We’ve seen plenty of dramas about serial killers in recent years. But have we seen one where the daughter of a real-life serial killer has to bring her father back into her life in order to find his final victim? That’s the premise of the new Paramount+ thriller Happy Face.
HAPPY FACE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A closeup of a woman putting on makeup in the morning.
The Gist: As Melissa Reed (Annaleigh Ashford) starts her day, she greets her marathon-training husband Ben (James Wolk) and gives her teenage daughter Hazel (Khiyla Aynne) a birthday donut; the couple also has a son, Max (Benjamin Mackey). Hazel opens a birthday card from a mystery person mentioning a lake that is a name out of Melissa’s past. She takes the card and puts it in a safe in her bedroom, which is full of letters that contain mordant drawings and cryptic messages with happy faces for signatures.
That night, Melissa buys a burner phone and calls a prison in Oregon, telling the person on the other end in no uncertain terms to leave her family alone.
Melissa works as a makeup artist on The Dr. Greg Show, an informational daytime talk show. The morning after that phone call, she and true crime producer Ivy Campbell (Tamera Tomakili) are called into the office of Dr. Greg (David Harewood). It seems that they’ve gotten a call from Keith Hunter Jesperson (Dennis Quaid), the notorious Happy Face Killer; he has information on a murder he hasn’t admitted to yet, but will only talk to Melissa. Why? Melissa is his daughter.
Melissa was 15 when she found out her long-haul-trucker dad was a serial killer; when he came off the road he’d always bring her and her little brother souvenirs. Melissa — “Missy”, as Keith calls her — has tried to distance herself from her father for 30 years. She thinks this is a ploy to just get her to meet him in person. But Ivy convinces her that if this can give a family closure about their missing daughter, it’s worth going to see him.
Once they’re there, Keith rambles and avoids giving details. But he mentions that the “souvenir” from the final murder is a trampoline. A visit to Melissa’s mother at her childhood home leads Melissa and Ivy to a clue that will send them to Texas.
Photo: Katie Yu/Paramount+
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Happy Face gives us similar vibes to Black Bird, another series where a serial killer guides people looking for victims.
Our Take: Jennifer Cacicio created and wrote Happy Face based on Melissa Moore’s podcast of the same name and Shattered Silence, the book Moore wrote with M. Bridget Cook. But if you want to get an idea where the show’s semi-arch tone comes from, look no further than the names of three of the show’s executive producers: Michelle King, Robert King and Michael Showalter (Showalter also directed the first episode).
While Happy Face isn’t as sardonically funny as some of the Kings’ and Showalter’s other shows, there’s more than enough dark humor here to offset how bleak the situation could be, with Melissa coming to grips with her family’s past in order to find her father’s final victim.
Ashford, of course, is well suited to carry both sides of this show’s darkness. She plays Melissa as a person who has done her best to move past what her father did, and can be as flippant about his intentions as anyone, but she is also great at playing Melissa’s vulnerability as Ivy convinces her to go see Keith and she starts to pursue leads that might end up revealing her father’s final victim.
Quaid, who generally plays good guys on screen, is effectively creepy as Keith, both the version that’s in prison and the version we see in flashbacks. He claims that the sex he had with all of his murder victims was consensual, and does so with a conviction that is scary to contemplate, and he puts on a weird lisp that makes Keith just weird enough to make you look away from the screen from time to time. He’s menacing and strange all at once.
Happy Face is definitely an example of a show with two strong lead characters surrounded by a group of very capable actors — especially Wolk, Harewood, Tomakili — who are playing roles that lack shape and depth. Wolk is there as the supportive husband who makes mistakes like saying the words “your father was the Happy Face killer” loud enough that his daughter Hazel can hear it. Ivy is a hard-nosed producer who has a yen for true crime. Dr. Greg is a Dr. Phil/Dr. Oz wannabe whose whole reason for being is to host a show.
After the revelation about Melissa’s relation to the Happy Face Killer, it feels like the rest of the series will boil down to Melissa and Ivy playing detective to find that final victim and give her family closure. What we hope to see is more face-offs between Ashford and Quaid, with some of the details of the rest of the characters’ lives filling in along the edges.
Photo; Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Hazel looks up the Happy Face Killer on her laptop, knowing what she knows now about her family history.
Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Khiyla Aynne as Hazel, because we’re curious to see what she does with this new and disturbing piece of information.
Most Pilot-y Line: Over the phone, Keith chides Melissa for telling him to “fuck off” in front of her boss.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The performances of Ashford and Quaid, and the wry tone of Happy Face are what makes us want to keep watching. What we hope doesn’t happen is that the show becomes a standard mystery thriller and forgets about its more intriguing aspect, which is how Melissa can’t quite let go of her dad, no matter what heinous things he’s done.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
