reagan (Christina Applegate) and Chris (Will Arnett), a young couple with a newborn who create comical hijinks from their unusual stay-at-home-dad arrangement. Chris used to be a stuffy corporate lawyer but, once becoming a father, makes the progressive decision to stay at home, simultaneously quitting his job to take care of the baby and buying Bjorn Borg underwear. Instead, Reagan goes off to work each day running Ava’s show.

The show’s premise spotlights the couple as an exemplary paradigm of what a young, contemporary marriage should be. They drink, they party, they squabble over the tackiness of Chris’ Brendan Shanahan cardboard stand-ups. Somehow in all of that, they find time to change diapers as well. Among the fanciful notion that a serious relationship consists of disagreements on décor complemented with a shit ton of midday drinking, I found little space for Rudolph’s comedic prowess to manifest in NBC’s starry-eyed attempt to make marriage “edgy” and “alternative.” Guys, it’s Christina Applegate, not Christina Ricci. 

And what's ironic about the character positioning is that Ava is pushed off to the side despite her headlining her own fictional show with the main character behind the scene. In most episodes, Ava's constantly barging into Chris and Reagan's home uninvited, usually clutching a bottle of Sauvignon and smiling Rudolph's signature bright-eyed and gummy smile, with Chris mumbling sarcastically, "Why, Ava, come on in." 

But Rudolph doesn't take to the sidelines meekly. In just a few episodes, she's successfully managed to embody femininity and mock it at the same time. And it's hard. Last year's Holly McKay article that basically told female comedians to "be less ugly" demonstrates how the assumption that women can't be funny and attractive at the same time prevails in mainstream comedy. Rudolph confronts this assumption head on, embracing and yet rejecting it at the same time.

Wearing designer clothes as a TV idol and acting like the biggest diva since Beyoncé post-C-section, Ava sasses us into oblivion with zingers like, "Can you cut your hair? We are neither in a little house nor in a prairie." Even though we're supposed to be focused on the fact that Reagan and Chris are disrupting traditional gender roles, it's Ava that makes us acknowledge the reality of double standards. "At a certain age, a woman has to choose between her ass and her face," she delivers with complete sincerity in the pilot episode. I guffawed, even though I instinctively wanted to nod. But actually. After Ann Coulter, slowing metabolism is probably the biggest asshole around the block. 

Rudolph's making this transition from SNL to prime time look so damn easy. Although Arnett and Applegate are also playing characters relatively new to them — Arnett's trying out this new thing where he's not over the top, and Applegate is still reclaiming her dignity from those Kelly Bundy days — Rudolph is just killing it with her new role as a Hollywood diva and life-coaching guru. "Keep on watching and growing," Ava repeats in each episode while her face delivers a wise and perfectly lip-glossed smile. I want to laugh, but at the same time, I'm wondering if I would've become more in touch with my "inner woman" or whatever if I had watched more Oprah growing up. 

I'm not implying that Rudolph triumphs as the underdog on a show sustaining marriage norms despite tricking viewers into thinking it's defying gender expectations with the stay-at-home dad gimmick. (Although that's exactly what it does. Married life is so fun! A husband and wife's most serious problem is how to organize the junk drawer! How quaint, ammirite?!)

I'm not even trying to suggest that the show instinctively sought to overshadow Rudolph with Arnett and Applegate in the first place. I mean, the chick is undeniably funny in her own right without being obnoxious about it, unlike Molly Shannon, who guest starred as an incompetent soccer mom in arguably the worst episode of the season. (Put her back in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform and we'll talk.)

Up All Night caught my attention for its unique and relatively harmonious relationships between its characters. I'm not sure how long this third-wheel act can work, and whether dynamics between Reagan, Chris and Ava will change once Ava gets more serious with her new handyman boo Kevin, played by a lumberjack-y Jason Lee who actually seems to have gotten lost and confused on the way to the My Name is Earl set. But maybe it’s a good thing that the writers have incorporated this May-December romance into the show. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have gems like, “When he touches me, I feel as if I’m being sandblasted.” 

For now there's a certain balance to the show, in terms of both comedy and relatability, that gives each character his or her due. In the Christmas episode that primarily focused on Reagan's obsession with giving her newborn Amy the best first Christmas evarrrrr, Ava gets to jab the audience with her funny bone too. Not a mere reminder that her character's existence on the show is relevant, Rudolph's punchy deliveries stand well enough on their own, usually due to how damn relatable they are. After she tries on a skiing outfit to prepare for a romantic winter getaway with Kevin, she gets trapped in said outfit and shouts to her assistant, "It feels like I'm being raped by a sleeping bag!" Girl. You and every other chick trying on a North Face monstrosity at the mall. 

Maybe I'm biased, given my history of underdog admiration. But in Up All Night viewers can see just how the third wheel gets the audience's attention while simultaneously maintaining the balanced feng shui of the cast. In a recent episode, Ava appears in a karate outfit for a particular segment on her show. She asks the guest instructor, "Master Hu, what's the belt that allows me to catch a fly with chopsticks?" This has got to be a step up from that Karate Kid rerun on TBS you'd be watching instead. Plus, Megan Mullally just guest starred last week. Don't tell me you haven't missed that squeaky little woman. 

Qichen Zhang is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Cambridge. She last wrote in these pages about Parenthood. She tumbls here and twitters here. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

"The Wind" - The Fray (mp3)

"I Can Barely Say" - The Fray (mp3)

"Munich" - The Fray (mp3)

In Which He Is Now The John Lennon of Domain Names

The Man Who Could Not Usually Be Silenced

by DICK CHENEY

Lost

Season Six

I heard last week's episode was focused on Kate. I was on Fox News during the original airing. I drunk gchatted some peeps later that night after a case of Buffalo Trace and a prostitute named Susquehanna. The only one up at 4 am is Charles Krauthammer, and after busting his chops for being in a wheelchair like Locke and Magic Johnson for a week in the late 1990s, I asked him if Kate ran from her problems for the entire episode. He typed "lol" and then excused himself to empty his bedpan.

Charles Krauthammer jokes aren't how I made my reputation - Lost recaps with read-between-the-lines political coverage are. Let's face it - I could write a more coherent argument than Glenn Greenwald just by using the frontal lobe of my brain.

I guess I'm just caught up in the critics of my evil deeds, like New Locke, a.k.a. the Man in the Black. The writers of Lost asked themselves, "Would it be cool if we created a NEW major antagonist of the series in the final season of its existence?" They answered yes, and recast Locke as the villain in the saint's body. At least the Borg had a shiny-looking cube.

It's difficult to enjoy the inspiring story of Locke getting fired for cause when I have nightmarish flashbacks to Sawyer showing Kate the gay wedding ring he bought for Juliet in last week's episode. This week, Sawyer pretended that never happened, while still cracking wise by drinking himself to death in his underwear.

In the meantime, New Locke found a boy in the woods who looks like young Jacob. Revolutions have been started from less, I think this is basically how the careers of Charles Manson and Bob Dole began. Everywhere I go people ask me how I got my start in politics. "I was in the jungle," I tell them. "I ran out of food and water. I saw Satan, and sold him my soul. Now I've come to take yours." And I then bring out these creepy fake teeth that I have to replace the lack of my not having real teeth anymore and scream like Chunk in The Goonies.

I really don't understand what happened to Lost. You have these iconic characters, and yet all you can find to do with them is go to some weird cave on the side of the island and look at "candidates" for the island's savior. That may be how the Democratic Party chooses gubernatorial candidates, but it's a far cry from a political process.

Lost is trying to move back towards the simple pleasures of its first season. Although this current one has suddenly vaunted itself into the competition of suck, the first season was actually incredibly slow and deliberate about what it hoped to accomplish. The larger vision of the island that was developed in the ensuing seasons is totally obliterated by the character-based stories the show wants to return to.

Now that we've found out Hurley is Rose's boss, I have come up with some other ways the cast can be suprisingly connected with each other in parallel Los Angeles:

- Claire makes a young mother faux pas and asks Walt to babysit for Aaron

- Sun gives Charlie a massage complete with happy ending

- Boone appears in a not-very-well-received adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' The Rules of Attraction

how was there no 'bueller' joke associated with this flashforward?- Kate sells her revolutionary book concept, Eat Pray Run

- Shannon explains the concept of thetans to Sayid before he joins Scientology

- Juliet commits the classic screwup by transferring Miles' domain name to a big corporation without notifying him and then lying about it

Seeing John Locke teach his fiancee about how there are no miracles recalled the brilliant lessons of George Bluth. Every time Katey Segal's face gets in my face, I can't get what she did to John Ritter out of my mind. Who knew that Married with Children would spawn three successful careers, one major eating disorder, and one complete failure? Speaking of weird casting, putting regulars from Lost on every other failure of an ABC show is wrong in so many ways. If they try to recast Michael Emerson as one of the guys with the girl in the pizza place, I'm going to have to commit an unrelated murder on whoever thinks Better Off Ted is funny.

harold and richard, get off this show and head to white castle guysThe only show I can really watch and enjoy besides Lost is of course Archer, where H. Jon Benjamin is doing a virtual clinic in how awesome he is at voice acting.

So far Aisha Tyler and Jessica Walter are underwritten and annoying, but it's comforting to find a show that's honest about its objectification of women instead of just putting Evangeline Lilly in a wife-beater for the better part of five seasons.

"wait a second - does the doc have a higher number because he's kewter than me?"The parallel universe Los Angeles is likely to ensure what we should already know by now - even in this wonky version of the future, the names written on the wall of the Man-in-Black's masturbation cave were headed for the island even if Oceanic Flight 815 never crashed at all.

You're probably wondering why I've been in the news lately. It's partly because I saw Sarah Palin reading off her hand and wanted to make the save, and partly because if k.d. lang is confident enough to look like that in public, so am I.

A young tumblr's story has recently inspired me to speak out. The man who created pitchfork.tumblr.com had it stolen away from him. Tumbledore's fight to become the Yoko Ono of domain names has already embarrassed one really insecure tumblr "director of outreach." Her outreach is about as effective as Ari Fleischer was at hiding my more profanity-laced e-mails, and her memoirs about this incident on a rival website leave something to be desired. A lot of hurt feelings hopefully won't mar the fact that my favorite blog in the world is located on tumblr, and also my second favorite. Never hire an oversharer to do what an undersharer can do just as well.

you hurt the feelings of a beautiful young tumblr in the prime of his tumbling. all he wanted was to post pics and songs for uWe now all tenderly await meaghano's memoir about her customer experience with tumbledore, replete with a raunchy sex scene where she dry humps a printed out e-mail. With a little luck this can turn into something Don King can really get behind.  Hopefully I will read about meaghano and tumbledore's 2012 nuptials in an elaborate NYT wedding profile where instead of them posing together, their websites pose for a series of photos. The initial enmity between the two melted over a series of e-mails and meet-ups at Pinkberry. The two quickly found they shared a grudging respect for Choire Sicha, and neither knew how to pronounce his first name.

tumbledore claims nothing! it is you who have to answer for your sins!!!Young tumbledore demonstrates a devil-may-care attitude that Sawyer would do well to follow. At the very least he won't have to do awkward rope ladder stunts with a former paraplegic and he can focus on having heart-to-hearts with Richard about how new Locke wants to kill his friends. The island's jungle has turned into more of a sausagefest than Gawker.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in an undisclosed location. He is marketing a line of "Free Tumbledore" tee-shirts that you will be excited to hear about in the coming daze. You can read his review of the Lost premiere here.

"Killing the Ghost" - Matthew Ryan (mp3)

"Jane I Still Feel The Same" - Matthew Ryan (mp3)

"They Were Wrong" - Matthew Ryan (mp3)

Ryan's incredible new album, Dear Lover, comes out this week.