So, I’m kind of up all night over Up All Night.  If you don’t know what it is, it’s a TV show.  But not just any TV show– it’s a sitcom that started out with this premise: What happens when a former cool-girl daytime talk show producer has a baby and tries to juggle her work and family?  

I really wanted to know the answer to that question.  For personal reasons.  So did a lot of my co-workers.  In fact, when they released an over four-minute trailer for the show in anticipation of its premiere, we watched all four minutes and forty-two seconds.   That’s like an eternity in online video commitment.  We chuckled as our heroes, Christina Applegate and Will Arnett, grappled with their baby’s super human strength.  We howled over their “who slept less last night” fight.  We emailed it to each other.  We said, “This is gonna be so awesome.”

Then the show started.  It was okay.  It continued.  It was less okay.  And also, what about the TV show you people work at?  When does the fact that you work at a talk show and not a paper supply company, a late night sketch show or a diner factor in?  It didn’t– and then they got renewed for Season Two– by the skin of Maya Rudolph’s pretty teeth.

In Season Two, there was no more talk show.  So now, not only is this now just kind of a regular show about people, but it has effectively USED UP THE PREMISE for, oh, I don’t know– anyone else who might want to develop a show about working at a talk show.  It was sad.  Feelings were hurt.  I binge-ate uncooked spaghetti noodles.

For those of us who care, just adding Jack from Will & Grace playing “Older Jack” from Will & Grace and also a random brother aren’t the only changes.  The show’s switching to a multi-cam format, which means it’s now going to be “Taped In Front of a Live Studio Audience.”  Just like Two and a Half Men!  And Whitney!  Oy.

And then, there’s this news.  Series creator (and former SNL writer, so she’s kinda Liz Lemony) Emily Spivey is “departing.” And here I am, blogging about this show I don’t watch much any more and a woman I don’t know.  At midnight.  And this is why:  I feel like Up All Night is that friend you know deep down is so, so super-awesome, but she can’t get her act together and just keeps going down the same dead-end path and dating the same loser guys.  No, Sweet Friend, getting bangs or switching to a multi-cam format are NOT the answer– and now that Emily Spivey’s leaving, well, that’s pretty much like your own mom just gave up on you.  Whatever you do, Up All Night, don’t have another baby– that fixes nothing.

I only say this because I care.  And also, Happy 2013!