Stop The Lies. Cuz It Ain't Funny

Happy Endings, S02E20

Penny began a web of lies to avoid an old friend named Daphne, that leads to a fake baby shower and tangles all of her friends within it.  You would think someone who owns a "lieble" would know how to lie a little better, but Penny was simply awful at it (not that her friends were any better).  It was almost like a contest to see who could make the lies worse than the last person (I might have to hand the prize to Alex, whose lies seemed the most unnecessary of all).  Usually I like when one of them takes a problem that could be handled easily and makes it into a monstrously complicated issue, but this time I just wanted Penny to hurry up and tell the truth because it wasn't doing her friends any good, nor doing any good for me humor-wise.

As pushy as Daphne seemed to be, I liked that she kept cornering everyone until they felt so pressured they had no choice but to lie.  I mean, she was all up in their faces and making them feel like bad people (they were right to worry if they would look like mean people because they are).  I liked seeing everyone being on the spot, and Daphne's dead-serious concern about all the excuses they created.

Another nuisance who made an appearance in the episode was Max and Dave's landlord who was trying to cock-block (and evict) the two based on little more than jealousy.  I didn't care for his iron fist attitude toward subletters, but when he questioned them about a purse and Max said it was his, that was a really funny scene.  Max tried to act all stereotypically gay so that the landlord wouldn't know it was Alex's purse, and the guy was so adamant that Max better be as homosexual as he claimed to be.  I don't know what that was about (he was pointing at Max as if they would be hell to pay otherwise) but it made me laugh.  Maybe he just didn't want another Dave living in his building who would be bringing home more beautiful women that he couldn't date himself.

But the best example of comedy in this episode was Max's invention of the trash oven.  It could cook a brisket in 18 hours and emitted such deadly fumes that Dave was certain it would kill them while they slept.  I thought that his homemade infomercial for his oven was so ghetto, but hilarious.  He even came up with a catch phrase:

Set it and forget it.  (Don't forget it.  You gotta keep an eye on it or it will burn your house down.)

If that wasn't enough to make you pick up the phone and buy Max's product, there was a disclaimer that "hand burns are unrelated" when Max finally showed us his hands were bandaged heavily.  Oh, man.  At least with his hands injured we can be sure he won't be building anything else that might burn or suffocate someone to death.

I find myself unable to really enjoy stories that have Penny at the heart of them and maybe it's because she's more of a heavy stone around the others' necks than any one else.  I mean, there was really no reason that the gang all had to start lying (and they did so on their free will), but if Penny hadn't initiated it and made Daphne seem like the black plague, maybe the truth would have come out quicker.  I kinda wish that Daphne had gotten a bit more upset and really made Penny learn a lesson.  But I'll forgive the six of them for not being so funny when they were so cute about the lake house Jane and Brad were thinking of getting.  All of them are such loveable dorks.