Happy Town 1.3: "Polly Wants a Crack at Her"

Things took a strange turn this week in “Happy Town”. The dark, serious mood of the first two episodes was replaced with an almost comic atmosphere. Happy go lucky music played while Henley recovered from her car crash, Tommy and Dave went digging for bodies and the Stiviletto’s got all gussied up to go file charges against Tommy for attacking them. While I liked the episode it didn’t really fit the theme of the first two and things are starting to get a little schizophrenic.

Things quickly got back to usual though when Andrew Haplin went out to seek revenge on his girlfriend’s attacker. His top suspect also happens to be her meth dealing father and after bringing a group of friends to help in the beating Andrew is quickly stabbed and sent to the hospital. It’s always awkward when you meet your girlfriend’s father for the first time.

The rest of the episode focuses on the town as they prepare for their annual Thaw Fest. We get some small clues in the multiple storylines going on in “Happy Town” and a few new questions to boot. The state sheriffs seem to be getting closer to finding out Dave murdered Jerry Friddle but Tommy manages to hold them off. All signs point to the local shop owner being the Magic Man but you have to think the guy who goes around town doing card tricks is a little too obvious. And we still don’t know what the weird goat hammer is for from last week but we do know the man who found Henley after her crash stole it from her after they made sweet sweet love. Oh and we found out that the local doctor is actually a veterinarian and is played by David Cronenberg. Didn’t they use the same joke in “Baby Boom”?

At the episode comes to an end we find that Tommy’s wife Rachael has mysteriously disappeared. As we close out we’re given some pretty heavy clues that it’s the Magic Man’s doing so it looks like things are really starting to pick up on “Happy Town”. Which is too bad because CBS has pushed the next episode out three weeks and low ratings are makings things look not so good for “Happy Town”?