Review: Happy “White Sauce? Hot Sauce?”

I’m actually not big on sauce.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Following the midseason Christmas break we got delayed last week’s episode of Happy!, we jump right back into the action where things left off. Nick Sax is in the Creepy Santa’s workshop, but he’s a day late and a dollar short; Hailey and all the other kidnapped kids are gone, and only Meredith is left, Nick’s former lover/ ex-partner who’s been working with Nick’s ex-wife Amanda to find Hailey, same as Nick. She tells Nick that he’s gotta go see Mr. Blue and stabs him in the leg with a pair of scissors, but Nick, anticipating this turn, knocks out Meredith and leaves her in the workshop while he continues his search. After picking up a distraught Happy from his sorrow, the two are out of there to find Hailey’s mom, Amanda and see if she can give them a hand.

Meanwhile, we go back and check on everyone’s favorite disgruntled mobster, Mr. Blue, as he’s approached by the director of the reality TV show his sister is starring in. The director is ecstatic with how things are developing in the show and offers Mr. Blue a more permanent position as a recurring character or perhaps as the star of his own spin-off series. Mr. Blue responds in kind; smashing a Christmas ornament on the director’s face, and declaring that he would never want to stop doing this job that he loves so much.

Back at the workshop, Meredith is found by none other than Mr. Blue’s go-to henchman, Smoothie, who’s in the middle of drowning the place in gasoline for some quick evidence destruction. He drops the knocked out Meredith on her father’s grave, and, after waking up, she finds her way back to the police station to check on the eight missed calls she has from work. Turns out, she’s under investigation from two crooked cops in internal affairs on Mr. Blue’s payroll. Their directions are as simple as they are threatening: stop investigating the missing kids, or bad things are going to happen. Following this, we come back to the fate of the kidnapped children, who are led into some kind of classroom in an undisclosed location. There, they are met, once again, by Smoothie, who is serving as some kind of teacher for them, while a tape recording informs them that they’ve all been very bad children and that their lives are about to change; creepy.

Nick and Happy go to find Amanda and get her to help, but Amanda is not at all happy to see Nick. Negotiations are initially awkward and stiff, but eventually, the tension gives way to anger as Amanda tells Nick how she’s worked hard to keep him out of her life for these past ten years. She sees him (rightly so) as an engine of destruction and violence, and she wants him nowhere near Hailey. Their argument comes to a head just as an entourage of hatchet-wielding goons break into the house a la Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.” The two fight them off, but Nick ends up completely trashing Hailey’s room in the process, and an infuriated Amanda tosses him out onto the street.

Defeated and discouraged, Nick thinks its time to give up, but Happy isn’t about to let Nick wallow in his pain. He tries to cheer him up by showing how the spirit of kindness and goodwill exists in people around Christmas, and that Nick should cheer himself up by doing something nice for others. But Nick argues back that the cheery face people put on around this time is nothing more than a facade, and that deep down people are just “broken toys.” To bring his point home, Nick decides to lie down on the railroad tracks and wait for a train to come and end his wretched existence. Happy panics tells Nick that he’s right and that he’ll disappear just as long as Nick gets up from the railroad tracks. Nick agrees, and Happy poofs into thin air. Nick tries to pull himself up, but a sudden heart attack puts him at the mercy of the oncoming train until the other subway passengers nearby pull him up to safety. Nick stumbles out of the Subway into the New York air feeling worse than before and pleading with Happy to come back but to no avail. He sits on the sidewalk, contemplating his next move when by happenstance he hears “Blue Christmas” being played on the radio at the gyro stand near him. Suddenly, he remembers; he had met the Creepy Santa before when he was working for Mr. Blue, and the Santa is none other than one of Blue’s henchmen. With Blue’s name on his lips, Nick realizes that he’s the one behind all of this, and he’s got to take him down.

Our Take:

This was another solid episode in the series, but not quite the spectacular showing we received in last week’s episode. This one is a bit slower, focusing more on bringing together the plot threads of Nick, Meredith, and Amanda, which is definitely something the show needed to do. Happy’s disappearance from Nick’s life felt a little forced, in my opinion, as the two seemed to have gotten so close, but that didn’t really take away from the impact of the breaking of their fellowship, which really tugged at the old heartstrings. All in all, its a quality episode, but also felt like something of an in-between on our way to better things.