Dr Qua (SpaceOctopus) So, I saw this had Steve Coogan & I happen to like him, and Netflix thought I'd like it (it suggested I would 4.5 stars like it, in fact) and I took a chance watching it. I watched about 5 episodes before I no longer felt it deserved my attention at all, and turned it off. I kept getting this familiar feeling & couldn't put my finger on it, but it was bothering me for sure. That's when I finally noticed the studio was Showtime. I finally understood the feeling. I realized it was just like the feeling I got from Weeds, Dexter, Californication etc, it's this really obnoxious, kind of -I don't know what to call it- maybe pandering? This "we're so cool, aren't we cool?" kind of vibe. This thing where somehow a good idea for a show is brought to Showtime & then gets ruined completely by them. I kind of see Showtime as a cheap knock-off of HBO. I get the same feeling when someone tries to sell me knock-off Sharpies with a weird name that looks close to it.I feel like the entire show was just trying way too hard, just like the other ones I mentioned. Instead of actually using the talent of people and writing for themselves, from their own creativity, it just feels like they spent too much time writing to get viewers & writing what they think viewers want them to. Using clichés & all the kinds of stupid attempts to be deep, cool, or funny but looking like tools instead. Showtime are posers. That's the best description. Similar to a kid trying to be punk rock but failing miserably & just looking like an idiot & shopping at Hot Topic, putting studs on things & thinking it makes them a punk. I don't know how else to explain it, I just know Showtime had something to do with it. I feel like if HBO had picked the project up, this may have been worth watching. Mostly it's just irritating & trying way too hard & is dumbed down. Such a shame really.. what's worse is how many people who I like that fall for this crap. I felt insulted by this garbage. You should too, if you're even somewhat intelligent. What was with all the religious crap, too? That was even more annoying.Go watch something way better. Seriously. Almost anything HBO makes is worth watching (excluding Sex in The City, True Blood and Entourage, which belong on Showtime), even Ballers, which I really should hate considering my hatred of football & sports, but is actually pretty good & the writing isn't stupid or obviously people trying too hard. The acting is also excellent. Personally was surprised to like it. Anyway if you're after comedy, then try the new HBO show "Vice Principles" or a classic like Mr Show or Dream On. Forget this.

LA Carlson Certainly Steve Coogan, Kathryn Hahn and Bradley Whitford are talented actors who hoped for so much more. I know my laughing gave way to a sense of despair early. It seems clear why this show was not renewed. There's nothing remotely happy in this adult show. The conversations involving genitalia are what the Millennials find amusing over and over again. Baby Boomers just look ridiculous as some of the conversations are not plausible. A click to the writer's'website, Shalom Auslander says it all. It explains why this show is the way it is. His past interviews explain his perspective. Lots of swearing from episode to episode. The young boy, Sawyer Shipman, who plays their son is adorable.

marciaoh Now that Happyish is officially canceled, I'm searching for answers as to why it didn't make it. I watched the show every week, which may seem odd since I really wasn't a fan of the series. I suppose the talented Brit, Steve Coogan and Bradley Whitford, pulled me in at first. Then, the quirky, irreverent humor interested me. However, the main problem with Happyish is that it presents no truly likable characters. The central family is miserable and seems to wallow in self-pity in such a pathologically unhealthy way that the audience becomes uncomfortable and a bit embarrassed. Since the family is attractive, live in an upscale home, are educated and have enviable careers, it's difficult for most viewers to empathize with their misery. The scripts sort of repeat the same overused refrain each week--millennials and Swedes are all evil villains and corporate America eats people's souls. There is no subtext or probing for deeper insights, just the cloying monotony of rather overdone story lines. All the characters, even the Swedish group who take over the ad company, are one dimensional and shallow. I've begun to wonder why so much contemporary television uses Swedish people as the antagonists--are Swedes now the postmodern symbols of blond, blue eyed monsters--the entitled white power structure? To this point, in the incredibly well done HBO hit, Nurse Jackie, the writers pinned the downfall of the hospital, the central workplace and life-blood of the characters, on the Swedes. Have American TV producers simply run out of villains that are politically correct? Swedes, family angst, fear of aging, psychological despair and Jewish self-identity all get short shifted in Happyish and the viewer comes away not happyish at all.

nixon carmichael Originally planned with the late and great Phil Hoffman in mind, Steven Coogan has taken up the mantle of the impotent and increasingly overqualified, if self- entitled main character. We are immediately thrust into the life of Thom Payne, a British (of course) shill for the advertising industry desperately clinging to relevance in a world that is leaving him behind.After a baffling and somewhat incoherent opening rant against Mount Rushmore we find out that Thom's winter of discontent comes at the hands of his new corporate overlords, half his age, and of course they are portrayed as 20 something, Scandinavian, euro- hipster clones who maliciously forsake everything Thom holds dear in the name of Twitter feeds, YouTube posts and Facebook updates.Jammed between whimsical scenes of Kathryn Hahn having arguments with her overbearing Yiddish mother (personified by a talking ups package) and a weird scene with Coogan having aggressive sex with an animated keebler elf (yes both of those things actually happen), the breath of fresh air, Bradley Whitford, emerges as Coogan's direct supervisor and voice of reason to Coogan's outlandish antics and tantrums.The show works, just not the way the creators intended. Rather than a referendum against the Internet age and millennial hipsterism, the show turned out to be the examination of aging Gen-Xers, desperately clinging to relevancy and resisting a world of their own creation.