This post contains spoilers from Paramount+'s Happy Face episode 1, "The Confession."
It's been 15 years since Melissa Reed (Annaleigh Ashford) has seen her father, and as far as she’s concerned, the rest of her life could pass without ever seeing him again, and she’d be just fine. Why? Because he’s serving four life sentences at Oregon State Penitentiary for murdering at least eight women. Melissa is the daughter of Keith Jesperson (Dennis Quaid), the notorious Happy Face Killer who operated in the early 90s. New Paramount+ true crime series Happy Face picks up here and jumps off from Moore’s story to bring us face to face with a serial killer as time dwindles for an innocent man on death row.
A successful make-up artist on a true crime TV talk show, Melissa has gone to great lengths to hide her identity and protect her family secret not just from the public, but also from her children, which her husband Ben (James Wolk) works to do too. So, when Happy Face sends their 15-year-old daughter a birthday card inspiring her to ask questions about Chilliwack, British Columbia in Canada, Melissa is on guard… and she should be; her father is dangerous.
She takes the birthday card and hand-drawn picture from Hazel (Khiyla Aynne) and locks it in a safe, which we see contains heaps of unopened letters to Melissa from her father as well as trinkets he’s given her throughout her life. The rest of the day, Melissa experiences effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and flashes back to certain childhood memories. Clearly, she hasn’t dealt with the trauma of learning at 15 years old that her father was a serial killer. That night, she leaves Happy Face a message: “Stay the f*ck away from me and my kids … or I swear to f*cking God, I will make it my life’s work to make sure your miserable existence is more miserable than it already is.”
The next day, Melissa finds her father is up to something when her boss, talk show host Dr. Greg (David Harewood), calls her into his office and demands to know why Happy Face would call the show and request to talk to her specifically.
Happy Face stirs up case drama
Melissa learns that Happy Face called Dr. Greg with claims he lied in his original confession: There is a ninth victim, and if Melissa comes to see him, he’ll give her the victim’s identity. Curious how he even knows who Melissa is, Dr. Greg wants answers.
Melissa tries to divert but ultimately reveals that Happy Face is her father. When Dr. Greg and show producer Ivy Campbell (Tamera Tomakili) hear this, they salivate and encourage her to face him, not run from her past, and they use the pain of the victim’s family to help manipulate her into going. She believes her father is lying and is using this ninth-victim bit as a ploy to get her to come see him. Nonetheless, she agrees.
Melissa comes face to face with her father
Happy Face is wide-eyed and in awe at seeing his daughter, whom he calls Missy, which she doesn’t like and repeatedly asks him to stop doing. Jesperson (Dennis Quaid) is domineering in size and overpowering in energy, exuding pure creepiness through his Jokeresque smile. Melissa is disgusted to see him sign the TV show release form with a smiley face and asks him if he’s doing this to be on TV.
This rubs him the wrong way, and he reminds her of her love for Dolly Parton and performing as she was growing up. He then tells her she’s there because she’s still a little girl digging in his pockets for treasure. See, when she was a child and her father would go out on the road for work (he was a long-haul trucker), he’d always return bearing trinkets for his little girl. Melissa grows uneasy. In a tense moment, he tells her that every time a woman took her last breath, Melissa got a present and "time with Daddy. ... I needed to be around you after [a killing] because it kept me out of the darkness. I brought you things because seeing you happy erased all I’d done." He thought, if she loved him that much and he loved her that much, then maybe he couldn’t be all that bad.
Happy Face goes on to say that after he killed this new victim, he brought Missy a trampoline. It was the last gift he gave her. This makes Melissa physically ill, and she excuses herself. As he gets up to go back to his cell, Ivy asks where the victim is, and Jesperson says, “Ask Missy. She knows.”
Later that night, Melissa recalls her first time staying with her dad at his new place. She noticed blood on the ceiling fan that he said was spaghetti sauce. This encourages her to move forward with his new claim, and she and Ivy go to see her mom in Spokane in search of the old trampoline, which they find. Now, they have a location: Denton, Texas.
Melissa identifies the ninth victim and gets a confession
After telling her father they found the trampoline and have a location, Melissa and Ivy tell him he can let them turn this over to law enforcement, or he can maintain his control of the narrative and tell them the truth. Happy Face says he delivered a load to Denton then stopped at a bar, where a pretty bartender was just getting off her dayshift. After he finished eating and left, he saw her hitchhiking and picked her up.
She was a singer and planned to be famous. Her ego rubbed him the wrong way, so he strangled her by pressing his fist into her larynx. As he was killing her, he smelled grapefruit. When she came back to and gasped for air, he hit her in the head with his 11” dog wrench, dumped her body, then bought a trampoline and drove home.
Later at the hotel, Melissa has another memory of her dad giving her a guitar pick. She calls Ben to look in the safe at the pick, which has a name on it: Whiskey River. Ben warns her if she goes down this road, everyone will know her father is the Happy Face Killer, which Hazel overhears. Just then, Ivy finds a missing girl from Denton who worked at Whiskey River: Heather Richmond. However, her case is marked solved, with her assumed boyfriend at the time convicted and currently on death row with two months left to live. Now, Melissa and Ivy must rescue an innocent man from paying for her father’s crime.
Happy Face episode 1 review
Episode 1 sets us up not just for the story between Melissa and her father to unfold but also for the story around Happy Face’s claim of a ninth victim to develop. It also presents us with another plot in which to invest ourselves: rescuing an innocent man from death row. While Happy Face is only inspired by the story of Melissa Moore’s experience and fictionalizes an unknown murder, it does a superb job at making us forget that what we’re seeing did not actually happen through its moments of tension and curiosity interlaced with real flashbacks.
Annaleigh Ashford is outstanding in her portrayal, giving us nuanced performances full of vulnerability and emotion. Dennis Quaid is unsettling in his performance, embodying creepiness and manipulation in his depiction of Keith Jesperson. He is divine as a serial killer struggling with his own morality, wanting to do right but unable to resist his urge to do wrong.
Very well written and acted, the tone and pace of Happy Face helps drive this narrative forward, shrouded in mystery.
Happy Face debuts its two-episode premiere on March 20, 2025, on Paramount+, with new episodes dropping weekly through May 1.