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Last month, I rewatched every single wonderful episode of Happy Endings and selected the very best joke from each installment. You’d think I’d be burned out from consuming 57 episodes and writing thousands upon thousands of words about this cult favorite but nope! It just made me miss this beacon of comedy even more.
Three major points stood out during my rewatch. First, Happy Endings is even funnier than you remember. The quality and quantity of jokes packed into each episode is staggering. Second, Eliza Coupe has the best reaction shots in television history. After bingeing Season 1, I started screengrabbing some of these gems. Nobody portrays frustration, exasperation, or confusion with more comedic aplomb than Coupe. Finally, Damon Wayans Jr. is the funniest physical comedian of the modern sitcom era.
Pardon the contradiction, but these three opinions are unassailable facts. Upon deeper reflection (what, you don’t ruminate on classic TV sitcoms on the reg?), I realized something that deep down we already knew: Jane and Brad are the hands-down funniest TV married couple of all time.
And honestly, it’s not even close.
Separately, Coupe and Wayans Jr. are exceptional comedic actors. Coupe’s time on Scrubs and Benched (a criminally underrated show you should absolutely stream) and Wayans’ stint on New Girl prove that these two have chemistry with everyone. But when the two combine their comedic talents Captain Planet-style, the humor and laughs are elevated to an electric level. Jane and Brad’s infectious chemistry goes against traditional sitcom tropes. Conflict, tension, and contrasting viewpoints are often used to drive story, but so much of the couple’s humor derives from just how much they love one another. They extract humor from positively and the fact that they, get this, actually enjoy spending time together. Oh, also, they really love to bone. Like, they just can’t get enough of each other.
Happiness and sincerity are typically anathema to traditional sitcom humor, but these two found new and exciting ways to generate an absurd amount of laughs. Happy Endings was a masterclass on character-based humor. The show took a simple plot like “Brad goes to the dentist” and turned it into this wonderfully bizarre scene. The series was adept at playing to its actor’s strengths, turning innocuous traits like “Brad’s bad at small talk” and “Brad enjoys late ’80s-inspired ventriloquism” into the type of incredibly weird, immensely funny bits that resonated with comedy nerds.
On paper, the controlling Type-A character isn’t exactly revelatory, but Happy Endings dialed up the mayhem by taking Jane’s propensity for perfection to an almost psychotic level. Also, again, I cannot stress this enough: Eliza Coupe knows her way around a reaction shot.
I’m completely in awe of this show. The writing staff, Coupe, and Wayans Jr. combined to create two of the most interesting, magnetic, and most importantly, funniest characters in TV history.
It’s a shame Happy Endings was canceled, but I’m just glad it existed.
