'Happy!' Season 1 - TV Review

"Happy!" is a TV series that was originally based on a comic book series written by Grant Morrison. I'm sure he would be pleased to hear me say it's one of the most fucked-up shows I've ever seen. Movies sometimes come more messed up than this, but I don't think TV has ever reached these extremes prior to this. Oh wait - I've seen "Preacher" - that's about on par.

The opening scene of the first episode has Nick Sax (Chris Meloni) fantasizing about blowing his brains out in the washroom of a bar, and after he does it we're treated to him disco-dancing with a huge quantity of blood streaming upwards out of the top of his open head. Nick is a disgraced cop turned part-time hit man - something he's surprisingly good at given the quantity of drugs he smokes and ingests. By the mid-point of the episode he's had a heart attack (a real one), threatened the ambulance attendants with his gun and made them feed him drugs, and acquired an imaginary friend called "Happy" who is a small blue winged unicorn (Patton Oswalt). Happy is the imaginary friend of a young girl (Bryce Lorenzo) who's just been kidnapped, and she knew of Nick (how becomes an important point) and sent Happy ... but no one but Nick can see or hear Happy.

The first season consists of eight episodes of about 45 minutes each.

I got through the season, although I admit I wasn't always giving it my full attention (you may assume from my media consumption that that's common: it's not). I was entertained by some of the dialogue, which was often well written. I was somewhat shakier on the overall plot, which seemed unnecessarily drawn out at times. If I'm going to watch batshit crazy TV, I'll probably head back to watch "Preacher."