Times Digital Download: Happy

T-Mag Friday 12/April/2019 17:18 PM
By: Times News Service
Times Digital Download: Happy

Why did you do that?’
It’s a perfectly legitimate question to ask, surely, and you’re sure to have any number of responses to choose from. It could be a simple ‘because I wanted to’, a noble ‘it was the right thing to do’ or the rather oddly-sounding ‘I was out of marmalade’, especially if used in the wrong situation...which is essentially any situation that doesn’t involve the orange-flavoured fruit preserve. But surely, one of the answers that is high on the oddness scale would be ‘because the unicorn told me to do it.’ Most people are sure to find your answer ludicrous. Firstly, because unicorns don’t exist, and secondly, if they did exist, why would they spend their time on you? Most people would struggle to come up with a logical answer to these questions. But not Nick Sax.
A disgraced police detective who has since become a hitman so that he can ends meet, his bad experiences have left him bitter, cynical and world-weary. He now moves from one job to the next, doing them only so that he has enough money to survive. His attitude and behaviour have left him cut off from the rest of the world.
With nary a friend to call upon when he suffers a massive heart attack, Nick receives an unexpected visitor as he recuperates in hospital: Happy is a little, blue, winged unicorn, who can be seen by no one but Nick, who is played by American actor Christopher Meloni, who would’ve surely drawn on his experiences playing NYPD detective Elliot Stabler on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, with some insights thrown in from his time as Chris Keller in the prison drama show Oz.
Happy the unicorn is voiced by Patton Oswalt (Agents of SHIELD, Two and a Half Men, Ratatouille), and tells Nick that he is the imaginary friend of a little girl named Hailey, later admitting to the increasingly disbelieving ex-cop, who must surely wonder if he’d suffered a brain aneurysm or he was hallucinating, that that little girl is in fact his estranged daughter.
Featuring a cynical ex-cop turned hitman named Nick and a tiny blue unicorn named Happy that only he can see, the dark comedy Happy is now available to watch and stream by Netflix subscribers the world over.
Happy tells an incredulous Nick that little Hailey was, in fact, kidnapped by a rather deranged gentleman rather conveniently named Very Bad Santa, a delusional man with psychotic tendencies who kidnaps children while dressed as Santa Claus (no, you don’t get brownie points for uncovering the source of his nickname). Thus begins an unforgettable, odd, darkly hilarious series of adventures between Nick the cynical ex-cop and Happy the imaginary unicorn, as the latter appeals to the former’s sense of rescuing his daughter and doing the right thing – the characteristic that defined Nick when he was a cop, even if it came from a stuffed toy. To some, it might seem weird, ridiculous even, to pair such incompatible characters together, but Nick and Happy aren’t just two characters in a show. They represent so much more.
Nick represents adulthood and humanity the way we know it. Like so many people out there in the world, Nick has been worn down by the realities and harsh truths that are out there. We’re too mired in cynicism to remember to dream every now and then, until we see what dreams look like, what they’re made of, and what they’re capable of doing.
Sometimes, it takes a child to remind us of the sweetness of innocence, and how their pure and happy thoughts can tug at our heartstrings and remind us of how we can indeed make the world a better place. And truth be told, that is what Happy is all about. Nick is an allegory for how humanity currently is, and how maybe they can be again. All it takes is for a little bit of dreaming, a tiny amount of imagination, to help light the way or not is another matter entirely.
The Short and Skinny
Name: Happy
Genre: Comedy/Fantasy/Thriller
What it’s about: When cynical ex-cop turned hitman Nick Sax suffers a massive heart attack and is left contemplating his life, hope comes in a form most unexpected – a tiny, blue, winged unicorn named Happy that only he can see...
Produced by: Hypernormal, Original Film, Littleton Road, Universal Cable Productions
Produced for: Netflix
Runtime: 60 minutes
Number of Episodes: 10
Where to watch: Netflix, Syfy, DirecTV, Amazon Prime