This post was submitted by Topher Burns

Two things before we kick off this hate-fest: First, I’ve never paid for a massage with a happy ending, but for the purposes of this post I’m going to do my darnedest to put myself in the mindset of someone who is soliciting just such a procedure.  Second, my boyfriend is really into this show, so if there’s someone who is actually going to go for a while without a massage and a happy ending, it is yours truly. So, now you know how things stand.

I am told that a massage parlor of the seedier sort does not advertise that you’re going to get jerked off after a half-hour rub-down. Instead it’s just understood. With a wink and a jab in the ribs, the establishment offers you a massage and trusts you’ll get the message. The promise is blatant but unstated.

ABC’s new show Happy Endings makes similar promises: cool, urban, twenty-somethings, including the anti-stereotypical gay guy, an interracial relationship, and the awesome chick who got fired from SNL, just trying to make it in a complicated world.

Instead they just paw awkwardly in the mid-lumbar area and then ask to get paid. No full-body work. No illicit services. No warm towel and knowing smile.  Just a, “There, I touched you, you loved it, now pay the bill and hit the road, asshole.”

Happy Endings features hollow twenty-something characters who engage in stilted dialogue and crack sadly predictable jokes in asides and mumbles. Their Hallmark moments are both over the top and hamstrung by abashed self-awareness. As a New York Times review of the show observes, the characters are New Yorkers on a soundstage in Burbank that they puzzlingly refer to as Chicago.

The episode that promised, that winked and nodded but then just poked and prodded the most was “Mein Coming Out.”  The gay character in the group of friends is a “non-typical” gay. That he is not a blatant stereotype is certainly something to be thankful for, but it feels a bit like a Seinfeld-and-his-dentist situation. Because the gay dude is a “normal” dude but also gay, he gets to say things like, “Aw man, coming out is gay!”

In “Mein Coming Out,” our gay character says this precious little zinger not once but twice. Lame, dude.

After clumsily “whacky” hijinx and stultifyingly banal happenstance, our dude does come out to his parents, and as luck would have it, they’re chill about the whole thing.  The only person who ends up unsatisfied in the happily-ever-after conclusion is the viewer, left lying face-down on the table wondering to himself, “Wait, shouldn’t they have asked me to flip over by now?”

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