Review: Central Park “Live It Up Tonight”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

As part of her ongoing scheme to take over Central Park, Bitsy Brandenham gets the mayor to order an unexpected audit over at the park in an effort to dig up dirt she can use to ruin Owen and the park’s standing with the public. However, she doesn’t count on the lengths Owen and Paige will go to, and together the two of them take a nighttime trip to visit a worm store in order to reprint their receipt.

Meanwhile, Molly and Cole are taking a pop culture tour about Cole’s favorite film, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Lead by the entrepreneurial tour guide named Zoom, everything is going well until they reach the spooky portion of the tour. Cole runs off, scared by bats, and Molly has to track him down. By the time they get back home, it’s past their curfew. But that’s okay, because Owen and Paige were late getting back, too.

Our Take:

Live It Up Tonight splits the Central Park cast into three groups: the kids, their parents, and Bitsy and Helen. It’s not quite as strong an episode as when the whole Tillerman ensemble is together, but it’s still an entertaining jaunt in the park that provides some character development while giving us plenty of laughs along the way.

Bitsy and Helen are definitely the stars of the show in my mind. This episode finds them stuck together in an underground bunker after they both get stuck going down a passageway trying to find a jade earring that dropped underneath a dumpster. Helen’s biting sarcasm is often withheld or spoken just out of earshot when it comes to her rich employer, so seeing them unable to escape from each other is a fun angle. Bitsy in particular was on fire this week, with plenty of solid one-liners… and her knock knock jokes to intimidate the competition and her least favorite pretzel place were great.

The other two plot lines are a bit less interesting. The better of the Tillerman storylines for me was Owen and Paige’s. Excited to finally have a night to themselves with the kids off at the tour, they start catching up on chores until they realize that’s kind of lame. Then they try to go out, but their wild night comes to an abrupt end when Owen gets a call informing him of the late night auditor’s arrival. This starts them off on a long chase to track down a receipt for worms that sees them biking in the rain and buying Gumbo-scented candles from a desperate mother. Sweet bonding moments ensued throughout, and Owen and Paige manage to have a good time without the typical late night drinking.

Molly and Cole’s story isn’t as enjoyable due to its sheer predictability and lack of a real message or theme. Cole’s not scared of the dark, or maybe he is? He’s scared of Molly, but then he’s okay with her helping him off the fence? It was just a bit scattershot and Zoom’s song was pretty meh.

Overall, Live It Up Tonight does a pretty good job of letting viewers live it up. While it didn’t quite reach the heights of last week’s episode for me, it was one of Bitsy’s funniest episodes to date, and getting to see more of Owen and Paige tearing up the town together is always welcome.