'The Other Two' finale: A happy ending for the Dubeks, amid scrutiny of show creators

In the end, “The Other Two” were all right.

Max's Hollywood satire (now streaming) signed off Thursday after three seasons, amid a report of inappropriate behavior by co-creators Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider.

“The Other Two” showed how hard it can be living in the shadows of a younger brother who achieves Justin Bieber-like celebrity and a talk-show host mom (Molly Shannon) who is as famous as Oprah. But in the series finale, the less-famous Dubeks, Cary (Drew Tarver) and Brooke (Heléne Yorke), learn they never needed the external validation they’d been chasing all along.

The episode, “Brooke & Cary & Curtis & Lance,” shows an on-edge Cary incessantly calling his agent Mackenzie (Nadia Dajani) about a project he hopes will win him an Oscar. He becomes so obsessed with reaching her, he walks from New York City to her family house in the Hamptons. In a delirious state, Cary imagines Mackenzie has left him hanging him for years, but Mackenzie snaps him back to reality: It's been just 36 hours. Cary begins to realize what his career obsessions have done to him and how he’s treated people as a result.

The next morning Cary wakes to see a story on the news about his boyfriend, actor Lucas Lambert Moy (Fin Argus) being found walking naked along a road. It turns out Lucas is married, and Cary announces the two are done.

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Cary then goes to make things right with his friend Curtis (Brandon Scott Jones) who is celebrating his birthday in the Hamptons.

“I’m trying not to care about work as much starting now, because I think it’s fully killing me,” Cary says, at a loss for his motivations in the first place.

“You wanted to be the most famous actor in the world,” Curtis reminds him, “so everyone would love you and be impressed by you but also scared of you and then never judge you in any way because they were too constantly in awe of you. It’s what we all wanted.”

Cary realizes that ambition has left him with little else, but he and Curtis are able to make up. Cary also gets a call from Mackenzie telling him a director has been attached to movie and Harry Styles has committed to being the love interest.

Back in the city, Brooke, her brother Chase (Case Walker) and Pat arrive at a Peabody Awards ceremony where Brooke will receive an award for her special on mental health. She worries that recognition for doing something good will put a target on her back, but it’s Chase and Pat who should’ve been concerned. While the trio are on the red carpet, takedown reports about Chase exploiting those struggling with mental health and Pat’s deleted “elitist” tweets publish.

The family quickly huddles in an empty ballroom trying to come up with a plan as the fallout builds. Brooke decides to take the fall and appears in a live interview with Lawrence O'Donnell, taking the blame for Pat’s tweets and the idea of giving free therapy to sell Chase’s albums. She also puts out a statement from Pat and Chase saying they’ve fired Brooke as their manager.

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After her TV appearance, Brooke finds her ex-boyfriend Lance (Josh Segarra) waiting for her in the rain. They say they miss each other and decide to take things slow when exploring the possibility of getting back together. But after Lance departs for his overnight nursing shift, he rushes back, enthusiastically telling Brooke, “Let’s just go fast!”

A week later, the family meets for dinner and Cary tells them he decided not to do the movie after all. It just didn’t feel right. Brooke and Lance have moved in together, and a post-credits scene reveals Brooke is engaged. She’s also being sought out by “the biggest names in literal Hollywood,” because everyone wants a manger who will take the fall for their clients.

While Cary and Brooke have their happy endings, the signoff has been bumpy for Kelly and Schneider, former writers on "Saturday Night Live." A piece from The Hollywood Reporter published Wednesday implies complaints against Kelly and Schneider might’ve influenced Max’s decision to end the show. The report, citing anonymous sources, says “Kelly verbally abused writers and overworked crew and claims that Schneider enabled his behavior.” But that an internal investigation “formally cleared (the pair) of wrongdoing.”

In March, Tina Fey brought up “The Other Two” when accepting the Mike Nichols Writing for Performance Award. Playfully addressing her former “SNL” boss Lorne Michaels, an executive producer of the show, Fey said he’d “unleashed an army of monsters into the world. You know it, I know it, and the crew of ‘The Other Two’ knows it – oh, I was supposed to change that. I was supposed to change that. That’s inappropriate."

As for the claim the series ended over misconduct, co-creators Kelly and Schneider said they planned for the series to end after three installments, and the episode clearly was designed to wrap it up.

"It is bittersweet to say goodbye to the Dubek family after three seasons, but we always knew, both creatively and personally, that this was where we wanted to end their stories,” the two said in a statement issued by Max. “And because we are quite literally out of ways to humiliate Drew Tarver, so what’s the point?”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'The Other Two' series finale recap: How it ends for Cary and Brooke