'Happy Endings' EPs Explain the Increasingly Weird, Impoverished Alex

ABC

Elisha Cuthbert might play the most unhinged character on Happy Endings.

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The runaway bride from the pilot, who eats ribs when she's drunk and runs a store nobody seems to shop at, Alex takes her eccentricities to another level in the Nov. 16 episode when she develops a presumably short-lived crush on Max (Adam Pally).

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But unrequited affections for her gay pal are just the tip of the crazy iceberg in season 2. The character started out the sophomore run fleeing her apartment after smoke damage and a diabetic snake made it inhospitable, forcing her to shack up with Penny (Casey Wilson) -- and, as creator David Caspe and executive producer Jonathan Groff tell The Hollywood Reporter, allowing the show to kill two birds.

"We liked the idea of more story lines of the two of them together," Caspe tells THR. " We also didn't love Alex and Dave's apartment. And we knew we wanted to do a storyline of Penny moving into a new place, and then we thought maybe Alex can move in with her."

"Alex owns a store that's economically challenged so we like the reality of that," adds Groff. "Penny has a good job, and Penny likes the companionship. They're such old friends, and Alex really kind of needs a place to live."

The domestic partnership has also signaled a bit of a shift in the show's core couples, seemingly swapping the original pairings of Penny and Max and Alex and Dave (Zach Knighton).

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Caspe and Groff, who originally spoke to THR when the series was picked up for a full season two weeks ago, also hinted that they'll probably take lead on a few episodes later in the season.

"We will probably end up writing a few episodes," says Caspe, who wrote the pilot and last season's "Bo Fight" "Sometimes for us, it's easier to have our hand in everything than going off and doing a draft on our own. It sometimes takes you out of the room a little bit. We have such great writers bringing such great drafts. Eventually, we would hope to. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of the job for sure, but for now it's just sort of worked out that we're in the room."

"I have a feeling we'll probably be writing over Christmas," Groff says. "You can let my wife know that the ski vacation will be severely compromised."