Happy season 2 review: Welcome to SyFy’s demented black comedy…

When Syfy decided to transform Grant Morrison’s Happy! comic book series into a TV show, many fans were understandably taken aback. Not because of the graphic novel’s is intensely violent and crude, but for the length.

The limited series ran for only four issues.

But behold, the blue unicorn and his alcohol drinking friend are back! and they are pissed and on the hunt for Sunny Shine, Smoothie and the Easter Bunny.

Happy!’s second season excels at giving Meloni and many of his fellow actors’ plenty of tasty adventures, and they are strange. Oh boy, are they strange, indeed! And this high-octane Syfy show is exactly as we want it to be going into season two, where the strange meets more strangeness.

Sax, played by the fantastic Christopher Meloni’s violent hero and a CGI blue unicorn voiced by Patton Oswalt are just trying to get by in the dark, twisted streets of New York City, but that’s not the only reason that the Syfy original series stands out. It’s got some great, cutting-edge madness and darkness, layered with a heart of gold at the center.

Gone is the deranged Santa Claus kidnapping young children. In his place is — and I’m not kidding — the Roman Catholic Church, a pink-eyed sadist in a deranged bunny costume and a plot against Easter.

When we pick up for the second season, we realize quite a lot has happened since the last episode of the first season. Nick has the chance to reconnect with his daughter, Hailey (Bryce Lorenzo), who is safe and sound since her terrifying kidnapping in the first season, and these scenes serve as the moving emotional core to an otherwise wild season. All the while, Nick’s trying to avoid his old bad habits — like drinking and drugs, whoring and, er… murdering people — which is easier said than done.

And the show has not lost its absurd humor and highly-stylized violence and from the very first episode, the show cannons with explosive action in the form of nuns. And Imaginary friend Happy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) is still there acting as Nick’s partner and conscience, providing excellent one-liners and sight gags.

As for the rest of the gang, well, they’re all over the place.

Like Nick, Merry McCarthy (Lili Mirojnick) is no longer a police detective, but that doesn’t stop her from pursuing a particular case on her own time.

Francisco Scaramucci, otherwise known as Mr. Blue (Ritchie Coster), is still in prison and is still possessed by the orcus demon inside his body and is wreaking havoc!

Hailey (Bryce Lorenzo) is going to school and Medina (Amanda Hansen) is trying to raise her and Nick, the girl’s father and her ex-husband, simultaneously. As for Smoothie (Patrick Fischler), he’s still a pervert.

That leaves Sonny Shine (Christopher Fitzgerald), the disgraced and outright demonic children’s entertainer who is now in the heart of the Vatican itself, and trying to convince the Pope and his entourage to embrace his surreal plans for livening up the Easter holiday season.

When “Happy!” thrives, it’s largely due to Meloni’s performance, as he brings out Nick’s various layers of depravity with ease, especially when he gets frustrated by the ways the world doesn’t make life easy for him.

With the new Smoothie-Hailspare, the story arc is quite intriguing and has the potential to go to some interesting, entertaining, and even dark places, and be warned, they sure do!

The show expands upon the world of imaginary friends to a degree, in a bar, with Little Bo-Peep, and it’d be nice to see the mythology behind Happy’s existence get even more definition, if and hopefully when a season three is confirmed.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

This second season brings back most of the same characters, the same hallucinatory vibe, and the same outre violence, and it’s that mix of the silly and surreal with the brutal and bloody that makes this show so much fun.

This is a show that is made for: those who get a giggle out of the twisted and demented reality, but it is also a show that showcases a talented cast and how they thrive in such a weird and violent show.

A must watch, but not with children under a certain age.

5/5 STARS