Funded by the collective prayers and wishes of the internet hive mind, with possibly some help from dubious business practices in Iraq1, Arrested Development will be brought back from the dead next early Sunday morning on Netflix. The critical and financial success of this unprecedented experiment in TV resurrection will decide if other shows will be able to continue to tell their stories long after a broadcast or cable network had canceled it, thereby cheating death, defying nature. To save Netflix, or Amazon Instant, or any current or future video streaming service the burden of thinking too much when they decide to play God, here are 12 comedies whose [...]
"I do think Happy Endings is absolutely on brand. What we found was it was just too narrow. It was a very hard decision because, as you know, I love that show and I found it very hard to make that decision. On the same token, I think Super Fun Night and Mixology are broader shows that will bring in a wider audience. So, hard decision, not happy at all to see it go, but we feel it was on brand and so is [Super Fun Night] and Mixology."
- ABC President Paul Lee when asked by a journalist today why he canceled Happy Endings and picked up Super Fun Night and Mixology, two other single-camera [...]
The best phrase to describe Happy Endings, which wrapped up its third season on Friday night, is "live-action cartoon." Not only does that sum-up the overall consequence-free, wonderfully-detached shenanigans its characters get up to, it also describes the shows resilience, somehow making it to three seasons and 57 episodes despite ABC constantly shuffling it around the schedule and airing it in hour chunks to burn it off every year. Here's hoping it can survive the latest Friday-night-shaped anvil thrown its way and get renewed again.
The primary appeal of Happy Endings is the chemistry between its cast, the rapid-fire dialogue, and the very lack of emphasis on plot or [...]
After a two month-long forced hiatus from ABC, critically-acclaimed sitcom Happy Endings returned to the airwaves Friday night with two back-to-back episodes. The ratings on those episodes were just as low as you'd expect from a show that's been moved around and taken off the schedule for months now. The episodes drew a 0.9 and a 0.7 rating, respectively, with adults 18-49 and 3 million and 2.4 million total viewers. Those are low scores, but Friday night, dubbed the "Friday Night Death Slot," is typically an underwatched night in TV and it's probably hard for fans of Happy Endings to keep track of when the show's on at [...]
Happy Endings returns to the air this Friday. New episodes will continue to air every Friday — two at a time, back-to-back — until the end of the show’s third season. Ever since ABC announced this scheduling change in February, fans of the show have already been preparing for the worst. Airing on Fridays has not been a good thing since the heydey of ABC’s TGIF line-up. And your own network launching a Save This Show campaign is an even worse sign.
So, it appears more and more likely that this last springtime run will be the show’s curtain call. And though Happy Endings fans aren’t widespread, [...]
