Trophy Wife Brings Us The Latest Sitcom Character With A Cursed Birthday

Trophy Wife's Peter is not the first sitcom character to have bad birthdays. He's not even the first to believe that his birthday is actually cursed, and to have given up on the idea that he'll ever have a good one. But when it comes to Peter's fiftieth birthday, when we compare it to a memorable Mad About You that covered several of Paul's bad birthdays...who wrote it better?

Who Did It First?

The Mad About You episode "Cake Fear" aired May 4, 1995. "The Big 5-0" aired some eighteen and a half years later (last night).

Winner: Mad About You.

Who Did It Funnier?

I'll be the first to admit that Mad About You is kind of a cornball affair that hasn't aged especially well. (Jamie's wardrobe alone, you guys.) But one thing its producers did very well with "Cake Fear" was to take a sitcom trope and blow it out. We don't just get one bad birthday; we get a bunch, each of which is terrible in its own special way. In the present day, Ira and his girlfriend Susannah are in the process of having a brutal fight over his cat's having eaten her bird &mdash. In previous years, Paul had a party snowed out; got dosed with one of Lisa's sleeping pills moments before having to show up at his own surprise party; and got threatened with Jamie leaving him because he didn't figure out she wanted him to take her on his annual birthday walk. Is each of these plots brilliant on its own? No. But the multi-timeline format allows the writers to hit the high points and then jump to the next, or previous. On Trophy Wife, the bad-birthday story only stars Peter and Kate, and is quickly derailed with a trip to...the DMV. Which is more sad than funny.

Winner: Mad About You.

Who Made It More Believable?

Paul's bad birthdays include a cat falling out a window and a snowstorm in May. On the other hand, the calamity that brings Peter to the DMV in the first place is that he accidentally runs into a cop car, and then gets dinged for driving with a license that juuuuuuuust expired, because it's his birthday.

Winner: Trophy Wife. Maybe some lawyers would have a better handle on when they need to get their important paperwork in, but Peter has three kids from his three marriages, so I buy that he's distracted, and that Kate isn't as good at keeping up with his shit as Diane was.

Whose Stakes Were Higher?

Other than the very first one he spent with Jamie in their first (and only) apartment together, Paul's bad birthdays all affected a bunch of other people trying to help him have a good time on his special day, which would seem to up the stakes. However, Kate's surprise plans for Peter's birthday only involve the two of them, and revolve around her anxiety that, having married a much older man, she's finding herself enjoying the perks of settling down and spending time at home. A lot is riding on her proving that Peter is not an old man, and that she isn't boring!

Winner: Trophy Wife.

Whose Outcome Was More Satisfying?

The structure of "Cake Fear" means that Paul's birthday story doesn't really wrap up: we certainly buy the idea that his birthday is cursed, and will go on being cursed. But Peter's bad fiftieth birthday has so much riding on it that when Kate finally confesses her concerns to him at the last stop of her surprise — a cool boutique hotel, where she will presumably finally take off her trenchcoat and reveal the naked lady underneath — it's great to see Peter enthusiastically agree to go in; it's a reminder that even though their relationship isn't easy and there is an obvious and significant age difference, he is fun and they do have things in common. It's even greater for this homebody to see both Peter AND Kate tear ass out of the hotel seconds after going in because it's just too loud. I CAN RELATE.

Winner: Trophy Wife.

So...Who Wrote It Better?

Mad About You and Trophy Wife both show us how adversity — even adversity with dubious causes — can pull couples together. But while Mad About You took the sitcommy approach typical of its multicam era, Trophy Wife uses the premise to bring us a little closer to the characters involved AND let us see Bradley Whitford sucking at parallel parking.

Winner: Trophy Wife.