Review – Happy Endings

Happy Endings – ABC – 10:00/9:00pm Wednesday – USA

This TV season there have been so many shows about twenty-somethings at different stages in their relationships that I’ve actually grown tired of joking about how there are so many shows about twenty-somethings at different stages in their relationships. Happy Endings is a new comedy for ABC (who are already airing Better With You, which is basically the same thing only with an old couple instead of a black guy) and it completes the cycle of sitcoms about this topic. ABC got the ball rolling back in the fall with Better With You, NBC followed up with Perfect Couples, FOX brought out Traffic Light, CBS debuted Mad Love and it’s all come back around to ABC who now have Happy Endings.

Happy Endings stars Zachary Knighton, from the much better but little seen Life On A Stick, as a guy named Dave who’s left at the altar by a woman named Alex (Elisha Cuthbert, who has so little screen presence that it took me the entire episode to figure out that, yes, that was Jack Bauer’s daughter from 24.) Alex’s sister Jane (Eliza Coupe) is in a relationship with a black guy named Brad (Damon Wayans Jnr). And of course they have two wacky friends; desperate female Penny (the always amusing Casey Wilson from SNL) and gay guy Max (the far less than amusing Adam Pally). They all hang out. That’s the show. I know it’s going to take a lot of brain muscle to figure out how a modern day television show could possibly grapple with the stirring tales of a ‘recently broken up couple’, a ‘still together couple’ and a ‘pair of wacky single people’, but I know the effort will be worth it.

Yes, Happy Endings is another Friends rip-off a decade after people stopped doing Friends rip-offs (heck, Rachel was a runaway bride in the pilot of Friends as well, for crying out loud). My fallback position on these incredibly generic sitcoms is to just praise the cast and say things like how Perfect Couples is kind of oddly paced but everybody in the cast is really good in something else so maybe they’ll be good here later in the season. I can’t really do that with Happy Endings as of all the ‘couples’ shows that have come out in the last four months this is the weakest cast. Actually, with the exception of Casey Wilson and Damon Wayans Jnr the entire cast could be shipped off to Mad Love and the show would suddenly become twice as good.

Zachary Knighton was always the weakest member of Life On A Stick, overplaying everything in a loud ‘I’m being wacky’ voice even if it worked for the tone of that show, but on this show it comes across as weird and kind of delusional. His bride-to-be who abandoned him returns and he starts yelling about how her hair makes her look like Predator, not because he’s upset and that’s something his character would do to break the tension but because some writer thought it would be HIGH-larious to throw in a Predator joke for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Elisha Cuthbert barely registers in the pilot, and Coupe seems to have gotten a lot of notes that say ‘be more Monica!’ The worst offender in the cast is Pally but that’s more because the character he’s lumped with is so irritating that even the most talented of actors couldn’t pull it off.

Max is the least gay gay guy you’ll see on TV. Yes, it’s nice that they’ve decided to shy away from the stereotypical flaming homosexual, but Pally does not get a single line of dialogue that doesn’t mention that he’s gay. Within the first five minutes he even gets this clunker of a line “even I think that’s gay and I had sex with a dude last night” – because he’s gay, you see. It also means when unlucky-in-love Penny brings a date to her birthday party Max is going to notice that the guy is actually gay and point out all the signs that show how gay he is. Because Max is gay, you see, and Penny is so hopeless in love that she can’t even tell if she’s dating a gay guy. Groan.

Most of the show is this obvious mess of bad romantic comedy and stale jokes. Can we please pass a law that forbids the following type of joke from being used ever again:

Character 1: Hey! Don’t accuse me of eating a piece of cake! I haven’t even seen a piece of cake! I don’t even like cake! In fact, I swore off cake five years ago and I’m insulted by the mere suggestion that I would eat a piece of cake!

Cake Chef Appears From Kitchen: Your cake’s ready now sir!

Character 1: I don’t know who that is.

Character 2 tilts their head to the side, raises their eyebrows and makes a ‘oh really?’ face.

Character 1: Get out of my kitchen! Whoever you are!

Character 2 shakes their head and may or may not laugh.

We get it, if Dave is going on about how he’d never even think of looking at another woman; a naked woman is guaranteed to appear at any moment. Usually right beside them and without any clue as to what the conversation is about.

Happy Endings isn’t all bad. Casey Wilson is really funny in a role that we’ve seen a thousand times before and has no right generating laughs. Penny is turning thirty but wants people to think it’s her 26^th birthday?! Oh brother, that Penny! She’s hopeless! Penny’s trying really hard at the gym cause she’s desperate to get married?! Oh brother, that Penny! She’s hopeless! Casey Wilson has to work overtime to generate any laughs from such a terrible character, and the fact that she scores the most out of the cast is a real testament to her comic ability.

The pilot got funnier as it went along but there’s nothing going on here that you haven’t seen before at least FOUR OTHER TIMES THIS SEASON ALONE. Soon you’ll be able to watch a show about twenty-somethings at different stages in their relationships every night of the week. Compared to all the other comedies on the air right now, there’s absolutely no reason you should be watching this show. Compared to all the other shows about twenty-somethings at different stages in their relationships, Happy Endings sits somewhere just above Mad Love and just below Perfect Couples.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Bad