With miniscule ratings and mediocre-at-best reviews, Showtime certainly wasn't very pleased with how Shalom Auslander's freshman series Happyish shaped out. In an unsurprising move, then, they've decided it would be best to rain on its parade by not continuing it for a second season.
Considering the hard-wrought road it took to make this show a reality, it's fitting this dramedy about people trenching through corporate America as best they can would come to such a defeating end. Once a three-year passion project for Showtime president David Nevins, Happyish was first ordered to pilot back in 2013, when Philip Seymour Hoffman signed on to play lead Thom Payne, Kathryn Hahn to portray his wife, Lee, and John Cameron Mitchell directing the pilot. In January 2014, the station picked up the program for series, but it received a tragic blow once Hoffman unexpectedly past away one month later.
Happyish found new life again, however, when Steve Coogan filled in for Hoffman and the pilot was reshot with Hahn still on board but producer Ken Kwapis calling the shots instead of Mitchell. In addition to critics not responding well to Auslander's uneven program, audiences were even less enthused with what they saw from the surreal middle-age-based show. Ratings began with a mere .430 and were almost half that when its season finale aired last month to .261 viewers.
Deadline reported the news. As if it didn't have enough to be sad about, this marks the first original show under Nevins' watch not to get at least a second season, and one of the very few from the past decade to get this cutthroat decision. Ouch.
What's most disappointing about this news is how much promise laid wasted here. It's clear this wasn't meant for everyone, but certainly Auslander's show could have gone on to become an unprecedented, generation-speaking program with brash ideas, memorable characters and piercing wit. Despite fine performances all around — especially from Bradley Whitford — Happyish came across as too smug and self-satisfied with itself, mistaking patronizing its audience as asserting confidence and not proving itself before it felt the right to say it spoke to a generation. It wasn't as self-aware as, say, Girls and couldn't really strike what tone and texture it wanted to be, even when it began to get slightly better throughout its ten-episode season.
Auslander is a ferociously smart writer, though, and hopefully he takes this opportunity to put his talents and time into something truly worthy of his voice and wit. It was overstated in his first showrunning effort (he also wrote every episode by himself), but he has a lot on his mind and hopefully those thoughts can become more cohesive in his next project, whether its another book, a new TV show, a movie or whatever it may be. There's also little denying the cast, also including Ellen Barkin, getting themselves on their feet too.
Image courtesy of INFphoto
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