I first became aware of the
brilliance of Annaleigh Ashford in her work in one of the best dramas of the
2010s Masters of Sex. In the early episodes her character Betty – a prostitute
who was helping Masters’ early word in sexual research – she had no patience his
often squeamish demeanor around what she did for a living. Over the series four
seasons Ashford’s character showed by far the most range as well as Ashford’s
ability to show the gentle nature behind a hard veneer. Her character wanted
what so many people do – a normal life as a wife and mother, one that was at
odds with her being a lesbian in the 1950s. In a cast full of understated
performances Ashford was always incredibly bold.
Ashford managed to build that work
into a fascinating career in television ever since Masters ended in
2016. In 2019 she had supporting roles in the Emmy winning Best TV movie Bad
Education and a recurring role in the remarkable Netflix series Unbelievable.
Her biggest role as lead was as Gina in the kidney transplant comedy B Positive.
I didn’t see her work in The Assassination of Gianni Versace but her
incredible work as the naïve Paula Jones who has used by conservative forces in
Impeachment stayed with me even more than the work of Sarah Paulson and
Beanie Feldstein’s larger roles. And I was understandably thrilled when she
finally received her first Emmy nomination for her work as Irene, the
accountant who becomes the wife of Steve Banerjee in Welcome to Chippendale’s
and then becomes dragged down in the darkness that her husband inflicts in
his lust for glory.
Now more than a decade after becoming
on my radar for the first time she has returned to Showtime in connection with
Paramount+ at the center of a new true crime limited series Happy Face. Her
presence in the ads was more than enough to guarantee I would watch at least
the two episode series debut yesterday on Showtime (episodes will drop on
Paramount+ every week going forward.)
Now I must be very clear that
this is yet another true crime story about a real life serial killer and I can
understand why many would want to avoid it. I have written countless essays
about how exhausting the genre is by this point. But the trailers make it very
clear and the first two episodes deliver that while this is in part the story
of Keith Hunter-Jesperson the serial killer known as the Happy Face Killer, it
is the story of the effects his actions had on those around him more than
anything else.
When we meet Melissa (Ashford)
she’s doing her makeup and preparing to celebrate her daughter Hazel’s
birthday. She is everything we expect from the wife and mother, cheerful and
loving – until her daughter receives a strange birthday card from someone who
claims to know her. Melissa pales, deflects and puts the card in a safe. Then
she goes to work.
Melissa works at a true crime
show hosted by Dr. Greg (David Harewood). She’s just the makeup artist but its
clear watching her do the work that she has a gift to get people to talk that
seems more than just being an employee. After that she goes to a convenience
store buys a lot of candy, and a burner phone. That night she looks up the
phone number of a prison online, waits until her family has all gone to bed and
goes outside. She delivers a loud, profane call telling whoever’s on the other
end to stay the hell away and to stop what she’s doing.
The next day Dr. Greg calls her
into his office. They are about to receive a call from Greg Jesperson the so
called Happy Face Killer, who has made it very clear he’ll only talk if Melissa’s
there. Melissa is forced to divulge a secret she’s buried for decades: “He’s my
father.”
When ‘Happy Face’ answers, he
makes it clear he wants to hear Melissa. Then he tells her that while he
confessed to eight killings “I held one back.” He says he’ll give the details –
but only if Melissa comes to see him. Melissa abhorrently doesn’t want to do
so: in the nearly thirty years since her father was caught and confessed, she’s
only gone to see him twice and the last time was fifteen years ago. She makes
it clear the only person who knows is her husband Ben (the always reliable
James Wolk) and not even her kids know. She would prefer it stay that way but
she’s more or less being pressured by Ivy, the executive producer. She has a
heated debate with her husband about it but she knows that if he’s telling the
truth, they need to know.
Dennis Quaid’s role is relatively
small compared to Ashford: he’s only seen in captivity and flashbacks but in
those few scenes in prison you get a sense of pure, unadulterated evil combined
with narcissism. It’s very clear that he’s not confessing out of the goodness
of his heart: this is an opportunity for him to manipulate Melissa who he
claims he loved the most – and also that he did it for her. He goes out of his
way to blame the killings on the fact that he was bringing back his trophies to
Melissa as trinkets and doing everything in his power to argue that Melissa had
to know what he was doing and that she’s just like ‘her old man’. The two scenes
in the pilot – the only ones they’ve shared in the present so far – are tour de
forces for both actors: Quaid acting as if this is normal father-daughter time;
Ashford looking like its taking all her will-power to run screaming from the prison.
(She goes to the bathroom during the first session and gets drunk when the thing
is over.) She’s clearly hoping against hope this is just a lie.
It isn’t. Melissa and Ivy slowly
deduce that her father is talking about the murder of a waitress in Texas,
something that ‘Happy Face’ acknowledges. He says he never raped any of the
women and that all of them went with him voluntarily, so it’s clear he’s trying
to shape the narrative by confessing. The issue is that this isn’t an unsolved
murder – the Texas police have convicted a man for the crime and sent him to
death row. His final appeal has played out and if they don’t act in two month,
he’ll be executed.
Melissa’s clearly terrified by
the situation she’s now in. She knows enough details about the crime to testify
in court but if she does so the life she’s constructed around herself will
completely blow up. In flashbacks to her childhood we get a real sense of what
happened when the truth came out: how her panicked mother desperately tried to
buy every newspaper in the neighborhood in a futile attempt to hide it. She
makes it clear to Melissa that her husband has friends – worshippers – who have
been watching her for decades at her father’s behest to show the signs of his
evil. We also know the first time the truth came out that Melissa was beaten
severely just for being the daughter of Happy Face and she’s understandably terrified
what will happen if her children’s connection revealed. Her husband is just as
worried but by the second episode that train has left the station: Hazel has
overheard a conversation and knows the truth. She argues that her mother needs
to do the right thing and come forward in order to put pressure on the Texas DA
to get the accused murderer off death row. Anyone who knows anything about the
criminal justice system – particularly in Texas – knows how much of a push that
will be anyway.
Melissa ends up going on Dr. Greg
as a guest to force the DA’s hand and the interview sequence is excruciating because
even though she’s an employee and everyone knows her problem she is raked over
the coals the same way they would any other guest. Ivy demands Greg ask her if she’s
afraid she’s like her father and while she hides it as a logical question, it’s
clear she’s doing it to get more ratings for things to go viral. It looks as
though future episodes make it clear that for all their arguments about wanting
to see justice done, Happy Face is a commodity to the media and they are more
than willing to do the same to Melissa for that same reason. It’s not clear yet
(though I suspect it soon will be) that any of them care the least bit about
Melissa beyond the range of the story and that they really don’t care about the
fallout that will be felt by her and her family.
None of this works without Ashford
who is as good as she’s ever been playing a woman who is clearly as much a
victim as the women her father killed but has always wondered what it means
that a killer is her father and she didn’t know what he was doing. Melissa has
built a good life for herself but as Greg points out that is only on the
surface. She has spent nearly thirty years denying that part of who she is –
and she’s now terrified if her children will have to deal with that same
legacy.
That is what differentiates Happy
Face from shows like Criminal Minds and to an extent Dexter and
its spinoffs: this is not a series that intends to glamorize the actions of a
killer but to show the effects that ripple down from the families of those who
learn the horrible truth about their loved ones and then have to deal with the
fallout for the rest of their lives. And like Monster it takes a dim
view of those who come out and worship these kinds of monsters, both in the
prison system and the museums and web sites that come around them.
And Quaid’s performance is masterful
in subduing his natural charisma and every man quality: there’s a manipulative
streak to be sure but it’s completely masked in narcissism. We see him bragging
at a card game about how this will make him a hero, give him national attention
“and there’s more I held back” he said almost cheerfully. Human life means
nothing to him, and that’s just as true of his daughter: she’s just another
person he can toy with. Both of these performances are worthy of awards in even
a few episodes.
It's fitting that Happy Face is
being rebroadcast on Showtime not only because Ashford’s career was launched on
this network but because it is the network of Dexter, the show that did
more to glamorize the idea of the serial killer in pop culture than any TV show
before it. It’s airing after Original Sin and later this year we will
get a continuation of it in Resurrection. Now I liked both the original series
and loved Original Sin but I think it’s good for the network that Happy
Face is airing between them. What better place to just how horrible real-life
serial killers are then the network that made them hip and even sexy to begin
with?
My score: 4 stars.
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