'Happy Endings' Deserves a New Beginning on Streaming

We live in a magical time, when thousands of new and old TV shows are available at the click of a button, thanks to streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. But not every show has made the transition. In Stream This! we highlight a deserving series that’s not yet available on streaming… but should be.

May 10, 2013: We solemnly refer to it as The Day the Laughter Died. Because on that day, ABC callously axed the brilliantly zany sitcom Happy Endings after three simply ah-mah-zing seasons. And we’re still not over it.

And to pour salt in our still-festering wound, to this day, we can’t watch Happy Endings on any of the major streaming services. No Netflix. No Hulu. No Amazon Prime. Our kingdom for the ability to stream “Boys II Menorah” whenever we choose!

For those of you who never piled onto the Happy Endings bandwagon (what, you guys don’t do pile-ons?), Zachary Knighton and Elisha Cuthbert starred as Dave and Alex, a couple who split up after Alex leaves Dave at the altar (for some jerk on Rollerblades, no less). The sudden split forces their four friends — Jane (Eliza Coupe), Brad (Damon Wayans Jr.), Max (Adam Pally), and Penny (Casey Wilson) — to choose whose side to take, and who to keep hanging out with. They’re literally stuck in the middle, you guys!

Okay, so that’s not the most inspiring premise for a sitcom. But let’s not kid ourselves: Sitcoms aren’t about what they’re “about”; they live and die on the chemistry of their cast. And Happy Endings had some of the most effortless sitcom chemistry of the past decade. Together, the six-person ensemble was much greater than the sum of its parts, and the show quickly shed its original premise and got busy being a crackerjack joke machine, with rapid-fire gags flying back and forth at a head-spinning pace.

All six characters filled a typical sitcom role, but with a twist: Max was the frat-boy slob… but one who just happened to be super into dudes. Alex was the ditz who could also polish off a plate of barbecued ribs like nobody’s business. Penny was terminally unlucky in love — she even dated a guy named “Hitler”! — but remained a sunny optimist. Dave was the dopey dreamer, driving his food truck and exploring his Native American heritage. And married couple Brad and Jane grossed everyone out with their happily TMI sex life.

Despite a top-notch cast and impeccable writing, though, Happy Endings was hamstrung by scheduling problems from the start. It debuted in April 2011 at the tail end of the TV season, along with a glut of other “young singles” sitcoms (Fox’s Traffic Light, NBC’s Perfect Couples) that made it look like just another Friends rip-off. ABC rushed it onto the air two episodes at a time, and it looked destined for a quick cancellation.

Miraculously, it managed to pick up a second season and landed in the cushy post-Modern Family timeslot on Wednesday nights. And it did well there, notching a series-high 8.3 million viewers for its Season 2 Halloween episode, “Spooky Endings.” (That’s the one where Penny and Max dress up as a new mom and her infant in a Baby Björn, by the way.)

But it got yanked off the schedule later that season to make room for Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt. 23, and then shifted all around the calendar during Season 3, from Tuesdays to Sundays and finally to (ugh) Fridays, where ABC unceremoniously burned off the final ten episodes (again) two at a time. When news of its cancellation finally came in, it was sad, yes… but not unexpected.

Two-plus years later, though, we still find ourselves quoting the gang on a regular basis (any tough news is instantly labeled “roof stoof” around here) and wishing we had a way to enjoy all 57 episodes at our leisure. We watched inferior sitcoms like Marry Me and Benched just to catch a glimpse of our old pals. We got excited when the writing staff’s Twitter account seem to hint at a revival… only to fly into a rage when it was revealed as an April Fool’s Day joke.

Related: Everyone Loves ‘The Golden Girls,’ So Why Can’t We Stream It Anywhere?

Happy Endings is exactly the kind of quirky cult comedy that could find a new audience on streaming — which makes it all the more frustrating that it’s not available there. Hulu did offer full episodes back when the show was still airing on ABC, but no sign of them now. VH1 started running Happy Endings repeats a couple years back, followed by Logo last year, but those seem to have been wiped from the schedule, too.

Now if we want our Happy Endings fix, we need to either pay per episode on iTunes, buy the DVDs, or just act out Penny-and-Max scenes with our friends. (We reached out to Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, which owns the home-video rights to Happy Endings, to see if there are any plans to offer the series on streaming, but they didn’t respond.)

One potential silver lining here: If a streaming service does decide to pick up Happy Endings, maybe they could eventually pull an Arrested Development and reunite the cast for a much-needed fourth season. We can’t help but notice that none of the six cast members have a regular TV gig at the moment, so the timing couldn’t be better. Seeing what kind of wacky antics Penny, Max, Brad, Jane, Dave, and Alex are up to these days? We can’t imagine a more happy ending than that.