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‘Happiness Isn’t Everything’: Mitch Hurwitz’s Lost Post-’Arrested Development’ Family Sitcom

From the Script Pile -

6–8 minutes

“The  Script Pile” is a new biweekly column on Splitsider that examines the  screenplays for high-profile movie and TV comedies that never made it to  the screen.Since Arrested Development was canceled by Fox in 2006, Mitch Hurwitz has created four other shows: the short-lived Fox duo Sit Down Shut Up and Running Wilde, an American adaptation of the UK sitcom The Thick of It for ABC (which never made it to air), and the least-talked-about of the four, a rejected CBS pilot called Happiness Isn’t Everything.Considering Hurwitz is best known for creating Arrested Development, the last thing you’d ever expect him to get involved with is a mainstream family sitcom on CBS, but that’s exactly what Happiness Isn’t Everything is. A hybrid multi-cam/single-cam show, Happiness was co-created by Hurwitz and his Arrested Development right-hand  man James Vallelly, the only writer (besides Hurwitz) to work on all  four seasons of that show and the only one who worked on all three  seasons of its original Fox run too. CBS ordered a pilot and six scripts  for Happiness Isn’t Everything, targeting the show for fall of  2009, but passed on the series after a pilot directed by sitcom legend  James Burrows and starring Jason Biggs, Richard Dreyfuss, Mary  Steenburgen, and Ben Schwartz was produced.Judging by the pilot script, Happiness Isn’t Everything is the closest thing to Arrested Development that  Hurwitz has made since, in terms of subject matter and tone but not  quality. The show follows a Beverly Hills family of four who are  struggling with the fact that they’re a little too close to each other.  Jason Biggs stars as adult son Jason Hamburger, a writer for the cheesy  Spike TV sci-fi show Starhole who’s described in the script as  “an over-thinker. Calm on the outside, he might just be the craziest on  the inside.” The rest of the family includes Richard Dreyfuss as pushy  patriarch Jerry Hamburger, a brilliant plastic surgeon/untalented  amateur singer; a pre-Parks and Rec Ben Schwartz as son Jacky, a  resident physician who insists on bringing a life-sized wax dummy of  O.J. Simpson everywhere; and Mary Steenburgen as Audrey Veill (get it?),  Jerry’s ex-wife and the boys’ mother who’s very much a part of Jerry’s  daily life.The pilot follows Jason trying (but failing) to break up with his girlfriend Moon (played by Michelle Krusiec, Dirty Sexy Money) while fretting over his family being too close to one another. The script feels like a middle ground between Arrested Development and  a run-of-the-mill CBS sitcom at times, with Hurwitz and Vallelly mixing  some story complexity and fast-moving cutaways in with the script’s  broad jokes and bad puns. Some of the jokes land hard, but a lot of the  humor in the script falls flat on the page. A running gag involving  Jason’s family life affecting his sci-fi show Starhole,  complete with a series of cutaways to the TV set with star Luke Perry  talking to a tennis ball on a stick against a green screen background,  works particularly well.Hurwitz’s  willingness to make a more conventional show while compromising his  artistic integrity a little bit also happened with his next show, Running Wilde. Here’s how he explained his mindset at this point in his career, which might shed some light on why the Happiness Isn’t Everything pilot feels a little pedestrian:“[Fox  exec] Kevin Reilly is actually a great guy, and he kept saying, ‘Mitch,  I want you to be rich.’ Like, ‘Right, yes, so I do. That’s right.’ And  he’d say, ‘So I just want you to be successful, and I’m telling you,  this isn’t gonna make it.’ And then it got to the point where he  literally said to me at one point, ‘Look, you’re gonna make fun of me  for saying this, but if you think something is a good idea or you think  it’s funny or it’s just a twist you haven’t seen before, just don’t do  it.’ And I said, ‘Kevin, come on.’ And he goes, ‘I know, I know, I know …  I know that’s ridiculous, but I’m telling you, you’re your own worst  enemy. Just don’t do it.’”
Hurwitz may not have been operating under similar advice for Happiness Isn’t Everything, but like Running Wilde, the pilot script does find him shifting his sensibilities in a more mainstream direction in the time between Arrested Development’s original run and its Netflix revival.One edgy thread Hurwitz surprisingly doesn’t drop when moving from AD to CBS is his love of incest humor. As mentioned earlier, Happiness Isn’t Everything is  about a family that’s too close to each other — so close, in fact, that  family members often kiss each other on the mouth. There’s a storyline  in the pilot about protagonist Jason not wanting his dad to kiss him on  the mouth anymore but not telling him for fear of hurting his feelings.  All the family members kiss each other on the mouth (or try) at some  point in the script. It’s pretty weird and doesn’t ring as true — or as  funny — as AD’s George Michael/Maeby stuff, but some great  moments result from this odd running joke, which I suspect may have been  a little too strange for CBS brass.It’s unfair that everything Mitch Hurwitz ever writes will be compared to Arrested Development,  but it’s an inevitability after someone creates a show as iconic and  beloved as that one (which is part of the reason he’s returned to the AD well as of late, I suspect). I’ve drawn so many comparisons to it throughout this piece because the Happiness Isn’t Everything pilot  itself, with its level-headed son at odds with his dysfunctional  family, feels awfully similar to Hurwitz’s better-known show. Is the Happiness Isn’t Everything pilot as funny as Arrested Development? No, but the Arrested Development pilot  isn’t as funny as the rest of Arrested Development; it was no  indication of how amazing that series would become in subsequent  episodes.With a little time (and a series order from CBS), Happiness Isn’t Everything could have grown into a revered show as well. There’s enough promise in  the pilot to warrant exploring in future episodes and with a solid  ensemble backing the material up, Hurwitz might just have been able to  stick the landing on his second family sitcom — he just would have  needed to survive the onslaught of comparisons to Arrested Development by critics and internet commenters first.