On May 13, 2011, ABC cancelled the series after one season two days after the series finale aired.[4]
Plot
The series revolved around three different relationships that are tightly intertwined in one family, as it follows a couple, Maddie and Ben, who had been dating for nine years and are happy just living together despite not taking the next step, marriage. Maddie's life is thrown for a loop when her younger sister Mia announces that she is pregnant and is about to marry Casey, a guy whom she has only known for seven weeks. To make matters worse, Maddie is stunned that their parents, who have been married for 35 years and have their issues, approve of the union, leaving Maddie and Ben questioning themselves about their own relationship. The story followed their lives and struggles.
Better with You was previously known as Better Together, Couples, Leapfrog,[5] and then briefly as That Couple.[6][7] On January 15, 2010, ABC green-lit the pilot, which was written by Friends writer and executive producer Shana Goldberg-Meehan and directed by James Burrows.[8] The show was produced by Bonanza Productions, Silver and Gold Productions, and Warner Bros. Television. Better with You aired on Wednesday at 8:30 after The Middle and before Modern Family.[9] On October 26, ABC announced that Better with You was picked up for a full 22-episode season.[10]
Ben Kweller wrote the theme song for the show.[11] Country music singer Reba McEntire made an appearance in episode 8, "Better with Flirting", as wedding planner Lorraine Ashley. Series regular Joanna Garcia Swisher and McEntire both starred in the WB/CW series Reba.
Better with You marked the second time Josh Cooke and Jennifer Finnigan have co-starred on a sitcom, the first being the short-lived 2005 NBC series Committed; it is also the second time that Cooke and Kurt Fuller co-starred in a sitcom, having previously starred in the short-lived 2006 ABC series Big Day.
Episodes
All episodes of the show (except "Pilot") start with the word "Better".
Mia invites her sister Maddie and her boyfriend Ben to meet her new boyfriend Casey and to let them know that they are engaged. Maddie is very surprised by the news and gets jealous that her little sister is getting married before her. Maddie tries to be supportive of her little sister and let her parents Vicky and Joel be the critical ones, but, to Maddie's surprise, their parents are very supportive of Mia's quick engagement. Only for things to get even worse when Maddie finds out that Ben knows that Mia is also pregnant and that she wasn't told.
Mia and Casey go house hunting when they realize that their apartment will be too small when the baby arrives. But Casey has unusual tastes when it come to home selection and wants a dilapidated old firehouse to be their new home. Maddie tells Mia just to go along with the choice because, before a man turns 27, he never really knows what he wants anyway. Meanwhile, now that Joel has finally retired, the already retired Vickey finds that Joel is really getting on her nerves because he doesn't know what to do with his new, free time.
Everybody hates the Christmas photo card that Joel obsesses over every year. But, when Ben is left out of the card, he gets really hurt when Joel invites Casey instead, so he and Maddie devise a revenge Christmas card. Meanwhile, Mia and Casey are finding it hard to say "no", so they ask Maddie and Ben to do the hard work for their future baby.
When Casey and Mia have their very first fight as an engaged couple, Casey implements his own plan to stop the arguments. In an attempt to help them, Maddie decides to show them how arguing can actually be healthy for a relationship, but instead, she ends up exposing a fault in her own nine-year relationship with Ben. Meanwhile, Vicky and Joel quietly resolve their arguments by hiding each others things.
Maddie thinks that the best way to get someone to do something is to make them think that it was all their idea. So she makes a deal with Ben to see if he can make Vicky stop sending frivolous emails to his workplace. Meanwhile, after her ultrasound, Mia finds it very difficult to convince Casey that their romantic activities won't harm the baby, so Maddie suggests that Mia try to find a way to make Casey see her as the sexy woman he fell in love with.
It's Halloween, which is also the date of Maddie's birthday. Because Maddie feels like she can never really celebrate her own birthday, since the holiday steals the spotlight, Mia and Casey offer to throw her a birthday party at their new house, the renovated firehouse. Ben, however, wasn't listening to Maddie when she told him what she wanted for a birthday present, so Joel tells him whatever he does when he messes things up. Meanwhile, Maddie and Vicky warn Mia that when couples live together they should never look behind each others "curtain," just in case they learn things they shouldn't know about each other.
Joel and Ben decide to accompany Casey on a road trip to Vermont, so he can move stuff out of his storage. Ben sees the trip as an opportunity to bond with Casey; But Joel sees this trip as a way to go far off his salt free diet. Meanwhile, Mia, Vicky, and Maddie start organizing Mia's baby shower, and Casey's hard-to-please mother, Ariel, comes for a visit. Mia goes out of her way to be accepted by Ariel, but things get heated between Vicky and Ariel when they both want the baby to call them "Nana."
Mia and Casey are over the moon when Maddie scores them a meeting with Lorraine Ashley, one of the top wedding planners in the city. However, suddenly everything takes a turn for the worse, when it seems as though Lorraine is trying to upstage their wedding. Meanwhile, Ben feels as though he has lost his flirting skills since he met and started dating Maddie. Reba McEntire (formerly JoAnna Garcia's mother on Reba) guest stars.
It's Thanksgiving and everyone but Vicky is relieved when her oven breaks down, as for once, everyone can enjoy a regular Thanksgiving feast, instead of enduring some horrible concoction that Vicky made up on the brim. Meanwhile, while everyone is spending Thanksgiving at Maddie and Ben's apartment, Mia stumbles across her late grandmother's "stolen" ring, hidden in a closet.
Maddie and Mia know that if they don't attend a family Christmas dinner with their parents at the lake house, Vicky and Joel will just pile the guilt on them, so Mia and Casey try to use the excuse that she is pregnant but as Maddie finds out, she tries to make up an excuse so that she and Ben won't have to go either.
Mia accuses Ben of destroying a pair of her jeans, so she takes him to buy her another pair, but he must break the news that she has to start wearing pregnancy pants. Meanwhile, Joel reads Vicky and her girlfriends' fantasy husband draft website and when he sees he is ranked last, he tries to get back into shape and Maddie tries to impress Casey with her high regard for the U.S. Postal Service.
When Mia and Casey adopt a stray cat, their pediatrician tells them that it's not a good idea for them to have a pet around the baby. So Maddie & Ben and Vicky & Joel all enter a competition under the impression that if one of them takes in the cat, then Mia and Casey will make them their baby's guardians.
Casey makes some big plans for his and Mia's first Valentine's Day and is warned by Ben and Joel to never buy an expensive gift because then every gift afterward would have to be just as costly. Still, Casey goes through with his plans anyway, which makes Ben realize he wants to show Maddie how he feels, and when Joel finds out, he hires the singer/pianist Michael Feinstein to perform.
Note: From this episode onwards, JoAnna Garcia is billed as JoAnna Garcia Swisher.
Casey has a job interview and without telling anyone, he borrows a leather jacket that gives bad luck to anyone who wears it. Everyone then recalls all their bad experiences while wearing the jacket, and even Ben, who once dropped a blanket on the New York Yankee Nick Swisher when he was about to catch a fly ball.
Ben wants to have his name posted on a shamrock on the wall of his favorite bar, but is disappointed to learn that it may not happen because the bar is owned by the New York Yankee Nick Swisher, making Ben hope that he doesn't remember the time he dropped a blanket on him while he was trying to catch a fly ball during a baseball game. Meanwhile, Mia and Maddie try to avoid accompanying Vicky to a charity event.
When Casey finds out that one of his ex-girlfriends wants her couch back, the one he and Mia are currently using, Ben decides to help him get rid of it without Mia ever finding out the real reason for them losing it. Meanwhile, when Maddie updates her parents wills, she finds out that they don't take her professional efforts seriously. (Originally scheduled to air on January 12, 2011; preempted due to coverage of the 2011 Tucson shooting memorial service.)
After Maddie is told that she has been promoted to a partner at her firm, she is fired and, to save some face, she lies to her family, telling them that she quit because she was offered a better job. Meanwhile, Vicky decides to give Mia and Casey a children's book that has been passed through her family for generations.
On the day before Mia and Casey's engagement party, Maddie has a hard time believing Mia's story of how she met Casey, while Mia starts to doubt Maddie's story of how she meet Ben when they were building houses for the less fortunate. Meanwhile, during the engagement party, Vicky and Joel realize they can save some money by promoting Joel's campaign for becoming the club's treasurer.
19
"Better with Dancing"
Gary Halvorson
Story by : Eve Weston Teleplay by : Christopher Luccy
While taking dance classes for their wedding, Casey realizes that Mia isn't a good dancer so he decides to pretend that he is a bad dancer to make her look better. Meanwhile, Ben runs into Larry King while at a hotel and seizes the opportunity to ask him on advice about a fight he had with Maddie over her parents.
When Mia realizes that she won't be able to be in her wedding party due to her pregnancy, she and Casey decide it would be best to postpone the wedding, but then Mia runs into trouble when the bridal shop won't refund her money for her wedding dress. Meanwhile, Joel tries to hold back from crying with his toast, so Ben uses the opportunity to make Joel cry as revenge for Joel making fun of him when he cried over his childhood pet dying.
Joel decides to use his old bargaining skills to try to buy Mia a high end baby stroller that shes really wants. Meanwhile, Maddie is worried that she has lost her passion for being a lawyer now that she is unemployed.
22
"Better with the Baby"
Gary Halvorson
Story by : Adam Chase Teleplay by : Zachary Rosenblatt & Greg Malins
When Mia goes into labor, she and Casey decide that they should be married before she gives birth, so Casey and Ben rush to City Hall to get the marriage license, while Maddie tries to find someone to perform the ceremony and Vicky and Joel look in the gift shop for the "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" items. The baby's name is Spencer.
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