The joke that Dave wears a lot of V-necks has been one of his best recurring gags on Happy Endings – and he doesn’t have too many, unlike basically everyone else. But I’m worried the show kinda ruined it with this episode, which turned his V-neck obsession into a Hoarders/Intervention spoof to very silly results. Silly even for this show, and this show is plenty silly.
My main problem, really, is that spoofing those overwrought reality shows is a little overdone – Intervention isn’t really a thing anymore, and even Hoarders barely counts. Sure, the task was handed to Max and Alex, easily the show’s most plausible candidates for such behavior, but most of their scenes were pretty flat spoofs, which isn’t what I expect from this show. I did, however, enjoy Steve Agee’s guest spot in the TV show Alex and Max were watching as the guy who’s addicted to eating books that his girlfriend hoards.
Plus, we had the return of Seth Morris as easily the show’s best recurring character, the demented madman Scottie, who keeps calling Dave “Doug” and comes to the realization that he’s addicted to Vicodin. And Dave’s ultimate realization that he loves V-necks because they helped him escape being bullied as a kid was a sweet capper. I just wish they had let Alex and Max spin more out of control. A plot this silly can’t also be boring.
Here I am, ragging on Happy Endings for spoofing Hoarders and Intervention, but I couldn’t have been happier at Brad’s spin on Jackass, called Blackass, which seemed to revolve around him, Brandon Johnson, and a couple other guys (they even had a black Wee Man) repeatedly falling into a pit of mousetraps. Well, really just Brad. It’s nice to see the show re-use Johnson though, even for a brief appearance like that – any attempt at world-building is something I appreciate.
The Brad/Jane story was probably the strongest of the night, effectively utilizing Brad’s adorable childishness and Jane’s adorable control-freakery (which, really, you could also call childishness). Brad reverts to his old, dreadlock-having, Sugar Ray-loving, turkey dog-eating college self, once he realizes all the changes Jane enacted once they got together. The Blackass sequence was the funniest of the night, but his inability to take baths (because in college, his bathtub was full of 311 CDs) was a nice little detail.
All of Brad’s former loves in life fit very well with his character too, who’s a big, nerdy old softie – of course he likes Sugar Ray, that’s exactly the kind of shitty band he’d be into. The revelation of Jane’s former self, who often barfed outside tents at Korn concerts and dressed like a Gwen Stefani action figure, fit perfectly as well. Especially Korn, for some reason.