What's wrong with Happy?

How did Happy Endings get to be so out of style?

Why is it that you can hardly find a movie or TV show that is actually delightful instead of dreadful? Remember how “Six Feet Under” started? It was a riot. And then by the second season it had become a 3rd rate soap opera. Or Battlestar Galactica – reportedly one of the best on TV and, incredibly, still continuing its steep spiral down to the depths of despair. (Not that I can really keep myself from watching it anyway – hope springs eternal? I know - that is their ultimate message, but still...)

Why are modern authors so loathe to give ‘upbeat’ a try, even in popular fiction? Check out the selections from Oprah’s book club sometime if you really want a full course meal of marginal people making stupid decisions and having to live with guilt and anxiety and disease and depression for the rest of their lives. Even the Harry Potter series author is threatening to kill off poor Harry. Why CAN’T Good win out over Evil without there being too-horrible-to-contemplate consequences? It happens in real life. Isn’t that REAL enough?

Project Runway (more Reality TV in the form of a fashion designer's competition, for the uninitiated) didn’t even manage a happy ending and it IS a reality show! And have you seen the commercial for Sonic Drive In’s new ice cream sundae thingies in which a 40s-something couple trades sarcastic comments about how no one reads his blog but his mother – although the mother might be telling her neighbor about it, so there? Do you think that suggests a happy ending? Even ice cream can’t be nice?

Trying to find something lighthearted in any medium is difficult – more so than it should be, I think – particularly if you actually have some literary or performance standards. TV is nearly impossible unless you stick to HGTV and the Food Channel and even then ‘happy ending’ is relative and subject to taste. Mention to someone that you want to watch a ‘romantic comedy’ and you get laughed out of the video store.

Too unsophisticated, I guess. Too trivial. Too trite.

Well, that’s me. Life is hard enough sometimes without wallowing in it. And yes, I manage that enough, however inadvertently, on my own, thank you. But I also manage, almost daily, to create my own happy endings in the things I do, the conversations I have, the commitments I make and the goals I set. Why is that so passé? Isn't that the whole point of Life?

I do so love a Happy Ending.

(And yes, we had our own Happy Ending with our flooring – in case you are wondering. It looks great!)