'Happy Endings season 4: Producers say what would've happened

The bittersweet saga of Happy Endings still has a sad conclusion: No other network stepped up to the kickball field’s home plate after ABC killed the show in May, meaning that Brad, Jane, Penny, Alex, Dave, and Max — Maaaax!! — will live on only in our weird fanfiction memories.

That said, at least we’re getting a bit of closure. Series creator David Caspe and Executive Producer Jonathan Groff (no, not that Jonathan Groff) recently did a postmortem interview with TVLine in which they discussed the show’s fate — “For me, the show’s a gigantic success,” said Caspe, who is such a Dave — and teased a few of the storylines fans could have expected if Happy Endings had survived to see 2014.

Among them: Brad and Jane may have begun talking about starting a family. Alex and Dave would have moved on after their breakup, leading to plenty of wacky dating plotlines for each. And the series may have actually gone there with Penny and Dave, a long-hinted-at pairing — though Caspe says it wouldn’t have happened until the team felt that Dave and Alex’s issues had been figured out.

“We wanted to have them break up in an amicable way so we could go back to telling Dave’s dating stories in a way that was more serious, or Alex dating and what that would mean for the group in a way that was more even-handed,” he explained. “Would Penny have been part of that? Maybe. I think we would have needed to regroup…[It’s similar to] the way it was tricky for Barney and Robin to hook up on How I Met Your Mother. It didn’t come without some degree of difficulty for Ted and Barney’s relationship.”

As any fan knows, Happy Endings began with a wedding — an aborted one, but a wedding nonetheless. And in a way, the show also ended with nuptials: Caspe and Groff told TVLine that the show’s cast (and, evidently, some of its creative team) recently reunited for star Elisha Cuthbert’s wedding to hockey player Dion Phaneuf.

“I was actually thinking about it today that it was probably the last time we’d all be together as a group,” said Caspe. “Hopefully, we will all still see each other one way or another, but it’s probably the last time that we’ll all be together, and that’s kind of sad. Luckily, I didn’t realize it until afterwards.”

Excuse me while I drown my sorrows in a steak sandwich.