Summary
Annaleigh Ashford excels in Happy Face Episode 7, which puts her character through the emotional wringer with family drama and new revelations.
Happy Face raises some interesting new questions towards the end of Episode 7, but I prefer it when it’s languishing. This is a better character study than a crime thriller, which I’ve been adamant about since the beginning, and “My Jesperson Girls” provides the best character work of the season thus far. The only downside is that the characters are mostly awful. But in a good way.
I feel for Melissa. It’s bad enough having an attention-seeking serial killer for a father, especially one who pulls all your deepest secrets into the cold light of day in wriggling handfuls, but to make matters worse, she comes home after winning Elijah’s freedom to discover her husband is insufferable and her daughter’s nuts. Melissa expected closure, but finds her absence has left nothing but doors teasingly ajar.
Happy Face is very good in this stretch. Annaleigh Ashford and, to a slightly lesser extent, James Wolk are both brilliant, electing to visit Keith in person to give him a stern warning about contacting Hazel and then, ideally, put the entire matter behind them. But it doesn’t work out like that. Keith toys with them, leaving them in the visitation room with nothing but each other and a packet of Skittles. They realize quickly they’re on different pages. Ben wants to have his say, Melissa wants to have hers, but they’re muddled by the words they have for each other. Ben thinks Melissa abandoned them. Melissa thinks Ben wasn’t paying attention. They’re probably both right.
I tried my best to empathize with Ben. Ash turning up at their house in Episode 3 was a shock, he was overlooked for a promotion, and Hazel got into a pickle under his nose. He hasn’t had an easy time of things. But he hasn’t expressed any real concern for Melissa’s internal struggle or Elijah’s plight; he hasn’t sought to understand how deep Melissa’s scar tissue runs. His attempts to get aggressive with Keith are laughed off, and he takes that humiliation out on Melissa. I get that he feels emasculated and isolated, but he’s clearly making the situation worse.
There’s a clue to be found in Keith’s gloating call to Melissa and Ben after he left them hanging in the prison. The thing that tips him over the edge is his daughter calling him “Keith”. That’s when his typically unflappable demeanour breaks down. Later, when Melissa uncovers evidence that Keith might have faked his involvement in Heather’s murder (more on this in a minute), Ivy asks her why he’d do that, and Melissa brings up how much she has spoken to him in the last ten days versus the last thirty years. It’s a good point.
Annaleigh Ashford and James Wolk in Happy Face | Image via Paramount+
While we’re on the subject of good points – Hazel doesn’t have any. I’ve been moaning about her for weeks, and she drove me to despair in Happy Face Episode 7, responding to being called out for having a burner phone connected directly to her serial killer grandfather by limply claiming that she just wants to get to know him. She has fully bought into his charade of being a misunderstood victim. Melissa shatters that illusion somewhat by listing all the ways in which he was a terrible father, and Melissa’s mother, June, supports the cause by choosing that moment to reveal that Keith had attempted to murder the entire family by setting their vacation home on fire. Most of Melissa’s most confusing memories are bundled up in that place, in that idyllic time when she believed her father loved them and was warring with his own nature. It might not even be true, but Melissa believes it is, and since she can’t seek solace in her husband, she seeks it in Ash, who finally manages to see her as a victim like him and not a perpetrator like her father.
Melissa and Ben eventually make up, but it lasts a single evening before events conspire to tear them apart again. It starts with Melissa receiving another drawing from her father, this one depicting a scarily accurate image of Bob, the clerk who was responsible for the destroyed evidence in Elijah’s case. Putting aside how ridiculous it is that this guy only seems to wear one shirt, the clue alerts Melissa to the possibility that Keith faked his involvement in Heather’s death. When she confronts Bob, he reveals that Heather’s “daughter” had asked him to destroy the evidence, but since he couldn’t, he had instead played dumb while she took it away. Her haul included a bloody dress that could have been used to transfer Heather’s DNA onto the wrench that Keith claimed was the murder weapon. The writing’s on the wall – Keith incriminated himself in Heather’s murder for attention.
But we know Elijah didn’t kill Heather either – that has been conclusively proven. Which means someone else did; someone who was never caught. But that’s a matter for another day. Episode 7 of Happy Face ends with an even darker turn. Ben, having discovered worrying drawings in Hazel’s sketchbook, including one of Melissa with her mouth taped shut and Keith in his prison jumpsuit holding a thank-you message from Hazel for understanding her, decides to take matters into his own hands. He messages the prison guard he met in the bar, offering to pay him twenty grand in Bitcoin to kill Keith. Something tells me that’s a decision that’ll end up backfiring on him sooner rather than later.
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