![]() ![]() HAPPY ENDINGS CAST FULLI’ll tell myself I’m putting it on as a background show, but before 22 minutes are up, it has my full attention. It takes about half of the show’s 13-episode first season (it premiered as a midseason replacement) for the writers to get themselves out of that pilot-episode trap, though ABC made it feel longer by airing the season out of its intended order. The show opens as the flighty Alex runs out on her wedding to the blando Dave, leaving the rest of the wedding party to fear that the whole gang will have to break up. (Unlike “Friends,” “Happy Endings” actually has gay main characters, not just gay jokes.) Not every network sitcom would make a running joke of Alex’s adoption of a racist parrot, or have Max and Penny get hooked on a black-market cough syrup called NocheTussin as a way to keep from texting their boyfriends too much. This is a heightened reality, closer in sensibility to later shows like “Broad City” than to strait-laced studio-audience comedies. Caspe and company apply elements of that workplace sitcom to their hangout comedy format - single-camera filming, a relentless jokes-per-minute rate, absurdist cutaway gags and a cast of lovable characters who are terrible people. Yet granting that “Happy Endings” bears a resemblance to “Friends,” it also has the markings of a post-“30 Rock” world. ![]() (The creator David Caspe has claimed to have forgotten that Rachel Green entered our lives in a wedding dress.) And, true, the pilot episode involved a runaway bride. An on-again, off-again romantic relationship within the gang was an ongoing plot driver. ![]() HAPPY ENDINGS CAST TVYes, “Happy Endings” had superficial similarities to “Friends,” the ’90s Must-See TV juggernaut: It centered on six BFFs, played by a cast with blazing chemistry and crack timing, entering their 30s and razzing one another through the ups and downs of dating and careers in the big city. Pointing in turn to Dave (Zachary Knighton), Alex (Elisha Cuthbert), Penny (Casey Wilson) and Max (Adam Pally), Brad exclaims: “Hey, Ross! Rachel! Phoebe! Fat Joey!” A few beats later, he turns to his wife, Jane (Eliza Coupe), and pouts, “Don’t patronize me, Monica.” In a second-season episode of “Happy Endings,” the much-loved but little-watched comedy that ran on ABC from 2011 to 2013, the show acknowledged a comparison that had been dogging it since its premiere.īrad (Damon Wayans Jr.), loopy and slurring from a megadose of laughing gas at a dentist’s appointment, perks up when he sees his friends - but he calls them by the names of another set of friends. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |