See, these are the episodes of Happy Endings I needed immediately after the pilot. I knew I wasn’t crazy. It’s pretty clear “Bo Fight” and “Barefoot Pedaler” were intended to air close to the beginning of the series, seeing as the episodes feature Dave moving in with Max and confronting Alex over humiliating him with her wedding run-out respectively. As a result the continuity was all off, a shame since both of these episodes were sincerely funny.
In “Bo Fight,” Dave is skeeved to leave the lavender-scented respite of his couple’s apartment for Max’s torture-porn studio ( “Exposed wire is the new exposed brick,” Max exclaims. “By the way, that’s bird poop. In your apartment. There’s a bird in here. Alive.” Brad notes). After hearing Alex describe the slow fade of love that had her sprinting out of the chapel before her “I do,” Jane realizes the current state of her marriage sounds exactly like the stagnation that lead to Alex dumping Dave. She subsequently forces a starving Brad out to the restaurant where they had their first date, reassuring him that it wasn’t his typo-filled search history that inspired her need to reconnect: “I know, I had the same thing happen when I searched for a pair of black Crocs.” Luckily the two realize that just because they eat Chinese food in their sweatpants constantly, that doesn’t mean they’re destined to end up like their pathetic single friends.
Meanwhile, Alex drags Penny along to an extreme cooking class, where Alex’s shoddy wingmanship blows P’s chances with a hot divorced guy. After drinking all the beers with Max, Dave fantasies about becoming more Segal than Zach Braff, which entails hunting down Bo, the guy who rollerbladed Alex out of their wedding. “You know what I’m thinking?,” Dave asks as he formulates his scheme. “Up In the Air was over rated?,” Max replies, since he gets all the lines. After managing to get inside Bo’s house, they find that he, too, is a mess after being rejected by Alex, and has been dying to apologize for his blading faux pas. Just when Dave and Bo are reaching their romantic catharsis….Max punches Bo in the face. “You can be Braff all you want, but I’m Segal all the time,” Max screams, his fight energy too high to dissipate. So Bo summarily kicks their asses. I loved that the ending monologue turned out to be the rose ceremony from The Bachelor, the show the cast tried to avoid watching before inevitably succumbing to its allure. This episode was so strong, and so clearly meant to be the second episode in the season.
In “Barefoot Pedaler,” the gang scrambles to keep Alex and Dave separated, indulging in marathon brunches and double movie nights to avoid having them in the same room. “We had to rent The Road twice, and it was not that funny the second time,” Max complains. Everyone is psyched to see their favorite college band in concert, DMB-esque Barefoot Pedaler, and they unsuccessfully scheme to ditch Alex and Dave before their constantly bickering ruins all their sweet jam band memories. Penny is nervous to see Tom, the electric fiddle player that she banged “like a warrior poet” in college, imagining their explosive sexual energy might make them go all Whitney and Bobby on-sight. “You mean Eli Whitney and Justin Bobby? Because they are also two people who mean nothing to each other,” Max queries.
The gang’s drinking game was the highlight of the episode (“Guy with rainbow dreads! Drink. Jon Lovitz! Drink, bitches.”), and I was delighted to find that Jane morphs into a Creole riverboat captain after two drinks. After some teasing from broseph college mate Brody, Alex and Dave spiral into a screaming match about their failed nuptials. Apparently video of Alex running out of the church not only went viral, it got remixed and Autotuned. After Dave storms off, Alex decides she needs to get on stage for a big rom-com gesture of apology. Naturally she gets tased, leading to Dave getting tased, and you see where I’m going with this. Meanwhile, Max manages to get back stage and puts Tom on blast for pretending he didn’t remember his special night in Y2K with Penny. “Do I lie and say I don’t like you guys because I care what people think? Yes. And cause there are no gay hippies? Double true,” Max rants. Which of course leads to him getting tased. Overall, these were two winners that would have been excellent early season eps, rather than tucked in a week before the season finale.
