Happy Town 1.1: "In This Home on Ice"

Haplin Minnesota, also known as Happy Town to the locals, might possibly be the greatest place on earth. The fishing’s good, there’s no crime and because of a giant bread factory it smells like fresh rolls all the time. Kind of gets you all warm and fuzzy huh? Alright so there was the whole yearly disappearance of one of the residents but honestly for all the good in the town I think giving up one person a year is a fair trade off. Now, five years after the last disappearance there’s been a murder in Happy Town and that’s where the first episode of the show starts out. Let the fun begin folks!

The serious premiere did a decent job of introducing a bunch of characters without giving away too much of the town's past. We know that the town nickname for whoever was doing the kidnapping is the “Magic Man” and we know there’s a small group of townsfolk that are still pretty pissed that the crime hasn’t been solved. Outside of that we spent the first hour of the series following Henley Boone and Tommy Conroy.

Tommy is the local deputy in Haplin. His father Griffin and he spend a majority of the episode investigating the murder of the local town pervert. Along the way we start to find that Graffin is also going bat shit insane and rapidly becoming incoherent. He blanks out randomly and starts babbling on about someone named “Chloe” that no one’s ever heard of. By the end of the episode he’s locked himself in his office and ends up cutting his hand off.

Henley on the other hand is new to the town and has decided to open up a candle shop with her inheritance. Or that’s the story she’s handing out to everyone at least. She takes up residence in a local home with a group of older super horny women and one creepy shop owner. I wish I was making that up but it’s true and I’m still not sure what she’s doing in that home. Not so surprisingly we learn that Henley isn’t who she seams to be in the last few minutes of the episode. In fact she may be the mysterious Chloe we’ve hear so much about.

That’s where we leave off though. A lot of questions are thrown out and as of yet we don’t have any answers. Of course that’s pretty much what you’d expect from the premiere. The episode was decent enough but I don’t really see how this story line can be stretched out for long. At some point you’re going to have to find out who the killer is and I’m curious to see where we go from there. I give the show a 50/50 chance of sticking around longer than one season but right now my money’s on the local pizza shop owner being the killer.