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'Happy Endings' and the Magic of Rapid-Fire Sitcom Dialogue

by | March 26th, 2013

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, we aren’t ready to say goodbye to the show yet.

As others have already written, Happy Endings is a show that everyone should be watching. Though it may not be as seminal as Arrested Development or Community, as openly popular as Gilmore Girls, as critically acclaimed by high-culture media outlets as Girls, or as generally appreciated as New Girl, Happy Endings has the same thing that each of those shows all had or have—a means of character communication, which also doubles as the tone of the entire show. Just think of a trademark Gilmore Girls tête-à-tête between Lorelai and Rory or one of Michael Bluth’s morning conversations with Lindsay or GOB in the kitchen of the model home. The way in which a show’s characters communicate often conveys a show’s entire tone — and the way the characters talk to each other on Happy Endings is one of the most unique forms of communication in recent sitcom history. READ MORE

TV
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'It's Garry Shandling's Show': Just as Influential as You Probably Don't Remember

by | February 8th, 2013

Garry Shandling is one of the most innovative and influential comedians of all time. However, when Shout Factory released the entire Larry Sanders Show on DVD in the winter of 2011—concurrent with IFC’s decision to rerun the entire series—it seemed to set off a “Garry Shandling renaissance” that has carried over for the past 2-3 years; buoyed by Garry’s ever-bizarre and hilarious Twitter feed.

No matter how staunch of a Shandling supporter you’ve been over the years, you have to concede that there has been a certain heightened re-appreciation of his talents over the past few years. As a child of the 90’s I was slightly too young to appreciate Larry Sanders when it originally aired, so to me, Garry Shandling was the slightly odd-looking version of Jerry Seinfeld. It wasn’t until I was given the DVD set Not Just the Best of Larry Sanders during college that I was truly initiated into the world of Garry Shandling.

And that is a unique world indeed. Though, amid all the praise heaped on Larry Sanders in this “Shandling renaissance,” there seems to be a lack of attention paid to the show that paved the way for Shandling’s greatest achievement; the show that perhaps more than anything else truly exhibited the heart of Garry Shandling’s comedic sensibilities. Of course, I’m talking about It’s Garry Shandling’s Show. READ MORE

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