Review: Happy! “Arlo and Marie”

How do you even make “orange juice risotto?”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Orcus, possessing Scaramucci, has taken full control of his host’s body after successfully escaping the prison and thwarting Scaramucci’s plan to kill Orcus by killing himself. With that done, he makes his next moves in the world, to further his sinister, but unknown, plans. Meanwhile, Nick, in disguise at the “Bug party”, runs into Amanda and rescues her from her own madness and takes her back home. At the same time, Happy, after a night of passion with Bo Peep, gets left behind as a one-night stand. Bo Peep leaves awkwardly, while Happy fails to pick up on the signal that she might not like him the way he likes her.

Orcus makes his plans known when he reveals himself to Sonny Shine. Countering Sonny’s childlike ways with his sophisticated allure, he offers to help Sonny in his endeavors by using his convict army. Meanwhile, Meredith discovers that Orcus is more than just a demon, he is a harbinger of evil who kills humanity’s best and brightest.

Back at the Sax household, Nick has finally gotten his family all together to try and achieve some semblance of a normal life. However, Amanda’s addiction to the strange white liquid Sonny gave her is making things difficult. After they tell the story to Hailey of how they first met, Nick confiscates Amanda’s vial of go and ties her to a chair in the other room. He explains to Hailey that her mom is sick and needs to be tied up for her own good. Still, Hailey tries to do right by her mom and listens to her pleas for help. She starts to untie her but realizes that her mom is telling her lies just as she always has.

Nick shows up just in time, but Hailey, alienated by both of them, runs off into the night. At the same time, Orcus’s convict army storms Nick’s house and steals away Amanda. Nick, being the one man army that he is, fights the convicts with all his might.

The episode ends with a flashback to Smoothie being treated by the Wishies after his bout with Nick and waking up with his new blood-red eye. We learn that he’s met with Orcus before and that he’s taken a job from him to kill Sonny Shine.

Our Take:

This episode finally gives us some answers to the strangeness going on with Scaramucci and Sonny Shine. To be quite honest, the mystery of what was going on with all of this wasn’t exactly compelling, usually falling by the wayside of the grotesqueness and violence that is this show’s bread and butter. But, now that “Orcus” has been revealed as a devilish assassin of the saviors of humanity, the plot has finally been set on the table, and the story now has a direction to go. Looking back, that really was the problem with this season: it’s lack of direction. It felt less like a coherent story and more like a slipshod odyssey of Nick getting pushed around from place to place to try and be entertaining. In essence, there was a lot of noise, but no music.

But now we’re back on track, and I’m pretty satisfied with how the episode has gone. Orcus is making himself to be a wonderful villain, sophisticated in the way that only the devil can be. Now knowing that the Wishies are his own misshapen servants, the tension rises as we realize that Sonny’s minions are not truly his own.

Happy and Nick have reunited once again, and I like the way their dynamic has evolved since the start of the season. Happy has become the rebellious, juvenile one, while Nick tries to hold everything together as his baby momma keeps losing her mind and Happy rejects his role as Nick’s conscience. Now that the show has leaned off of the intense gross-out stuff and given us some slower scenes to see Nick express himself as a character, I’m finding Nick to be much more enjoyable to watch too. We’re seeing him now as the sane man in a world gone mad, which is a surprisingly good place to be.

The writing is spot-on this week as well. It’s a strong blend of funny and tense, where you never know when Nick might utter a raunchy one-liner or a scene might make a move south. Nick is the star of every scene he’s in and brings the charming antihero shtick that made me fall in love with this series in the first place.

We’re coming into the endgame now, and I think that with the second “Act” of the season behind us, the juicy bits are now in store. Keep it up, Happy!, I can’t wait to see where this is going.