This post contains spoilers from Paramount+'s Happy Face episode 2, "Killing Shame."
There’s no doubt that Happy Face is already a creepy but curiously engaging true crime hit. Episode 1 ended with Melissa (Annaleigh Ashford) and Ivy (Tamera Tomakili) identifying Happy Face’s (Dennis Quaid) ninth victim, Heather Richmond, and getting a full confession from the killer himself. Episode 2 picks up right where we left off and follows Melissa and Ivy as they head to Texas to meet with Elijah Faust (Damon Gupton), the man convicted of murdering Heather and serving time on death row, and his lawyer.
While there, they encounter more than they planned. Meanwhile, in prison, Happy Face brags to his fellow inmates about his impending second round of fame. He’s quick to note, though, that he’s only doing it because “It’s the right thing to do. I’m gonna save a man’s life. Why, if it weren’t for me, he’d be getting a needle before the 4th of July. So, nobody can say I’m all that bad.” Isn't he, though?
Melissa and Ivy head to Texas
On the way to Texas, Melissa flashes back to the time when she was 15 and her family found out their father had been arrested. Her PTSD is moving into rapid fire mode, as I suspect it will continue doing throughout the series.
Melissa and Ivy meet with Elijah's lawyer, who shows them a video. In it, Elijah gives an alibi: He clocked in at work at 9 p.m. on the night Heather was killed, and he never left, further saying the cops changed the facts to say Heather died at 8 p.m., the time she and Elijah were together. Cops also had Elijah’s fingerprint on Heather’s steering wheel and the fact that “Elijah was a Black guy dating a pretty white girl.” When the lawyer mentions Melissa will have to testify at Elijah’s hearing, Melissa momentarily flashes back to being woken in the wee hours of the morning by her mother to drive around town and collect all the newspapers before people started buying them.
“If people find out that man is your father, that’s all you’ll ever be… EVER!” she tells Melissa. It’s the defining moment that inspired Melissa to keep their family secret at all costs.
As Melissa and Ivy recreate the discovery of Heather’s body for the show, three important things happen. Melissa re-evaluates her priorities after Ivy points out she should be just as concerned about an innocent Black man on death row as she is about protecting her anonymity, Elijah’s sister Joyce (Marci T. House) shows up, and Melissa notices a smiley face on a nearby tree, which seems to corroborate Happy Face’s story. So, they call the cops.
The Texas District Attorney shows up and shuts down their filming, almost making fun of them, saying the smiley face proves nothing, that Happy Face doesn’t own the symbol. Furthermore, the trampoline with no receipt and the guitar pick, which just about everyone in town has, prove nothing. Melissa tells him there’s a witness, the daughter, to which the D.A. responds, “If you grow up with a monster for a parent, you grow up as an adult with you own set of problems. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out what this woman’s issues are.”
He tells them to find out what those issues are so he can “make her testimony worthless.” As he leaves, Melissa flashes back to when she was jumped and beaten by a group of bullies from school. It was the day she discovered what makeup can do. Just then, Ivy gets a phone call that the prison revoked their visit with Elijah. It seems the D.A. is actively working against them to keep an innocent man in prison.
Hazel ventures into her new identity
After overhearing that her grandfather is the Happy Face Killer, Hazel (Khiyla Aynne) explores her new identity as a serial killer’s granddaughter, unaware of the bullying that comes with it. She can’t stop looking at his picture and reading about his case. At school during lunch, she bumps into another student and drops her phone. Popular girls Victoria (Zara Nikou Sichani) and Eva (Momona Tamada) pick it up and tease her for looking at pictures of an older man, calling her Queenie. When she asks what it means, they say “Queen Bush” and walk away.
Eva later tells her the other girls are calling her Queenie because of what they see when Hazel changes in the locker room. “Just shave it or wax it or something,” Eva says. Hazel is embarrassed and when Eva walks away, she blurts out, “My grandfather is a serial killer,” which catches the attention of the popular kids.
After school, Hazel steals some bikini wax but gets stopped for shoplifting. The next day, Victoria and Eva approach her and call her a thief before telling her she should become a “murderino” like them, a person obsessed with true crime. They invite her to Seattle’s Murder Museum, where they out Hazel as the granddaughter of Happy Face. This lights up the eyes of the museum owner, who brings Hazel to a room with Happy Face memorabilia, including one of his drawings. It seems Happy Face is selling them online. When Hazel hears this, she recalls the drawing her grandfather sent her on her birthday and ponders selling it.
She later lets her parents know she overheard them talking about Happy Face, so Melissa sits her kids down and comes clean. Hazel is clearly intrigued.
Melissa speaks on The Dr. Greg Show
There’s an innocent man with a timer on his life, and only Melissa can change that. During her appearance on The Dr. Greg Show, we see Happy Face’s confession before Melissa admits to a shocked audience that Keith Jesperson is her father. As a kid, she says, she had no idea: “He was on the road a lot, and when he came home, he was Disneyland Dad. But I’m not here to talk about him. I’m here to talk about Elijah.”
Dr. Greg pushes her to recall what it was like growing up with a serial killer for a father. Melissa recounts vacationing every summer in Chilliwack, British Columbia. It was her family’s happy place. When asked if she still loves her dad, she says she did but now, no. He then brings up that all of Happy Face’s victims were random except the last one, Louise Nelson, who was his girlfriend at the time.
Dr. Greg asks Melissa if she’s worried that she’s like her father, which sends her into a sort of panic where she asserts that she is nothing like him. Dr. Greg points out how her being there is breaking the trauma cycle: “Is part of why you kept your father a secret because deep down you’re afraid you are like him? The person you loved more than anything in the world turned out to be a monster. It taught you to be afraid, that you were unworthy of love because your dad didn’t love you enough not to kill women. It taught you that you were stupid because you knew him best and never knew about his secret life.”
Melissa’s eyes well up with tears and she admits she’s scared. "He used to be so normal," she says, "Then out of nowhere, there was this side that was so dark." She worries she might have that side too. It’s why she doesn’t like to see him: He plugs into a part of her that makes her feel out of control. Dr. Greg reminds her she’s nothing like him, and he makes her say it in a moment so full of tension, it’ll have you on the edge of your seat, in tears. We really do feel her pain and torment, but in her admittance that she is not like her father, she finds some healing and enough courage to continue moving forward, fighting to prove Elijah’s innocence.
Happy Face episode 2 review
The Happy Face narrative is moving right along, steadily adding in more layers of mystery and drama to keep us deeply engaged, and it's working. Episode 2 is full of tension between Hazel’s experiences at school and the murder museum as well as Melissa’s trip to Texas then subsequent appearance on national television to reveal a family secret. We’re picking up pace and really starting to move.
At the end of episode 2, a plot twist! A man in a convenience store notices the paper and moves in for a closer look. Upon seeing Melissa’s face and reading that the daughter of the Happy Face Killer has spoken, he gets upset. Who is he? How does he know Melissa? Only time will tell, so stay tuned, kids.
Happy Face debuts its two-episode premiere on March 20, 2025, on Paramount+, with new episodes dropping weekly through May 1.