• by July 1, 2015

Let’s face it: With the (crushingly disappointing) ending of "Mad Men" (apple trees and honey bees, anyone?) lo those many weeks ago (not that I’m bitter), I found it hard to light upon a replacement that would be worthy of the kind of monomaniacal devotion that we paid to Weiner’s Men.

That said, lots of super-smart commenters suggested that I move to reviewing the only other new series on cable that is ostensibly about advertising: “Happyish,” on Showtime.  

Shalom Auslander, the Ish’s creator and showrunner — and sole writer of every episode — is a memoirist (“Foreskin’s Lament”), a novelist (“Hope, a Tragedy”), and sometime contributor to "This American Life.”  He has also served some serious agency time as a copywriter, most notably at McCann-Erickson.  (Boy, has that agency come in for some unfair satirizing lately on the tee-vee series about advertising!)

“Happyish,” which skewers pitches, tag lines, Swedes, Millennials, social media, skinny jeans, Ikea, Lululemon, ideation rooms,  chemistry meetings, and even the simple act of reading the newspaper, debuted at the end of April, and ended earlier this week with its tenth episode. Of course it lives on in the ether for would-be bingers.

So where to start?  Well, for the first few episodes, “Happy-ish” is so unrelentingly bleak it’s like blackout-shade-ish, never-getting-out-of-bed-ish, please-kill-me-now-ish.  It’s so dark that a normal death spiral would be way too perky for Auslander. He makes Larry David seem like an up-with-people person.

Given the existential dread of the subject matter —depression, dying, death — there was a terrible irony in the fact that the lead character, a ragingly unhappy creative director  (a version of Auslander himself) was originally played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose drug-induced death occurred shortly after production started.

After shutting down production, Showtime went in another direction in casting Steve Coogan — comedian, writer, and star of the film “Philomena" — who brings a certain intelligence and handsome-ish physical charm to the role that you want to root for.  He plays Thomas Payne — an obvious reference to the man whose “Common Sense” pamphlet set off the Revolutionary War, and gave us our independence as Amurricans. (Which is a little weird, since Coogan is a Brit.) More basically, the name also refers to a dude in pain.

Not only is he in pain, but he is a pain. We meet Payne on the evening of his 44th birthday, at a party inside his just-right, effortlessly shabby-chic house in Woodstock, N.Y., where he lives in the woods with his six-year-old son (the kid actor, Sawyer Shipman, seems to be cast for his annoying speech impediment) and his attractive, sardonic artist wife. (Auslander lives in the woods in Woodstock with his two sons and attractive, sardonic, artist wife.)

Thom is the embodiment of a certain kind of self-absorbed, upper-middle, creative-class privilege. In the first few episodes, we get a sort of “Groundhog Day” of his going to the office and being mad as hell and not wanting to take it anymore. He talks about the soul-crushing horror of agency life in lines that are more tired than Paddy Chayefsky-revolutionary, as in “Do I really want to waste my life writing ads?”

Lest we ever forget his constant, whiny inner-discontent, the series opens with Thom’s voice-over.  “Fuck ‘Mad Men,’” he says. “There is nothing cool about advertising. We’re doing what everyone else is doing these days, kissing the pimple-covered asses of teenagers.”

OK, I wanted to scream at the television — so quit already! You have no idea how lucky you are. Go load heavy boxes on trucks at night for a nice honest living, and report back to us!

Lee, his wife, is played by the always fabulous Kathryn Hahn (she was the delightful rabbi in “Transparent”).  She, too, seems a little too unhappy and unhinged about not having enough time for her art, what with living in a great house and taking care of the one kid (who goes to private school) and all.  I wanted to strangle them both and throw them in entitlement jail.

For a guy born in 1971, Payne has ridiculously curmudgeonly judgments about the Internet and social media, and I found his resistance kind of boring and annoying. He’s way too dyspeptic and “get off my lawn!”-ish  for someone so young.

But I’ve got to say that the show does get better as it goes along. The casting is flat-out wonderful.  Ellen Barkin is great as a world-weary recruiter named Kirschenbloom who gives Thom some sage advice. She tells him that “every person has their joy ceiling, and once you reach it, that’s the happiest you’re ever going to be.” As the “I’m in survival mode” director on the account side, Bradley Whitford is pitch-perfect too.

And the parody of agency life is dead-on. Auslander has a brilliant eye and ear for the stupidest nuances. He worked at McCann during the age of the Swedes (I won’t get into the actual names). Without any announcement, a pair of young Swedish creatives — Gustaf and Gottfrid — take over.  Gustaf loves to hold agency meetings, jumps on stage in sneakers, black jeans and wearing an “American Idol” type built-in mike, and is an evangelist for nonsensical lines like “Great business is moving at the speed of ideas.”   He thinks campaigns are so “last century,”  and is into “events and moments.” He also says, “Al-Qaeda is a great brand. They don’t make ads, they make events.”

Gottfrid is silent, and only occasionally whispers in Gustaf’s ear.  It’s funny.

Lee gets some great riffs, especially about how much she hates the movie “Frozen.” She ends up getting a studio in a barn where she can work, and is thrilled until her landlord comes to visit. Then he starts in on which concentration camps his family members died in during the Holocaust. Somehow, that scene is hilarious.

Moreover,  “Happy-ish “ is happiest at home, where Thom and Lee truly enjoy a marriage of equals. (So much so that they seem like the same person — they could exchange their lines of dialogue and no one would know.)  It’s a lovely relationship that is more like modern marriage than anything I’ve seen depicted on any other show.  The relationship to their son is nicely drawn as well. By the end, he didn’t seem as annoying, and I could even understand his speech better. Their interactions ring true: Thom leaves one morning, saying, “Time to make the donuts” -- and the kid lights up, asking, “You’re gonna make donuts?”

And Auslander even figured out an ending that is a teeny tiny bit hopeful, but still realistic. I won’t give it away, but it’s symbolic of something of a rebirth.  Thom’s still mad as hell, but he’s going to take it.  He’s never going to teach the world to sing. (And that’s a good thing.) But there’s enough entertaining stuff here that I’d vote for a second season.