"Up All Night," "Whitney," "Apt. 23" preview season 2 changes

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Up All Night (returns Thursday at 8:30 p.m.)

Season-One Story: Up All Night, starring Christina Applegate and Will
Arnett as new parents, started out last fall as a glimmer of sitcom
hope for NBC. Initially airing Wednesdays at 8 p.m., the Lorne
Michaels–produced show (created and produced by SNL alum Spivey) was a
self-starter on a night where NBC had no recent comedy track record;
its early ratings performance among viewers under 50 was actually
stronger than some of the network's established Thursday shows. NBC
eventually decided to try to capitalize on that Nielsen momentum
(though perhaps a bit too slowly) by shifting the series to Thursdays.
But instead of its numbers going up, they went down, causing one
Peacock exec to privately complain to Vulture that NBC's Thursday was
now seen as so niche that "Even when we move broader shows to the
night, they lose viewers." Yet through it all, Up maintained a core
audience, and once DVR data was figured in, it actually ended up
drawing bigger overall ratings last season than 30 Rock and Parks and
Recreation.

Season-Two Changes: Series creator Emily Spivey knows what you thought
of Up All Night’s first-season schizophrenia, as the show bounced back
and forth from being about once-footloose adults adjusting to
parenthood to a backstage comedy about life on an Oprah-like talk
show, Ava, where Applegate’s Reagan worked as a producer for her
self-obsessed best friend/host (Maya Rudolph). "The simple home
stories butted up against the scope of daytime talk show. It felt like
two different shows,” she says. “We enjoyed both. But in the final
product, it was two different worlds." This season, one of the worlds
have been blown up: Ava has been canceled, and Reagan is now a
stay-at-home mom, so the focus is now strictly on her and Chris (Will
Arnett) managing parenthood. "I always felt that the heart of the show
[was] about a cool couple having a baby," Spivey says. (The
cancelation doesn’t mean that Rudolph is off the show, mind you.
Thanks to the magic of TV logic, the unemployed, childphobic Ava will
now have more time to spend with Reagan and Chris, a former lawyer who
is now running his own small construction business.) "We get to see
all of them on new paths of struggle," Spivey says. However, just
because the show will be more about their home life doesn’t mean the
baby will be front and center: Spivey cautions that viewers shouldn’t
expect an update of Full House. "What didn't make me laugh last season
was when the show was super baby-centric," Spivey admits. A season one
episode set at Gymboree had some funny moments, "but that was the
opposite of what I wanted to do" with Up, she says. "I want this to be
a show about how a baby affects a couple."