USA picks up comedies that are not Happy Endings, keeps you hanging on about Happy Endings

By Sean O'Neal | May 16, 2013 | 9:21pm

Aux Features TV

As the USA Network remains uncertain as to whether it will rescue Happy Endings—probably depending, as always, on whether you love it enough—the basic-cable channel has committed to a couple other comedies that aren’t Happy Endings. The first, Playing House, reunites Best Friends Forever best friends forever Lennon Parham and Jessica St. Clair to play longtime pals who are reunited after one of them gets pregnant and she convinces the other one to set aside her own life to help her, like all good friends would do. The other, Sirens, is the previously reported show from Denis Leary that finds him moving from cops to firefighters to paramedics in his quest to mine the humor from all the city’s emergency services. The Chicago-set series also joins Chicago Fire and the upcoming Chicago PD in ensuring every angle of bad things happening in Chicago is covered on TV next year.

Also still in contention: Love Is Dead, a pilot set inside a company that handles romantic breakups for cowards; Paging Dr. Freed, a comedy set inside a gynecologist’s office (which seems to be a very popular sitcom milieu these days); and, again, Happy Endings, a pick-up of which Deadline cautions is "unlikely," depending on whether you stop thinking about it for even a second.