Happy Endings is a new half hour comedy series about a group of friends and life after one of those friends (Cuthbert; 24) leaves another (Knighton) at the altar.  Besides the broken up couple you have the married couple (Coupe; Scrubs & Wayans Jr.), the single girl (Wilson; Saturday Night Live) and the gay guy (Pally; Assassination of a High School President).

Taken at it’s premise, this show seems incredibly feeble.  It should be bad enough not to even warrant a review, but instead I’m writing about it.  Because it needs viewers.  Because it’s actually good.

I don’t know how it happened but this show is actually really funny.  It’s main premise basically got tossed in the toilet after the pilot and there’s very little talk of the broken up relationship.  And although there are numerous comedies just like this one, it somehow doesn’t feel stale.  A lot of this is the writing.  Obviously the writers realized this could be a disaster and decided to have some fun.  For example an episode based around the Jewish gay friend and him using the various females as beards when his parents come to town with a b-story of one of the females meeting a guy who’s last name happens to be Hitler and how this all comes together really hilariously.

But even the funniest writing wouldn’t work if there wasn’t some on-screen talent to bring it to life.  The male cast is adequate, but it’s the females who really kill.  It turns out Cuthbert can be funny intentionally, and then you have the wonderful Eliza Coupe who was on the last couple of seasons of Scrubs and shows that her greatness over there wasn’t just a fluke.  Rounding it all out is Casey Wilson who only had a short stint on SNL but who seems right at home here being just silly enough to still be real.

This is a straightforward stupid comedy.  It doesn’t pretend or try to be more or less.   But if you want a funny 30 minutes, look no further.