In Which We Effort With All The Subtlety Of The Period

Clap Your Hands Over Your Eyes

by ETHAN PETERSON

Happy!
creators Grant Morrison and Brian Taylor
SyFy

Happy! begins with Nick (Christopher Meloni) alone in a bathroom of a bar. The unavoidable irony (the first in the completely expected series of many such switcheroos) is that he is miserable. Nick - a former cop turned killer for hire - throws up and imagines blowing his head off. In his fantasy, his cranium spurts with blood as go-go dancers accompany his distress.

Distress was also the name of a 1995 science fiction novel by Greg Egan. It is the kind of actually meaningful project that SyFy could approach if it wasn’t constantly trying to copy the dismal success of The Walking Dead. Distress concerns an African scientist who develops a theory that makes her the target of a disturbed cult, and an intersection that changes humanity completely. Egan, unlike Grant Morrison, was the sort of writer to take seriously, because his development of characters doesn’t solely turn on making a cop a hitman, a prostitute a sensitive soul, and an Italian mobster the victim of molestation.

Such ugliness makes Happy! an adult comedy, except in typical SyFy fashion, it shies away from any true unpleasantness. Death as conveyed by Nick is painless, efficient and actually somewhat boring. Meloni, who is the classic case of an actor of limitless talent who never found the right role (he came close in Oz), is tries his best to save this tonal mess of a series.

Worst is Happy himself, an imaginary friend voiced by newly remarried comedian Patton Oswalt. As usual, Oswalt does a fantastic job trying to make the awful material Grant Morrison writes for him sound the least bit humorous. Unlike say, the stuffed bear Seth MacFarlane created in Ted, the joke is not that Happy says things that are amusing coming from a cartoon unicorn. Actually his dialogue is quite dull, and before he emerges to haunt Nick so he can save the little girl whose daemon he is, the show is considerably more exciting.

While the art direction in Happy! is up and down, Brian Taylor (Crank) clearly brings a joy to the production design. Happy! looks just as good as feature films which cost a great deal more, and Taylor's energetic gambits with angle, lens and mood all pay off. If you didn't actually have to have a story, and could focus merely on acting performances and visual composition, this show would be in a class of its own.

Unfortunately, the source material is lacking. In the tradition of his brother-in-spirit Mark Millar, Morrison’s only instinct is to splatter more blood, and have Nick say things that could be construed, optimistically, as parting shots even Bruce Willis would leave on the cutting room floor. Like Millar, Morrison seems to think there is a puritanical aspect of America that is shocked by such gruesomeness. But who can even be shocked by their own way of life? With or without an invisible friend, Happy! is a dreary ride through the mind of a self-involved person. Ultimately, this is a trip that each of can take at any time, simply by closing our eyes.

Ethan Peterson is the reviews editor of This Recording.