I Bet It’s All Gonna Work Out: My Favorite Sitcom Joke of the Decade

Back in early 2013, I was doing my part. I was an advocate. My cause was futile, but I refused to give up.

I was a freshman in college, just starting my second semester. It was one of the most tumultuous and difficult times in my life. Not the least of which because I’d done a piss-poor job of picking friends. But there was one thing that kept me going. A sitcom. The sitcom. The best sitcom on network television at the time, and maybe of the decade.

The show was called Happy Endings. Everyone who watched it loved it. All eight of us. 

Ratings were low and ABC was burying the remaining episodes. Cancellation was inevitable. But the show was peaking. Like, seriously peaking. Like, staging a 90-second sequence with the cast tied together as a marionette version of The Jackson 5 and it felt completely normal level peaking. 

But again, I was doing my part. Every time there was a new episode, whether it was a Friday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Sunday, I would turn it on in my dorm, open up the door to the hallway and invite in anyone and everyone who was willing to watch with me. 

My plan worked a few times. Much to my chagrin, my (bad) friends were weirdly more interested in the show that often came on afterwards, the bizarre and inexplicable Dan Fogelman comedy about aliens titled “The Neighbors.” 

(Side note: No one had a weirder 2010s than Fogelman. He wrote one of the best romcoms of the decade — Crazy, Stupid, Love — before writing one of the least necessary ones, The Guilt Trip. He also wrote Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and then wrote and directed Life Itself. On top of all that, he created The Neighbors, Galavant and Pitch, wrote for the short-lived John Stamos show Grandfathered and then found time to create This Is Us, one of the biggest shows of the decade. I do not understand how Dan Fogelman’s brain operates. But one day maybe I’ll understand all of this weirdness.)

But I’ll never forget the one episode of Happy Endings that transcended my (again, bad) friends’ misunderstood misappreciation for good things. It was called Ordinary Extraordinary Love, written by Daniel Chun. (Who if I’m not mistaken also created Grandfathered. FOGELMAN!) The title comes from a fake pop song written for this episode, sang by a fake pop star whose life Penny ruins and then capitalizes on for profit at Xela, Alex’s clothing store that somehow is still in business. 

The part of the episode that matters, however, is the Max and Jane subplot. (And the part of the episode where Dave declares Val Kilmer to be his spirit animal. Oh, and Alex checking out of the music-listening game after Smash Mouth.) Max is bummed to learn he isn’t a twink, because apparently twink doesn’t mean “gay man who likes twinkies.” So he enlists Jane and recurring gay stereotype Derrick to help him find which gay subculture he belongs to.

Spoiler: the answer is none. In a wink to the camera, Max doesn’t even fit in with the “sitcom gays.” So Max decides to invent his own gay subculture. He deems himself an “Optimistic Red Velvet Walrus” and decides to throw a party at the local bar called “Optimistic Red Velvet Walrus Night.” (He puts an ad in the Sacramento Bee to promote the party. The bar, of course, is in Chicago.) After waiting and waiting, eventually a nice young man comes in and asks if he’s at Optimistic Red Velvet Walrus Night. Max says yes. Max and the stranger bond over not knowing what gay subculture they belong to. Everything seems right.

Then an older gentleman in a red velvet suit with magnificent white sideburns that combine into a mustache emerges through the bar doors. Everyone turns. 

“Oh man, this place is empty,” the man grumbles. He doesn’t walk with a cane, but he has the gait and demeanor of someone who would. He takes a few steps through the threshold of the bar and raises a finger. “But I bet it’s all gonna work out!”

At the sight of this man, at the sight of a literal, come-to-life depiction of an optimistic, red velvet walrus, the few friends straggling in my room laughed at a volume I hadn’t heard since the last time I watched Dennis the Menace with my dad. I was laughing too, naturally. But not nearly as hard as these guys were. The only other time I can remember seeing friends laugh like that at something I’d shown them was the time in middle school I exposed all my friends to Celebrity Jeopardy with Will Ferrell.

To me, the beautiful thing about sitcoms is shared laughter. Say what you want about laugh-track shows, or even live-studio-audience shows. I know canned laughs are cheesy. I know that being told when to laugh is lame. 

But the only thing better than laughing is laughing with others. It’s a good thing that laughter is more or less contagious. Sharing a laugh is one of the most beautiful feelings in the world. And in that moment, while my favorite show was riding a magnificent hot streak and about 20 days away from hitting its biggest peak yet, I got to share a guttural, ugly laugh with some friends who I abandoned about eight months later.

As someone prone to hyperbole, I’m not afraid to call this gag my favorite joke of the decade. And I’m not afraid to say this, almost seven full years after Happy Endings went off the air: We always deserved more of this show. And maybe we’ll get it.

Can’t hurt to be optimistic.