Happy Town

Looks a bit Harper's Island from the commercials. Sam Neill, MC Gainey, and Steven Weber all contribute, so I'll give it a chance.

The cast is pretty awesome, lots of "oh yeah, I know him from..." type people. But the producers are the guys behind such suckfests as October Road and Life on Mars, and according to a buddy, some of the worst Alias episodes. Meh. I LOVE mystery shows, so I'll be watching.

Amy Acker. I'm in for at least one episode.

I'd forgotten all about the premier tonight until about 20 minutes in, but what I saw I dug a lot. Definitely a sweet Twin Peaks/American Gothic vibe to it. Anyone catch the beginning so I can get caught up?

And yes, Amy would've been enough for me even if this sucked. Fortunately it doesn't, though. I think I'm already hooked.

"It's Grow A Pair Week."

Fuck I missed it.

There was enough fun weirdness to keep me around for a few more eps, but some of the writing was pretty bad. Mostly just in the small-talk dialogue. I'll chalk it up to being early on in the show, though. More than willing to see where this all goes.

You didn't miss a whole lot in the first 20 minutes that wasn't explained, Uth. We see Georgia getting out of a mystery guy's car in the middle of nowhere (a guy whose identity they reveal the second we meet him at school, which seemed a bit rushed or pointless to make him hidden) and hearing screams coming from the pond. She sees movement in an ice shack, but the weather turns bad so she runs off home.

Inside the shack, we see a cloaked/bundled up someone torturing the town weirdo for information about something. He whispers whatever he knows to the torturer (possibly the Magic Man?) and gets a big hole driven into his head for his trouble.

After that we pretty much just meet the town through Henley and Deputy Tommy, setting up the characters and their little eccentricities. Don't know when exactly you came in. But really only the opening was super important.

This shit was terrible. Everyone's acting like they're in Twin Peaks. They're "acting like it" so much that it reminds you of the brilliance of Twin Peaks. Eveyrone on the show acted as if it were the natural order of things, that the weirdness in the world, in the town, in themselves, was normal, was the way things were supposed to be.

Here, the weird stuff is trying too hard and just comes across as laughable. It's like a bunch of frat guys sat around farting while watching a Twin Peaks marathon while snorting coke, saying, "hey, we could do that too!"

I was so psyched about MC Gainey popping up on JUSTIFIED the other night. Here, I was cringing while he was raving like a madman and cutting off his own hand. So poorly handled.

That said, I'll probably watch it for a few more weeks because I'm a sucker for this kind of shit and the cast is pretty fucking great (Bunny Colvin!). I predict it will go the way of Flash Forward real fast.

Ugh, I just found out this show is from the guys who gave us American Life on Mars and the shitacular October Road. Deriving especially from the latter, I can only assume the writing is gonna get worse before it gets any better. From what I remember from the few episodes of that dreck I got forced into, this is actually pretty damn similar in regards to the small town (awful nicknames like Root Beer come to mind).

I stand by what I said before, though, I'll probably stick with it for a bit, just to see what happens.

This show is so dull and derivative that it makes me want to

I was able to gather snippets of the setup, but you've managed to bring me fully up to speed. Thank you, Mr Coombs.

I'll concede there were some groan inducing lines. I'm just hoping they felt the need to do so in order to establish the characters as fast as possible, for those whose attention spans might be too challenged by a more leisurely pace.

If I were a meaner, lower person, I'd make most people who tear into Cody because her dialogue is too in love with itself and masturbatory watch this. No, no, this is what dialogue written by writers with an unjustified level of regard for their own talent write when trying to show off what badass motherfucking writers they are. God, this was fucking horrible on every level in terms of writing.

Favorite unintentionally hilarious moment: "He's not a well man. A well man doesn't put a hole in somebody's head. " Who in the fuck needs to explain that?

I liked "I'm just so over the whole Romeo and Juliet thing!" line because no one could have possibly figured out what they were going for there.

The Blue Door= The Black Lodge.

The Magic Man= Killer Bob.

Stephen Weber's grieving father=Leland Palmer.

Anything else?

Hey,
I'll take a knock off Twin Peaks.

I enjoyed it, was a bit harpers island except for the ultimate hottie.

Coincidentally, this is just how I feel about HIMYM.

It's alright. No one's perfect.

But Happy Town is fucking garbage. Like Heroes-level garbage.

Communist.

Dean Winters was supposed to play Webers character. I met Winters on set last year when they filmed some scenes in my city. I think Acker was there too and the Sheriffs son and the pizza restaurant owner guy. It's the "Thaw Fest" scenes which I guess won't appear until next weeks episode? Anyways, I'm sorta just hanging around until those scenes appear then I'll probably forget about the show. My city doesn't get a lot shot in it so it's neat to see it on TV/big screen.

Finally saw it, didn't hate. Thats all until I see the second episode.

I thought it was ok. Not great writing, but I did enjoy Gainey trying to get his son to be more coplike ("you look like you're selling ice cream!"). And Sam Neill seems to be having fun, got a real strong James Mason in Salem's Lot vibe from him.

True, but HIMYM is a perfect copy of Friends.

That comparison isn't even remotely justifiable... yet.

I caught that too, with a touch of Max from Needful as well.

I'll keep watching. The lack of anything even remotely Twin Peaks like (or Twin Peaks lite) in television, plus the occasional good stuff (Sam Neill, Robert Wisdom's balls, MC Gainey, murder mystery in general), ensures I'm sticking around. Hopefully the writers are over their "whack every point over the audience's head" lines of dialogue and future episodes are a bit more natural. We'll see.

Ratings were shit anyway, so I'll take a short burst of murder and some kind of conclusion.

umm... well that was .... ummm..... it was ...... um, um.... hmmm. i'll get back to you

Good or bad? Thought the pilot was bad so I ditched this. But will Hulu a good scene if there is one.

Wait a minute, was the writing not supposed to be hysterically, intentionally bad? Cause I was guffawing every two or three minutes at the shit they had those folks say.

I think I'm going to be stuck watching this for the same reasons as this poor AV Club writer. Soooo stupid, but so perfectly stupid. Acker and German are fine to look at, Sam Neill's camping it up, hatchet self-mutilation, and highway birdstrike, to name but a few. Two shows in and I can't decide if I'm laughing at or laughing with; most likely the former, but I think I'd rather not be sure.

Although whoever thought they could clone Peter Krause to play the lead, they forgot the charisma and talent genes.

I was way too confused with this, maybe it seems things are just happening way too quickly? I dont know, i'm still confused.

But then again i laughed at Spartacus at the beginning, but ended up being a solid show, so you never know.

I thought the drugging scene was pretty fucking awesomely done. And although I hate those dumbass characters at the farm, seeing the Krause-lite smack them down was pretty fun. Also, I never ever thought they'd solve the murder of the dude from ep1 so soon. That was pretty crazy.

And I kinda love that Sam Neill did new girl a solid by distracting Old Lady 1.

WINDOW BIRD. WINDOW BIRD. WINDOW BIRD.

Man, this show is wildly uneven, borderline retarded, and unintentionally hilarious at the same time, but I can see myself getting addicted to it.

Same here, pretty much.

Just saw the past episode on demand and was not surprised to see that there were no comments made.

Def a better episode but still too many flaws/poor acting/poor forehead blood etc.

I'm kinda shocked/impressed at the calibre of cult acting talent they're snagging. Peter Outerbridge, David Cronenberg (!), Stephen McHattie. Not to mention already having Steven Weber, Robert Wisdom, Sam Neill, Abraham Benrubi, and M.C. Gainey.

Ehh from what I understand it's pretty much cancelled. It's going away for 2 weeks and then it will be back for it's remaining 5 episodes. Plus the ratings are so low which I have to say it's kinda a shame. I have to admit I dig this show on some level. I mean I know it's not good but.....eehh there is something. From what I understand they are going to explain who the magic man is.

Just caught the last ep online, McHattie was great in his scenes. Loved him describing the Magic Man, and that shot of him stomping on that guy. "Tell him Carl Bravin sends him his hosannas!"

Yeah, not really a good show, but watchable fun. Harper's Island with better actors. Is Amy Acker's character toast then?

lol, looks like the series is toast and not just Amy

Just started over here on TV. Is there any sort of conclusion? Or does it just stop at a random episode?

3 episodes aired before a break.

02-Jun-2010 Happy Town 01x04 Slight of Hand
09-Jun-2010 Happy Town 01x05 This Is Why We Stay
16-Jun-2010 Happy Town 01x06 Questions and Antlers
23-Jun-2010 Happy Town 01x07 Dallas Alice Doesn't Live here Anymore
30-Jun-2010 Happy Town 01x08 Blame It on Rio Bravo

Well from what I have read there will be some kind of conclusion and you will find out who the magic man is. However I have no idea if you will find out his motives or if he is stopped. Im guessing he isn't stopped though.

oh snap, Happy Town is screwed if the Magic Man is a velociraptor

So apparently the last two eps are either going to get the Saturday night treatment in July (the "nobody watches this shit" timeslot), or they're just going to turn up on ABC.com whenever.

Guess so they aren't in the listings for the coming weeks.

I just got a whiff of this crazy. A bit of an episode was just on and I am devastated, devastated!, to learn that this quotable piece of shit is going to be out of the airwaves.

I managed to catch:

"I'm the best cop....ever...."

A deep meaningful philosophical conversation between two long-term friends centering around Bon Jovi songs.

Ugh PS3 won't stream thses sites of course. Is there anyway to watch this on my tv, ya know how it should be? I mean besides plugging the vga cable directly into it.

God damn, I kinda want to see more of this. I wanna know the secrets behind the reveals in that last episode. The Blue Door stuff was awesomely intriguing to me. Yeah it was stupid at times, goofy at others, but fuck man, it was never dull.

Finally got round to seeing the last two episodes. In keeping with the rest of the eps, it was fun, lightweight nonsense. Neill was such a pimp, you can tell he was enjoying himself with ridiculous lines like "I have bonecrushing strength and an undead army" (the James Bond reference was a nice touch too- wasn't he up for the role many years ago?). MVP of the series though was McHattie, guy didn't get all that much screen time but he made the most of it when he was on. Such a pro. I have no idea what the fuck he was talking about with that crocodile speech but it made me laugh.

And LOL at Dee Wallace Stone being the Magic Man. Rest in peace, Happy Town.

Finally managed to watch these. That last episode was kind of.....great? actually and the truth is im going to miss Happytown.

This show was never what I'd call legitimately great, but it did find some kind of groove in that last ep. Now I'm wondering what Big Dave was doing in the Blue Door video, and how come the town perv that Big Dave railroad spiked in episode 1 was sitting there at the bar in Cicero's. Also I imagine it would have been great to watch the continuing adventures of Sam "License to Collect a Pension" Neill, and Peter "formerly creepy pancake guy, now hilariously OTT british accent guy" Outerbridge.

Man, this show was some dumb fun.