ABC cancelled Happy Endings in 2013 after three seasons, but the cast and crew reunited over the weekend at EW‘s Popfest to perform a table read of a new episode, written by creator David Caspe. Watch a clip, after the jump. Casey Wilson (Penny), Adam Pally (Max), Eliza Coupe (Jane), Damon Wayans Jr. (Brad), Elisha Cuthbert (Alex), and Zachary Knighton (Dave) — reunited with Caspe and the Happy Endings‘ writers and producers.
Happy Endings, episode 4.01 “Happy to Be Here,” was written and performed in honor of late script supervisor, Tracy Scott. Scott died in May 2016, at the age of 46 after battling breast and liver cancer. The Happy Endings gang donated their appearance fees to the Susan B. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, in her memory.
Happy Endings 4.01, “Happy to Be Here”
The action picks up three years after the Happy Endings series finale. Max bails Penny out of mall jail. It seems she had borrowed a strangers children to act out a family fantasy, in Williams Sonoma.
He was also the bearer of bad news. His friend Scotty (Seth Morris) died. The two of them recount how the gang broke up, after Brad and Jane got in a big friend-splitting fight. None of them have spoken in 939 days (the amount of time between the May 2, 2013 finale and this past weekend’s performance).
Penny and Max then get to work on getting everyone back together and we find out what everyone has been doing, since we last saw them.
Happy Endings 4.01: EW Reports
• Penny has been married. Several times. Things happened on a Kid Rock cruise.
• Jane (Coupe) has been living in Japan, working as a top executive for Toyota. She’s now overseeing their sex doll vision.
• Brad (Wayans, Jr.) is living off the grid in the wilds of Wisconsin. He has a long, blonde beard, which is a result of his being Revenant-ed by some bears.
• Alex’s organic lifestyle brand – does the name Xela sound familiar? – is now a Fortune 500 company, and in other news, she is under the misguided assumption that Toyota is a Star Wars toy company called Toy Yoda.
• Max is now living in D.C. and no one is exactly sure what he does for a living. In an envelope-pushing joke, he announces to the group that he lost weight because he has aides – a pun he quickly clarified as meaning interns who helped with his work enough to give Max the time to workout.
• Dave was so bummed out after the implosion of the group that he pulled a Carl Casper in Jon Favreau’s Chef and took his food truck on the road. It didn’t work out so well.
In addition to catching up with the cast, the lost episode also featured a surprise drop-in guest — Draamaaaaaa! — as Stephen Guaruni belted out the longest Draaammaaa in history (like, over 10 seconds) and we learned the Hodor-y backstory of his catchphrase. (It involves being ordered to draw hundreds of portraits of his mean, aspiring-actress mother: Draw. Ma.)
Happy Endings Was a Dream?
What followed were a ton of twists — and more than a few f-bombs — but fans should know Brad and Jane did reunite, and it turned out Alex had ordered Scotty to fake his own death as a way to bring the group back together (but in faking it, he actually died). Then, in a super trippy, ultra-meta makes you kinda think, you know? ending, Dave woke up back in bed with Alex at 5:30 on the morning of their wedding (“Bitch, it’s 5:30!”) He proceeded to explain his bad dream: Alex left him at the altar and then, well, he basically rattles off events from the series.
“My dad was the tinfoil blanket brother from Better Call Saul and Penny’s assistant was Jane the Virgin. Brad was on New Girl, Max banged Schmidt from New Girl – man, I really gotta stop falling asleep to New Girl.”
“Wait, so people actually leave people at the altar?” Alex said in response. “Is that a thing you can do if you’re having second thoughts?” She then comforted Dave: “You’re still dreaming. The whole thing was a dream. A sweet, sweet dream…”
One of the best bits was this exchange between Alex, Dave, and Penny:
ALEX: Huh, I wonder why we all just suddenly stopped hanging out? It’s like one day we woke up and our friendship was just… cancelled.
DAVE : For no good reason.
PENNY : Who can remember the ABC’s of exactly what happened…
As always, the cast and crew would love to make future episodes of Happy Endings, should they find a network or streaming platform, and provided everyone was available.
What do you think? Would you watch future seasons of the Happy Endings TV show, if a network picked it up? Tell us.
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