I Return! (It Won’t Be) Happy Endings Season 3!

The Good: Very funny, Fine acting, Good guest performances
The Bad: Some uncharacteristic character moments that undermine the characters in favor of gags.
The Basics: With hilarious scenarios, Happy Endings presents a third season that was obviously not intended to end as abruptly as it did.


I’ve been gone for a few days (it turns out that trying to illustrate an 80-page children’s book five days before it is supposed to be given as a gift is NOT, in fact, a good idea) and as I wait with predictably baited breath for the new episodes of Arrested Development, I thought I would pop back to review something I still care about, but had not quite gotten around to reviewing. It was Happy Endings. With the third season now complete, fans are in mourning as its cancellation has been widely reported. It goes to show people like me that you can’t predict this sort of thing well – my title to Happy Endings Season Two (here!) implied that it should be a long-running series. Of course, the writing was on the wall for Happy Endings when the network went head-to-head with the unfortunately similar (but not nearly as good) New Girl (season 1 is reviewed here!) and then Happy Endings retreated (or was retired to) to Friday nights where all shows but The X-Files go to die.

The thing is, Happy Endings Season Three was good. It was consistently funny television and at least as enjoyable as the prior two seasons – and given that Megan Mullay returns, that’s saying a lot from me! – but it had a hard time getting seen by its loyal audience and its ratings slipped enough so that ABC (who is getting about as bad as FOX for canning beloved television shows before their time) gave it the ax. C’est la vie.

In its third season, Happy Endings follows the same six characters as the prior two seasons, much like Friends except that Happy Endings was quite a bit funnier and (oddly) far less popular. Set in Chicago, Happy Endings continues to follow Dave, his ex-fiance Alex, her sister Jane, Jane’s husband Brad, and their friends Penny and Max. The sextet hangs out, gets into ridiculous situations and struggles with their relationships. Season Three finds Dave and Alex dating again and they decide to take the plunge and get an apartment together. Penny suffers a series of (literal) falls and ends up in a full body cast and later has a concussion which requires her to wear a helmet and Max plays nursemaid to her.

In this season, Mr. and Mrs. Kerkovich show up and their appearances begin to explain how Jane ended up as neurotic as she did. While many of the episodes have threads that carry in a serialized fashion, especially Penny’s relationship with Pete this season, each episode has a more episodic feel, with conflicts coming up like Alex has to use all her Groupons or Jane and Brad discover they don’t know each other as well as they thought when they play game night together. And at the climax of the season (and, as it turns out, the series) a new Kerkovich sister is introduced!

Happy Endings is funny because the characters say the most outrageous and consistently funny things for a live-action comedy without ever stepping over the boundaries of good taste (unlike something like Family Guy which went from edgy and funny to “predict at what time in the episode the incest joke will come up”). The characters of Max and Alex rule season three for the hilarity of the lines they deliver and in season three the characters are much more firmly established than ever before. Max is so wrapped up in his own stuff that it often seems like he does not even think about what he is saying and Alex, by this point, is characterized as the group idiot, so she delivers some of the most straightfaced ridiculous lines. This allows the show to make some hilarious commentaries on society, like the when Alex tries to get smart, the show she has to stop watching on television is Baby Justice about a four year-old sheriff, which lampoons just how stupid most of the programming on television has become.

Penny has her longest relationship of the series in Season Three as Pete makes it through a six-episode arc and has her headed to the altar. Max dates around, like always, and Brad and Jane stay together while Dave and Alex work on their relationship through most of the season. For those unfamiliar with the show, the main characters of Happy Endings in season three are:

Dave Rose – The owner of a steak truck, he is working on his relationship with Alex. His father is now dating Penny’s mother and this season, he is more of a supporting character than in the prior seasons,

Alex – She gets tired of being mocked, so she works on getting smarter. As well, she moves in with Dave and works on not letting him take her for granted. Her clothing store gets a celebrity shopper and she tries to get everyone in the gang to play kickball,

Penny Hartz – Gets into more physical danger than in prior seasons when she repeatedly falls (in nonconsecutive episodes!) and ends up in a full-body cast and concussed. She dates Pete with whom she has excellent chemistry and yet might be jumping into marriage too quickly with. She plugs Alex’s store . . . and Jane’s new boss,

Max – Slouches through relationships and employment. He tries to earn a fast buck by competing in the Mr. Super Gay Chicago contest . . . with hilarious results. He is set up by all his friends at various points in the season and plays pranks on everyone. In one of the funniest turns of events, Max uncharacteristically goes back in the closet to date a woman who has amazing seats at the Bulls games. He also becomes an M.C. for bar mitzvahs,

Brad – Initially unemployed, he goes looking for work. That quest takes him to a children’s amusement restaurant and then back to an accounting position where he can shine. He and Jane remain very much in love, though they discover they do not know everything about each other that they thought they did,

And Jane – She finds her true calling working for the Car Czar. After helping Penny look for a car, she discovers she has a knack for selling cars and goes to work for the sleaziest car dealer ever. Her backstory is fleshed out with a surprising past (pre-Brad) relationship and she is tasked with organizing her sister’s wedding and executing it flawlessly.

In the third season of Happy Endings, the entire cast is spot-on. In this season, they all know their characters and their comic timing is amazing. Casey Wilson does some incredible physical comedy as Penny and Adam Pally proves he is one of the funniest actors of our time by not breaking when he, as Max, has to deliver some of the most absurd lines yet. Zachary Knighton and Elisha Cuthbert are able to illustrate some good on-screen chemistry as Dave and Alex actually have a romantic relationship we finally see. Cuthbert rules the season for performance, though, as she plays Alex as more of a hapless idiot than she did in prior seasons and she is entirely convincing in the evolution of the character.

Season three of Happy Endings is only twenty-three episodes and the moment it drops on DVD, it is a “must buy;” after all, it didn’t get anywhere near the requisite 100 episodes for syndication and, if Arrested Development is any indication, it is only through aggressive DVD sales that fans might ever get new episodes . . . even if it takes seven years for them to arrive!

For other third seasons of ensemble comedies, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Frasier - Season 3
It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia - The Complete Third Season
30 Rock - Season 3

7/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

No End In Sight For The Wonderful Happy Endings! Season Two Continues Strong!

The Good: Funny, Actual character development, Decent performances, Good self-referential qualities.
The Bad: I could always use more DVD bonus features, A few episodes that do not replay as well.
The Basics: In its second season, Happy Endings builds very well upon the characters it established in the first season, making it a wonderful DVD release!


There are few shows these days that my wife and I stop everything for each week and just sit and watch. Happy Endings is one of them. Happy Endings had an ambitious and very funny first season (reviewed here!) and we approached the second season with a real sense of enthusiasm. In fact, my wife and I were surprised that Damon Wayans Jr. even appeared in the pilot of New Girl; Happy Endings is such a strong show, how could it go off the air prematurely?! The second season of Happy Endings, illustrated that the show has staying power. How much? So much that even recurring performances by Megan Mullally – arguably the most overrated, obnoxious, one-note actress to ruin everything she touches – cannot shake my enjoyment in the season!

In the second season of Happy Endings, the show builds on its Friends-style accessibility where six people hang out and get into potentially problematic situations, while growing closer. With more references and in-jokes, Happy Endings seems to realize it is becoming a phenomenon. As a result, the second season presents fourth-wall breaking comments like Penny addressing her use of uh-mah-zing and the recurring presence of Derrick, whom Max once used to illustrate to Penny how irksome her stereotype of gay actually was.

The second season finds Jane and Brad’s marriage going strong, Alex actually moving on to date more and Penny trying to rally for a good year as her Year Of Penny begins. Steak Me Home Tonight continues to offer Dave opportunities for growth and Max actually lands himself a functional relationship . . . which upsets him more than he thought possible. The plots are pretty standard, like Jane and Brad faking an annual fight when a real conflict between them breaks out and Alex trying to break Dave of his interest in v-neck t-shirts. The comedic power of Happy Endings in its second season comes from witty dialogue and hilarious cutaway gags.

Like most great television shows – even sitcoms – Happy Endings is all about the characters in the second season. The primary characters continue to be:

Penny Hartz – Determined to have a good year where she stops dating losers and making the same mistakes, Penny buys a condo, takes in Alex and confronts her mother about her perpetual optimism. She exhibits her parental instincts when helping Max babysit and dates Dave’s psychologist. She also dates a guy whom she is determined not to change for nor change into what she wants. She develops some genuine feelings for Dave, well beyond the sex dreams of him that come when she drinks his signature drink,

Max Blum – He plods along doing whatever he can for money and living with Dave until he sees just how easily he has cast aside potential partners. When one of his ex’s comes back into his life on Valentine’s Day, Max tries to make a genuine change. His limo business continues running, though he gets a lot of help from his friends to stay afloat,

Dave Rose – Dating pretty steadily now, he goes into therapy and begins to reform a genuine friendship with Alex. When they accidentally sleep together, he is convinced by her that it did not actually happen and he works hard to get a liquor license for Steak Me Home Tonight. Jealous of Max’s new boyfriend, he picks up a motorcycle . . . with disastrous results,

Alex Kerkovich – Almost entirely over Dave now, she moves in with Penny and begins seriously dating once again. She faces off with the new wave of popular girls when her store becomes a popular hangout and the sales of baby-t’s explode. She is mistaken for a drag queen at Halloween, is treated like a queen by a new suitor whom Penny rejected, and takes in a racist parrot. She gives up alcohol and shows Dave how bullies work,

Jane Kerkovich-Williams – Still happily married to Brad, she uses her sorority sister’s failure to come for a visit as an excuse to have a home spa experience. She and Brad have a real fight which marks the beginning of Spring and she shows Alex how to brainwash Dave by illustrating her technique on Brad. She stops being uptight when she learns how to “sleep on” an idea,
and Brad Williams – Happily married to Jane, he nevertheless lies to her about going away on business as an excuse to stay in Chicago and relax in a hotel on his own. He and Alex bond over romantic comedies and he experiences his first cavity, which knocks him out for Valentine’s Day. Befriending the mailman with Dave leads to an awkward situation.

On the acting front, Happy Endings continues strong in its second season. While guest stars like Michael McKean, Ed Begley Jr., and Megan Mullally pop up, Happy Endings is still dominated by the six stars of the show. Eliza Coupe, Elisha Cuthbert, Zachary Knighton, Adam Pally, Damon Wayans Jr. and Casey Wilson all have great chemistry with one another and this season, they seem more comfortable in their roles.

Funny, with wonderful characters and great dialogue/situations, Happy Endings Season Two is well worth picking up!

For other works with Damon Wayans Jr., be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Other Guys
Marmaduke
Dance Flick

8/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the shows and seasons I have reviewed!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Reminding Us That Sitcoms Can Still Be Fresh, Happy Endings Season 1 Holds Up Uh-MAH-ing-ly Well On DVD!

The Good: Exceptionally funny, Decent characters, Good acting, Standard DVD bonus features
The Bad: Comparatively expensive, Light on DVD bonus features
The Basics: Happy Endings roars onto DVD as one of the funniest network comedies in years.


The other day, while most people were watching the Super Bowl, my wife and I were being absolute gluttons and doing a marathon of Happy Endings episodes because she had not yet opened the Complete First Season DVD set I bought for her for our winter holiday celebration. I think that I appreciated Happy Endings Season 1 a bit more the second time through because – in addition to catching three episodes we missed when they originally aired! – I was allowed to relax and enjoy the show. I have a habit of getting attached to television shows that get quickly cancelled. Last year, when Happy Endings first aired, I was feeling the sting of Mr. Sunshine getting canned in favor of this new show (how Allison Janney was not nominated for her role on that is inexplicable to me!) and, frankly, I did not want to get attached to yet another show where I would just get disappointed. So, last Sunday, when we sat and watched Happy Endings Season 1 on DVD, I was able to get to the place my wife has been at for months; simple, pure, immersive enjoyment.

Happy Endings is the new Friends. In the first season of Happy Endings, the show introduces six friends living in Chicago who are figuring out their lives and their relationships within their group and outside it. The basic premise of the show is that Dave and Alex were supposed to get married when a man skates in and whisks Alex away. Following the fall-out from that, the group tries to recover and stick together, especially as Alex and Dave try to remain friends. While Happy Endings might initially seem like a very typical sitcom – “shut your filthy whore mouth!” – it plays out as smart, funny and with characters who quickly become annoyingly endearing.

Following their disastrous attempt to marry, tensions are high among the friends (and relatives) of Alex and Dave. Dave moves in with Max and discovers himself in an odd actual relationship when he tries to be a good guy following a one-night stand. Able to extricate himself from that relationship, he is troubled when others in the group characterize him as a zombie. So, while Jane and Max duke it out in a contest to see which would survive a zombie apocalypse better, Dave quits his job and buys a steak truck. While Dave continues to date, Max and Penny try to find relationships of their own and Jane and Brad try to keep their relationship together, without ending up with swingers!

On the Alex front, she does not date as much as Dave does and is, in fact, disgusted by how fast he moves on to sex with other women, despite their lingering feelings for one another. She is compassionate and regrets running out on Dave and even accepts that she is not ready to have her tattoo of his name removed when Dave tries to have his lasered off. She puts Max’s attempt to find love with the owner of a new coffee shop over her economic interests when she tries to take a stand as a small business owner. And the whole gang ends up attending a wedding of an old friend who makes the single four wonder if they will ever find true love!

Of course, as a sitcom, Happy Endings is not so much about what happens in each episode, as it is about the characters interacting and the quality of the funny lines. For that, Happy Endings Season 1 is a rousing success. The lines are hilarious and they hold up very well over multiple viewings. In addition to attempts by the characters to make their own catchphrases – Brad earns some real points for getting “chicksand” to catch on! – the dialogue is filled with fast back and forths that actually improve with more than one viewing. The characters are actually pretty smart (emotionally dumb, frequently, but intelligent), so the first season of Happy Endings has decent diction, psychologically interesting situations and characters and situations that step nicely into zany without seeming utterly unrealistic. So, for example, one episode finds Max and Dave troubled to discover there is an artist living in their ceiling! But more than that simple and silly premise, Happy Endings works because it complicates the premise by having Penny and Alex meet the artist by chance and Alex and the ceiling man plan a date before the truth can come out!

But, like all great television, Happy Endings hinges on having interesting and memorable characters. In the first season, the primary characters of Happy Endings are:

Alex Kerkovich – Jane’s sister, she gets the jitters and runs out on her wedding. When she returns to Chicago a week later, she attempts to remain friends with Dave. She has a troubling knack for picking a terrible roommate (because of how impulsive she is), runs her own boutique clothing store, and accidentally steals the thunder from Jane on any project they attempt together. She has a love of ribs, is slow to date again and still has some emotional attachment to Dave beyond simple friendship,

Jane Williams – Wife of Brad, sister of Alex. She is an uptight, efficient woman who tries to keep the spark in her marriage to Brad lit. She is mortified when it turns out Max was not legally ordained when the pair was married and she tries to get Brad to open up with his father about his feelings. She nearly buries Max in a contest about who would survive the zombie apocalypse and nearly kills Penny when the two take martial arts classes together and Jane’s serious side comes out. Rather surprisingly, she volunteers to help fight adult illiteracy,

Penny Hartz – The scatterbrained, emotional friend, she is utterly unlucky in love. Upset by how Max doesn’t “act gay,” she takes to a stereotypical gay man until she realizes it is way too much work. She dates a hipster, falls for an amazing guy whose last name (unfortunately) happens to be Hitler, and she discovers she speaks fluent Italian only when she is completely drunk. She is initially irked by the activities she and Alex go out to following Alex’s sudden change in relationship status. She was Max’s beard with his parents for years,

Brad Williams – Husband of Jane. He gets in trouble with Max when he sets Max up with a guy whom he learns is gay, but seemingly has nothing else in common with Max. A businessman, he is alarmed when his attempt to make friends outside their narrow circle leads him and Jane to swinger coworkers of his. He is upset when his father comes to town and Brad accidentally provokes a heart attack by telling his father he loves him. He puts up with Jane’s competitive nature and tries not to kill Dave’s dreams,

Max Blum – The deeply sarcastic best friend of Dave and a slob. Defying virtually every stereotype about being gay, Max reluctantly comes out to his parents and doesn’t pursue getting a job this season. He hangs out, has fun and even falls for the cute owner of a new chain of coffee shops, much to his disgust for their commercialism. He also sniffs out boyfriends’ of Penny who may or may not actually be gay (he has a terrible gaydar!),

and Dave Rose – The ex-fiancée of Alex, his first date after the messy break up turns out to be a high school girl with a “Stay Grounded” tramp stamp tattoo. He moves in with Max, quits his job, dates a lot and buys a steak truck. In trying to compete in Chicago’s tough food truck industry, he reconnects with a beloved professor of his and is deeply hurt when his professor flakes out on him.

Happy Endings is served by an amazing cast. As much as I enjoy the crassness of my weekly 2 Broke Girls fix, I can completely acknowledge that the performers in it are not the best actors. For all my appreciation of Kat Dennings, far too often on 2 Broke Girls she laughs at her own jokes and it is clear she is having way more fun than her dour character is supposed to. No such weakness on Happy Endings. Like the Friends cast before them, the Happy Endings cast comes with a few known quantities, namely Elisha Cuthbert (though her roots seem to be more in drama) and Damon Wayans Jr. (who might have been living in his father’s shadow before this, but steps right out). Happy Endings also has Eliza Coupe, who many people know from Scrubs. As I was not a watcher of that, Happy Endings was how I got to know her and she is excellent as Jane. Zachary Knighton (Dave), Adam Pally (Max) and Casey Wilson (Penny) round out the Happy Endings cast and they are vital, fresh and fun. Wilson especially sparkles as the energetic, ridiculous and frequently-emotionally stupid Penny. She is a lot of fun to watch and the whole cast plays off one another incredibly well, promising a reasonably good future for the show.

On DVD, Happy Endings comes with the pretty standard bonus features for this type of show. There are deleted scenes, gag reels and a few featurettes, mostly promoting the first season of the show. They are good, but I would have liked some commentary tracks or additional bonus features, considering how expensive this thirteen-episode two-disc set was initially.

Happy Endings is consistently funny and the first season, while not flawless, is solidly above the curve. If we had to get a “new Friends” (especially this soon), it’s nice to see a network trying as hard as it is with Happy Endings. If you haven’t found the show yet, pick up the DVD set; you’ll be glad you did!

For other worthwhile comedy shows, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Frasier
30 Rock - Season 1
The Big Bang Theory - Season 4

7.5/10

For other television reviews, please be sure to visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |