There’s been a TV trend in the past few years that has reappeared several times this season. Let’s play a little game. I’m going to describe the premise of a show and you think of what show I am describing:
The show has a close-knit ensemble cast of longtime chums, all at a different stages of their respective lives. This ensemble also showcases the cast at different stages of relationships. There is the central will-they-won’t-they plot involving two main characters who you know will eventually end up together, there is the blossoming romance between characters, and there is the perpetually single comedic character tagging along for the ride and providing some fun one-liners. This show at its core is about the powerful bonds that friendship fosters through thick and thin.
How many sentences into that did you realize that I was talking about Seinfeld? Okay, just kidding. Obviously I’m talking about that other NBC mega-hit. The looming legacy of Friends still casts its shadow over NBC and the rest of network television, resulting in a slew of Friends clones this season from multiple networks.
ABC’s newest attempt to replicate the success of Friends, a half-hour sitcom entitled Happy Endings, pretty much follows the template above. Endings doesn’t stray outside the tropes of the romantic comedy genre, but not because it is a bad show, it just seems that showrunner David Caspe doesn’t want to stretch the conventions of the rom-com. Right now Happy Endings seems content to stay in its static and flat rehashing of a tired premise. The pilot episode, one of two that have aired thus far, is mostly set-up, which for most pilot episodes means fewer laughs, but in Happy Endings’ case, it means no laughs. The pilot suffers from a sitcom’s biggest crime: it just isn’t funny. The cast is charming, especially Eliza Coupe (from the last two seasons of Scrubs and a recent cameo on Community), who tempers her usual deadpan delivery in favor of a more lighthearted neuroticism, but the jokes just aren’t there in the first two episodes.
Happy Endings is just the latest in this year’s string of Friends knock-offs. ABC also has Better With You, NBC has the huge Thursday night ratings failure Perfect Couples (which has already been cancelled and is finishing its run), CBS has two rom-coms in Rules of Engagement and Mad Love. The most tolerable and occasionally winning of this year’s relationship comedies is FOX’s Traffic Light, an adaptation of an Israeli series starring David Denman (The Office’s Roy). Traffic Light, much like Happy Endings, doesn’t break the mold, but it has its moments.
It’s easy to feel ambivalent about these types of shows. Since Friends was and is such a beloved institution, the notion of another show treading on its territory will surely infuriate some viewers. But that doesn’t mean the networks won’t continue to try to shove rom-coms down our throats until we bleed. It’s only a matter of time until we start getting our share of romantic comedies where all of the characters are….wait for it….VAMPIRES: the ramen noodles of TV premises!
i saw happy endings and enjoyed it but i was starting to see your point until you said that eliza coupe was your favorite character in the show. then it dawned on me that you have no sense of humor cause shes clearly the least funny so your negative review means the shows prob hilarious.