HAPPYISH EPISODE 4 SHARES A COKE WITH MAD MEN

E4 Grade: D

The corny yet catchy commercial jingle that some of us grew up on, "I'd like to buy the world a Coke," where a race-uniting of spaced-out hippies sing a peaceful song about a billion dollar corporation's drink made of sugar and syrup for "perfect harmony", is of two-fold significance tonight: ending one show about ad writers and beginning another...

Thus, forever gone is MAD MEN, and here's a quick writeup of the fourth episode of HAPPYISH titled "Starring Sigmund Freud, Charles Bukowski and Seven Billion A-Holes."

While Steve Coogan's Thom Payne flipped off God the last time around, now both he and his wife want a spaceship to free them from a vapid world of... happy jerks. And with a side-story involving their brooding son bullied by a mean kid at school, tonight was unfocused, and not very profound. In fact, Bradley Whitford's grouchy Jonathan has deeper insight than Thom, and he's not even trying. Let's just hope that horrendous Coke commercial doesn't make an actual comeback anytime soon. Maybe, like with pop-up ads, the mere sight of it, twice in one night, will seal its fate, permanently.