Only one of two non-cable comedy show on right now that actually made me laugh Balls. Plus, someone on the show taught Elisha Cuthbert how to act. She went from the girl-with-no-timing-at-all to minor comic revelation in three years. Balls. At least I have Parks & Rec for another year Hugo - it wasn't Ah-mah-zing, but it was a heck of an ensemble and a nice antidote to the vast majority of the comedic dreck out there.
I watched it this past season, but I could never fully get into it. Somehow, sit-coms now mostly focus on horrible people, doing horrible things and experiencing no growth. Case in point, the episode where they make-over Max was Simpson-esque in it's ability to reset back to the way things are. Yes, I get the humor came from Max being Max, but I like to see some growth. Which is partly why I was upset that NBC cancelled Go On. I know it didn't have a lot of fans here, but it was about people who were, at their core, decent, and trying to get better. I also really like Parks and Recreation, since, again, they are decent characters. Even Ron has a heart of gold, underneath his exterior. I am sad that it was cancelled, as I said, I watched it and did enjoy some parts. It was mostly a show I had on when there was nothing else on though.
Isn't this news 2 months too late? Nevermind, I see that they were trying to shop it around. Everything I remembered reading when it was originally cancelled was that nobody was really interested save Sony trying to sell it. So do all shows need 2 cancellation dates now? Original network and the "nobody will buy it, it's now more official" date?
I had really stopped watching sitcoms during the early '90s, but Happy Endings oddly enough appealed to me. I dunno, it wasn't the greatest thing since sliced bread and I didn't watch every episode, but it was quirky, off-beat, and occasionally dived into old-fashioned slapstick. I'm actually going to miss it, because it was the only show I was following on broadcast TV.
I was hoping someone else would pick it up (come on Netflix, it can't be that expensive to produce!) but I guess not. It was a fun show -- not the greatest sitcom of all time, or even recent memory, but a solid effort that occasionally hit one out of the park. I'll miss it.
I tried to like it, but it seemed like it wanted to be Friends. And it wasn't. A lot of sitcoms are trying to be Friends these days. And they aren't.
I liked both of these shows. I was hoping Happy Endings would get picked up by someone. Bummer. There's still a couple of decent sitcoms out there. New Girl being my favorite.
As sitcoms go, and they do ... I was just starting to get into Shit My Dad Says when they cancelled it. It could have been good if they'd stuck with it, but it seemed like they kinda knew it was doomed so they didn't spend a lot of time working out the kinks.
I find New Girl too annoying and relationship-y and attempting to be quirky. The only reason I watch that show for Schmidt's constant serious anger over the stupidest things.
Really? I could not possibly care less about a sit-com character's "growth". Yeah, Happy Endings wasn't the best but it did make me laugh. The show was unique in one respect; the show had the best interracial (black/white) couple in sit-com history. Both the husband and wife looked good, like they actually could be together in real life, had chemistry, AND were both funny.
Maybe growth is a bad choice of words, I just prefer sitcoms where the characters are, at their core, decent people. That being said, Brad and Jane were awesome.
Sad to hear that it didn't get picked up. My favourite was Penny, she was ah-mah-zing. Started to watch New Girl as a replacement and it will be interesting to see if Coach comes back in a recurring role or not.
Oh, yeah, I'm in total agreement. The married couple were great, with both capable of going off in crazy tangents without warning.
I never saw Happy Endings as Friends: The Next Generation, beyond being about a group of late-20/early 30-something people. If anything, aside from the location, I felt Happy Endings owed more to Scrubs than Friends. Aside from both using Eliza Coupe, Happy Endings did the quick-cut away that Scrubs used for a character's (usually JD's) imagination. However, Happy Endings usually did it for a flashback to what the character was talking about. Edited to add: Looks like it's been a week for Eliza Coupe.
What more would be needed, though? Maybe if two of the characters were married, two in an on-again/off-again relationship, and two were just friends that were really close? Would that make the parallels closer?
I took me several episodes of going "That guy looks just like Damon Wayans" before I figured out that he IS Damon Wayans ... Jr. A sitcom that does the ensemble thing well and is consistently funny is Rules of Engagement. That's one that I came to late, and have been trying to catch up. I just saw the one where Adam and Jen are taking ballroom dance lessons. That cracks me up every time. http://youtu.be/8BCUnWXYYSg
In other words, 'if Happy Endings was more like Friends, it would be just like Friends', but it's not -- so it isn't. From what I have seen, Friends is pretty much a Seinfeld clone, similar to the way "How I Met Your Mother" is a Seinfeld clone (and dozens more), with romance. "Endings" is a product of the post Seinfeld sitcom legacy too, just a somewhat different strain as has been pointed out. Call the two shows "cousins", not twins.