4 out of 5

Created by: Shalom Auslander

covers season 1

I get it; it’s tough to take rage and criticism seriously when it’s presented on a premium channel and maybe essentially just trying to get ratings.  It’s the big paradox of a lot of entertainment: say something truthful, but if you get popular from it, the more disconnected you might get from that truth.  Regardless, Happyish manages to maintain its bitterness throughout its 10 episodes without much compromising.  It voices opinions I’m sure any aging creative has in a world where one has to make money – the complacency, the desire to want to do something more, the feeling of being trapped – and voices them with utter, f-laden vitriol, reaching out to modern post-whatever comedy like Louie CK’s that struggles with the hatred for all of those things that we struggled for in the first place: stability, family, etc.  Unlike Louie. though, Happyish doesn’t take a left turn toward reminiscence at any point: leads Thom Payne (Steve Coogan) and Lee (Kathryn Hahn) – voiced by creator Shalom Auslander, of course – remain consistent in their open bitterness toward… whatever.  And yet, the show skillfully tries to remain humane and grounded, cognizant of bills to pay and the need for companionship, preventing Happyish from sliding to far into an indulgent, unrealistic bitchfest.  The characters are trapped in a trap we all know, and cannot do anything about it in the way we cannot do anything about it – even complain too openly except amongst each other.  The casting is pretty pitch perfect; apparently a pilot was shot with Phillip Seymour Hoffman prior to his death, and while it’s easy to imagine his droll delivery replacing Coogan’s for certain rants, Coogan makes the role absolutely his own and animates it with a bit more fervor – properly matching Hahn – than I believe we would’ve seen with Hoffman.  Critics of the show have seen the subject matter as derivative, and true, the rallies against marketing – visualized in hilarious extremes via Thom’s job at an ad agency – aren’t anything new, but I think it’s a forest and trees observation; we’re all saying the same thing, but I’m tired of shows that make it a shrug worthy “what can ya do?” joke or try to moralize it.  Instead, Happyish latches onto the kind of doomsday mentality that fueled the initial Married… With Children seasons.  It is, perhaps, floating a little too on the line of indulgence when it tries to single the Payne’s out in feeling this way (again, the paradox being that the show must rely on us understanding and thus we very much cannot all be alone in our feelings…), but thankfully this only crops up in a couple of episodes, instead keeping things tethered to Earth via the relationships – personal, work – that surround the family.

Maybe it’s too bitter for some tastes.  I’ve been obsessed, as of late, with the pointlessness of all things and the ridiculous ways in which we joke this away, and Happyish – especially given the season’s conclusion, which I hope isn’t its last (Under the Dome has 3 seasons, people…) – doesn’t do that, which is admirable.  The more and more we can face these issues truthfully – and if a premium channel is airing it maybe we’re getting there – perhaps we can inch forward a little bit more toward shifting away from it.  Wait, no, that’s putting the same happy face on it I’m criticizing above.  Just… accept that you’re pissed off.  And that you’re trapped.  And realize that enough of us are feeling the same way.  (And realize – like Happyish ends up realizing – that that means nothing.)