I was impressed that memoirist Shalom Auslander ("Foreskin's Lament"!) had persuaded Showtime to turn his random reflections--on human existence, the mercy of God (or lack thereof), parenting, advertising, sex and Jewishness--into a cable sitcom, but we could only stay with it for six eps. Steve Coogan and adorable Kathryn Hahn do their best, and there are some funny bits, but I'm guessing a lot of it will seem like you've heard it before, more than once (maybe starting with the first time you got stoned at sleepover camp or with your freshman year roommate).
I'm also guessing this is one of those shows, like "Frankie and Grace" on Netflix, that gets extra points from TV execs because it fills a demographic niche-in this case, forty-somethings who have ambivalent feelings about millennials and are afraid they'll never be cool again.... It would have been interesting to see what Philip Seymour Hoffman (olav ha-sholom!), who had originally signed on to play the Coogan part, would have done with it, I admit.
On the + side, "Happyish" has a strong supporting cast (Bradley Whitford! Carrie Preston!), some cute animated sequences (not including IMHO the one where Coogan's character--"Thom Payne"!--schtups a Keebler elf), and a convenient time slot (between "Nurse Jackie" and "Veep") for oldsters who still watch scheduled programming on cable, but we still found it fairly tedious, unoriginal and kind of depressing after a while. Btw, Noah Baumbach's "While We're Young" (only $2.99 from Amazon Prime) explores some of the same boomer-vs.-millennial themes in a much subtler and more entertaining way.
I'm also guessing this is one of those shows, like "Frankie and Grace" on Netflix, that gets extra points from TV execs because it fills a demographic niche-in this case, forty-somethings who have ambivalent feelings about millennials and are afraid they'll never be cool again.... It would have been interesting to see what Philip Seymour Hoffman (olav ha-sholom!), who had originally signed on to play the Coogan part, would have done with it, I admit.
On the + side, "Happyish" has a strong supporting cast (Bradley Whitford! Carrie Preston!), some cute animated sequences (not including IMHO the one where Coogan's character--"Thom Payne"!--schtups a Keebler elf), and a convenient time slot (between "Nurse Jackie" and "Veep") for oldsters who still watch scheduled programming on cable, but we still found it fairly tedious, unoriginal and kind of depressing after a while. Btw, Noah Baumbach's "While We're Young" (only $2.99 from Amazon Prime) explores some of the same boomer-vs.-millennial themes in a much subtler and more entertaining way.