Happy Endings Recap: ‘Get Your Own Damn Daddy’

Finally, a Brad-heavy episode! Since it’s never to early for a celebrity cameo, Damon Wayans stops as Brad’s fictional/actual father, a strict military man who has never actually expressed any emotions toward his son. Spurred on by Jane, Brad tells his father Francis that he loves him, which sends the man into a panic attack when he assumes his son is trying to break some terrible medical news. After Fran calms down, his new-found lease on life has him head-over-heels about everything…except for his off-spring. “I love…this track suit,” he declares, marveling at it’s luxurious ball room. When Brad musters his courage to tell his dad he loves him again, Francis immediately starts choking on a piece of steak, and you see where I’m going with this. “Saw Millennium Park, did a little shopping, almost died…twice,” Fran reminisces while packing his bags to leave. Papa Damon outshines his son by a small margin, but given that Big and Little Wayans have the same natural charisma and excellent comedic timing, it’s nothing that more Brad-focused story lines won’t mitigate. Or they can have Damon Wayans on as a series regular; either way, I ain’t complaining.

Over in the most sitcom-y, but also most genuinely hilarious, storyline, Penny discovers she can speak fluent Italian if she drinks past the point of coherence. A convenient skill, considering every man she and Alex attract at the bar is a borderline sociopath. “It’s not sexist if it’s racist,” a livid Curtis Gwinn rants at them. After wooing an Italian hottie, Penny blows it (and her 20 mimosa lunch) trying to stay inebriated enough to fall in love. Elisha Cuthbert gets the best joke of the night/series by far: please, please let her character always somehow obtain a big plate of sloppy ribs when she’s drunk. It’s those kind of sticky, random details that manages to lift the show past it’s traditional set-up.

Meanwhile, Dave and Max slowly descend into obsession over a set of new Nerf guns. “On the box it says 8 and up. That’s us!,” Max shouts. After spending the entire episode shooting each other in the junk, they scheme to shoot their neighbor Mini-Kimono Guy (Paul Scheer as the new Ugly Naked Guy), whose sole crime seems to be the ability to fuck for an hour and a half on end. Don’t hate the player, hate the game, gentlemen. In a great visual gag, Alex and Dave watch as Max crawls on his stomach into Scheer’s pork den to lower his window (not a pork euphemism). So of course, when they do shoot into the apartment, the squishy orange bullet knocks over a candle, sets a scarf alight and starts a massive conflagration that requires the building be evacuated. The three are convinced they’re going to jail, and their panic runs delightfully wild as the fire department arrives. Unfortunately, this all happened in the last 10 minutes of the episode. Had the fire been set at the beginning of the episode, we could have really gotten into their frantic despair, various plans to escape prison, and more of Paul Scheer’s naked upper thigh. As it was, last night’s episode was solid with some pacing issues, but all that Wayans carried it through the duller parts. If only the show could have infinite Wayans…

Happy Endings Recap: ‘Get Your Own Damn Daddy’