Follow Up – Happy Endings
Happy Endings – ABC – 1 Season – USA
Happy Endings has just finished up its first season and ABC have not only picked the show up for a second season, but will be giving it the plum timeslot behind Modern Family. After a shaky start Happy Endings has quickly grown into one of my favourite new shows of the season. Really, if I’m being honest this Follow Up to Happy Endings should really be titled ‘Oh How Wrong I Was’. Don’t get me wrong, that first episode was crap, but there were a couple of comments I made about the show that I’d like to retract and rewrite here.
This has happened a few times over the last couple of years and I never feel too ashamed about it. Most Follow Up’s I write begin with me going back on what I first said about a show. Cougar Town and Community I didn’t feel it early on, and with Parks & Recreation I didn’t even feel it after the first season. Please don’t be mistaken, while I love Happy Endings this isn’t Parks & Recreation or Community just yet. Also, to any ‘you shouldn’t just review the first episode and should watch the entire season before forming your opinion!!’ folks, I’d like to say that I watched just as much Mike & Molly, Outsourced, Mad Love and Raising Hope and all of those shows were just as bad after 13 episodes as they were after the first one.
There are a couple of things I said in my initial review of Happy Endings that aren’t true of the rest of the season. First off, I’d like to take back what I said about Zachary Knighton being much better in Life On A Stick. Not true. Happy Endings still hasn’t figured out exactly what to do with Knighton’s character Dave just yet, but this still trumps his weird but amusing antics on Life On A Stick. Also, I should probably apologize to Elisha Cuthbert for suggesting she lacked screen presence. She’s actually really charming and a bit of a goofball. Also, who can hate on a show that makes jokes about her being cornered by a cougar and having a dad who might be in an elite counter-terrorist unit?
My biggest apologies go out to Adam Pally who plays the gay guy who doesn’t act gay, Max. I described him as ‘far less than amusing’ and called him the worst part of the show, blah blah blah. COME ON ME FROM A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO! Pally is the best part of the show. This is how obvious it is how much that first episode sucked. Max is quite clearly the breakout character, and he went from infuriating to hilarious in just a few episodes. Maybe it was best they let go of all the ‘look how non-gay this gay guy acts!!!’ jokes and let the character find his groove. I was right about one thing though, Casey Wilson IS really funny.
Even the pop culture references aren’t as clumsy as they were in the awkward pilot. My favourite episode of the first series, and the one that sealed this in my ‘I love this show’ box was one involving Penny dating a hipster and Max and Jane having a competition about who would do better in a zombie attack. They got everything about the two situations RIGHT, which is hard to do when you’re not Community. You’ve got to love any show where a character tries to distract a hipster horde by yelling “Look over there: it’s Sofia Coppola playing badminton with Jason Schwartzman!”
There are still some problems with the show, mostly with the order in which ABC released the episodes. Dave works in a food truck before the episode where he buys the foot truck, and he also moves into Max’s apartment despite having lived there for the last 8 episodes. Its obvious ABC knew it had some good episodes coming, so they bumped them up earlier in the schedule, holding off on the episodes where the show was still finding its legs. It’s just a shame the show was also still establishing the story at that time because it made for odd viewing watching Dave & Alex pal around just fine one episode, only for them to still be bitter about the wedding break-up the next week.
Happy Endings is a laugh out loud funny show with buckets of potential and a genuine sense of humour. It has a wonderful cast with great chemistry, and it’s a bright, zippy show that’s genuinely fun to watch even when it’s not being funny. With Cougar Town moving to Tuesdays next season Happy Endings has just become the funniest show on ABC’s Wednesday nights.
