“Happy Face” tries to be several shows at once. It’s a procedural mystery about unexpected investigators trying to get an innocent man freed for a crime he may not have committed. It’s a thin commentary on true crime pop culture and how we turn the worst events in people’s lives into disposable entertainment, often putting villains on a pedestal as their victims are ignored. On top of that, it’s a study of a family suffering through the grief and torture of having a truly damaged branch on their family tree. These shows often struggle to be the alpha, but they’re all also entertaining enough in their own right, especially the mystery. While the social commentary can get a little tone-deaf and the family drama a tad bit manufactured, the writing maintains momentum through eight hours of television in a way that a lot of bloated modern shows fail to do, setting up a second season in the last hour that may finally get all of these competing voices to sing in harmony.
Some may recoil at how much “Happy Face” builds on a true story given the argument that we shouldn’t have a household name playing a sociopathic monster like Keith Hunter Jesperson when his victims aren’t even mentioned by name. Known as the Happy Face Killer, Jesperson is serving life without parole in Oregon for the murders of eight women, although he claims to have killed many more (as many as over 150). After his crimes, he would draw smiley faces on surfaces near crimes, leading to his nickname. His daughter, Melissa Moore, created a podcast called “Happy Face” and wrote a book called Shattered Silence, that the creators of the Paramount show, including Robert & Michelle King of “Evil” fame and pilot director Michael Showalter, use to tell a new story.
The core elements are the same in that Dennis Quaid pays HFK and Annaleigh Ashford plays his daughter Melissa, now reimagined as a makeup artist on a Dr. Phil stand-in called “The Dr. Greg Show.” The show’s Melissa has tried hard to leave her family tree to rot, keeping grandpa from her kids Hazel (Khiyla Aynne) and Max (Benjamin Mackey) with the vocal support of her husband Ben (James Wolk), who would love it if Keith was thrown in a hole, never to be heard from again. Keith has been sending letters to his grandkids for years, but Melissa just hides them away.
Everything changes when Keith confesses to a crime for which another man (Damon Gupton) is currently scheduled to be executed in Texas. When Melissa’s connection to the Happy Face Killer is revealed, she becomes aligned with a “Dr. Greg” producer named Ivy (Tamera Tomakili) as the two attempt to turn delayed justice into must-see TV. Is Keith doing that thing that serial killers do, wherein they take credit for crimes they didn’t commit just to get attention? Or could they use this grotesque human being to get an innocent man out of prison? And some killer ratings at the same time.
The return of Keith into Melissa’s life upends her family, and Ashford is very good at selling emotionally fraught determination. She doesn’t want anything to do with the man who destroyed her life, but could she use that connection for the greater good? And maybe a promotion? As she works with Ivy to clear a man’s name, she tries to maintain a healthy distance between her and her father, knowing that the main reason he’s confessing now is to get back into her life and that of her granddaughter. When Hazel buys a burner phone to call her grandpa, “Happy Face” starts to tread some pretty manipulative waters. In fact, all of the material with Hazel, including some awful mean girls at school and selling her grandpa’s art, feels a bit shallow. As does the woefully underwritten role for Wolk, who we have to watch worry about a promotion during the first half of the season and then make some truly ludicrous choices regarding his father-in-law in the back half.
Sadly, the stuff that works best in “Happy Face” is the most familiar to the true crime genre that it’s trying to halfheartedly criticize: the twists and turns of the actual investigation. The plotting of this fictional addendum to the story of Jesperson is just entertaining enough. Still, it also raises a question that the show itself seems afraid to ask: Are they sensationalizing the true story of the Happy Face Killer by making it more entertaining to Paramount+ subscribers? Apparently, the real Jesperson sells his art, which will almost certainly see a boost from this show. Isn’t that a little morally dubious? Why not just tell an entirely fresh story about a serial killer and the daughter who’s spent her life trying to ignore him?
Because then it wouldn’t get the same attention as the podcast and book, which is the reason most people even know the name Keith Jesperson. A true crime fan myself, I am keenly familiar with the morally gray area in which the genre often exists. Still, it’s rare to see a product like “Happy Face” that tries to interrogate the proliferation of murderinos while also embracing some of their worst tendencies. I walked away from “Happy Face,” mainly having enjoyed watching it, but I couldn’t say I was smiling.
Whole series screened for review. Premiered on Paramount+ today, March 20th.
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