Happy Endings - "Cazsh Dummy Spillionaires"/"Sabado Free-Gante"

Season 3, Episodes 1-2

When I first started writing about Happy Endings, I decried the show’s basic premise, claiming that rom-com histrionics like “man being left at the altar” didn’t fit with it’s fast-paced and emotion-eschewing humor. And when the rom-com heart reared its head halfway through last season, I was skeptical of the show’s ability to tell a tale of something so pure, and was later turned off by its inability to engage with what seemed like a serialized plot. By those standards, the idea of a continuing romance between Alex and Dave (which was introduced in the season finale back in April) would seem like a total misfire for the show. Over the first two episodes of the third season, however, it’s been proven that maybe that’s not such a bad idea after all.

The greatest strength of this pairing – and this is something that wasn’t definite until the end of tonight’s episode – is how the show is playing with the idea of just how awful it is for the both of them. If the show was trying to argue that they actually worked together, or were trying to build a viable love triangle between Dave, Alex, and Penny (more on that in a minute), it would go against everything we’ve seen of the character in the previous episodes. By refusing to give any dramatic weight to the proceedings, it can be easily inserted into an episode and have things remain light and breezy, which is when the show functions best. Sure, this also means that there’s not much life to this arc – and if the show doesn’t find a way out of it in the next few episodes, it will quickly become a weight around the show’s neck – but for now it functions relatively well.

What’s interesting then is how much the show has down played this pairing narratively. Last week, Alex and Dave sleeping together was something of a C-story, mostly a one-note runner that only at the end of the episode turned into something a bit more substantial. In tonight’s episode, Alex and Dave’s story was still mostly one note, but it’s screen time was enlarged so that it took up an even third of the episode. This ultimately worked against the humor – seeing Alex and Dave hedge about getting an apartment together was too repetitive and lacked any sort of build – but it did have some emotion attached to it once it became clear (as it did fairly early on) that they were hesitant about their relationship, not just a lease.

In fact, I would probably say that the weightiest story belonged to Brad, even if that weight was somewhat stealthily deployed. Watching Brad and Max pal around Chicago, trying to recreate all of Brad’s favorite Saturday activities for free was quite enjoyable, but when it made the turn into weighty territory by exposing Brad’s fears about being jobless. Granted, this storyline wouldn’t have worked so well had it not been for last week’s premiere showing that Brad not only misses the financial security that his job gave him, but also the sense of identity it provided him. All together, much like with Alex and Dave’s relationship, it’s a surprising amount of serialization from a show that used to eschew it.

Jane and Penny’s attempt to buy Penny a new car was the slightest of the stories tonight, and perhaps tellingly almost the funniest. This might have been because Jane and Penny made for a great comedic pair – the classic control-freak/pushover dynamic is at play – but also because it was the one that went to the weirdest place and provided the most out-of-left field laughs. Still, it was a bit surprising that Penny’s quest for a new car didn’t have anything to do with Dave and Penny hooking up, given both how the show seems to be subtly hinting at her disappointment with the pairing, and the fact that the other two-thirds of the episode dabbled in something serialized. Instead, a bit of (possible) serialization got thrown Jane’s way, with the introduction in the tag of Rob Corddry as the Car Tzar, and his offer to Jane of a new job. It would certainly seem a waste of the show to only have Corddry appear for such a short amount of time, and to give up an opportunity to show Jane at her most competitive, so I suspect will see more of that next week.

And that raises an important question: Is Happy Endings becoming slightly more serialized this season? It would certainly be a weird move for the show, given that it worked so well before without being semi-serialized, and nobody was really calling out for the change. However, based on what I’ve seen so far, I’m willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt on something I doubted before, and I hope it becomes stronger because of the change.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

When Penny gets nervous, she develops a nervous tick in her boob. The more you know.

“Are we going to see any Mos Defs? Wouldn’t know if I saw it.”

“Month of the Month?” “Yeah. August was March.”

My new favorite exclamation: “CCH Pounder!”

“You trademarked Max World?” “It’s a long drawn out story with many moving parts. Basically…I did.”

“Just wish this coffee was a vagina, amirite?”

“There is no Car Tzar.” “No Car Tzar? Then who knows where the cars are?”

“Just take the care and go.” “Thank you.” “I’m getting black out drunk tonight.” “Okay, have fun.”

“Yeah, Paul is living the dream…Oh, you mean not seeing your kids on the weekend is a bad thing?”