Happy Together

The producers are excited to create more absurd fun for their comic duo, and the audience should be happy in the long run, admiring a knowing farce at a time where the world’s dark buffoonery needs to be ignored. Happy Together may not become an iconic sitcom, but it’s already a pretty good source for happiness.

The jokes could use some polishing, and the concept could easily grow old in a hurry, but the trio of Wayans, Stevens West and Mallard nudge this one a solid notch above your average network sitcom.

Nothing particularly interesting is done with the premise. ... But Wayans and West develop an increasingly comfortable rapport as the episodes go on, and West is enjoyable all the way through, funny without breathing hard.

It fundamentally lacks a point-of-view or anything that help it break free from the generic--even as its stars struggle against a tide bearing them back to the bygone era where this show’s jokes seem to have originated. ... Stevens West and Wayans are both young and fun-to-watch, and do their oddball-couple routine without Cooper better than they do the script’s overwrought dithering over whether or not they’re washed-up.

Tthe season’s slightest new sitcom on a network that has done much better by this genre in recent seasons with the likes of Young Sheldon, Mom and Life In Pieces. In this case, the premise simply has no foreseeable promise.

Bland, harmless, forgettable.

To the extent that there's a coherent thought in Happy Together's empty head, it is that 35 is the new 50. That sedate married couple is played by Daman Wayans Jr. and Amber Dawn Stevens (The Carmichael Show), ages 36 and 32, respectively. As for the pop-idol interloper, he's played by Felix Mallard, a giant soap star in Australia, where charisma is apparently measured much differently.