TV Review: Two seasons in, "Happy Endings" should have no trouble living up to its title

     "Happy Endings" cast, left to right: Zachary Knighton,
     Eliza Coupe, Damon Wayans Jr., Casey Wilson, Adam Pally,
     and Elisha Cuthbert. (Not pictured: cougar)

You may have noticed over the last couple of years (or longer, even) that certain TV seasons were dominated by a recurring theme or premise.

For example, last year ABC picked up three comedies about the plight of the white male: the first was "Last Man Standing", in which Tim Allen somehow baffled-by-modern-culture'd his way into a second season. The second was its original timeslot partner "Man Up", in which three white guys played video games in their basements while their wives looked on derisively (at least until November, when they were cancelled). The third, and easily the biggest offender, was "Work It" in which men were desperate enough to dress up in drag and act in one of the worst series in the history of television.

The year before that, however, was the year of the sitcom that followed the hijinks of three couples, connected in some way, that were each in different stages of their relationships. The first to premiere was ABC's "Better with You", which wasn't very funny but starred a lot of likeable people, like Joanna Garcia and Debra Jo Rupp. Next up was NBC's "Perfect Couples" which was just as unfunny and incredibly similar in almost every way except for being a single camera show (seriously, they even had Kyle Bornheimer compete against "Better With You"'s Josh Cooke as duelling showkillers - although as expected, both lost again.). Fox also had a similar setup with a comedy called "Traffic Light", which featured fewer couples but wasn't any funnier.

And just as all of those shows had either died or were about to die, in came the season's closing act: ABC's "Happy Endings", which is sometimes funnier in singular episodes than those other three shows combined.

Review: An adorkable season of Fox's "New Girl"

In an age of television comedy that can truly be considered golden (Parks and Recreation, Louie, 30 Rock, Happy Endings, Cougar Town, and literally on and on), the bar is understandably set high. A year or ten ago, a current hit like Modern Family would have been groundbreaking, not only as comedy but as television in general. Today's great TV comedies offer worlds with such great depth (think Pawnee, or the wide eyed curiosity with which Louis C.K. sees the world on Louie) and characters that constantly evolve (think Jeff Winger, or any number of Community characters). So when something like Modern Family embraces its role as a product sold by The ABC Manufacturing Network Inc. and over the years stays exactly as consumers seem to want, those who have come to know and love depth and evolution will understandably start to turn on it.

In comes Fox's "New Girl", a show whose very title might suggest beyond its literal meaning that whatever it is you're about to see, it's anything but stale. Is it? In some ways yes, and some ways no. On the one hand, it's perhaps the boldest show on television in how willing it is to take risks that have a fairly middling rate of success. But when those risks don't pay off, it's not much more than high brow slapstick, if such a concept is plausible.

Review: ABC's "Suburgatory"

There were a few contenders for the title of the 2011 TV season's best new comedy - many landed on Fox's "New Girl," a show which certainly knew its strengths but unfortunately has yet to solve some of its weaknesses (which is understandable, considering they're only about to enter their second season). A show in a similar state of embracing strengths but failing to recognize weakness was "Suburgatory", which unlike "New Girl" had more strengths to use in better ways and is probably a lot closer to weeding out its Alan Tudyk problem than the Fox sitcom is to weeding out its Lamorne Morris problem. As a result, "Suburgatory" was not only the best new comedy of last season, but was in many weeks the best new series of last season.

Reviews: HBO's freshman comedies "Veep" and "Girls"

"Veep": Take political satire at its finest and combine it with expertly crafted cringe-worthy comedy, and you get this fantastic series that is not only a great vehicle for star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but a fantastic showcase for its ensemble, consisting of Anna Chlumsky and Tony Hale among others. The show's complete apathy for politics and anything associated with it is well earned in the misfit characters' low ranking jobs, and combined with Armando Iannucci's love of vulgarity, makes for great bits of absurd dialogue like "I'll redact your fuckin' face!" The show didn't always hit home runs in the laughter department, but its literal home runs, like the "Baseball" episode, proved the show was firing on all cylinders the more its ensemble cast worked together to make it out of a high-profile but low-status event without a scandal on their heels. Concluding this write-up is a paragraph from the notes I took while watching the pilot, which nicely sums up the series and its view of politics: "Vice President has her Chief of Staff sign card of condolence to Senator’s widow for her by making a writing motion in the air – all in front of the Chair of the American Foundation for Developmental Disabilities, who she is meeting with after using the word “retard” in a public address" Great show, can't wait to see it come back - and hopefully with at least a couple more episodes next season.


"Girls": As Lena Dunham pointed out, "Girls" in an appropriately ironic title for her show - its characters, despite having such a specific worldview, are so self-important that one of them may even feel as if they are, to borrow a phrase from Hannah Horvath, "the voice of [their] generation." Said specific worldview is not easy in the slightest do sort through and decipher. Meeting these characters and observing their world for the first time is very jarring, and upon first viewing the pilot of this show was certainly polarizing; as many people hated this show as the ones who loved it, and initially I counted myself among the former. Through the next couple of episodes, we were able to more clearly see what the series was saying about life, the universe, and its characters. In fact, there probably isn't another show, at least one this good, that had a better sense of self - what it was, where it was going, what it meant, and even why it meant. Through the ten episodes we saw the appropriate amount of growth in its characters - we learned that Adam is more than just a shirtless creep and that Shoshanna is more than just a ditzy cartoon that might actually fit in better with George and Tessa Altman in Chatswin. Hannah's growth throughout the season was also pretty much spot on, for her specifically but also for any person in that stage of their life. Hannah wants so badly to grow up, but the kind of life that comes with being an adult, and thus is able to provide material for her book, is the same one that so often comes crashing down on her and leaving her in desperate need of help. Real life is all she wants, but real life is so much harder than stealing money her parents left for the hotel's housekeeping or continually having Marnie bail her out on rent. The last few minutes of the finale, as Hannah heads home on the subway, has her purse stolen, and sits on the beach at Coney Island to eat cake, is just a brilliantly interesting bit of television, and man, did I end up liking this show more than I ever thought I would.