Patton Oswalt plays a blue flying unicorn and Christopher Meloni plays an alcoholic hitman. This is truly the Golden Age of television.
SUMMARY (Spoiler-Free)
Nick Sax (Christopher Meloni) is a former police officer who is now a hitman trying to drink himself into the grave. After killing a number of members of a mob family and learning a secret that puts him in danger, he’s approached by a small, blue, winged unicorn named Happy (Patton Oswalt) who tells him that he’s an imaginary friend to a girl named Hailey (Bryce Lorenzo) who was kidnapped by a man dressed as a Very Bad Santa (Joseph D. Reitman). Together, Nick and Happy deal with the mob, child abductors, and a psychotic Santa in order to rescue the little girl.
END SUMMARY
This show is so bananas is every way and it works perfectly.
Meloni may be best known for playing the angry, aggressive Det. Stabler on Law and Order: SVU, something he draws on at points for Nick Sax’s character, but he also has done a ton of solid comedy work when given the right script. He plays Gene in Wet Hot American Summer and Freak Show in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, for example. This show perfectly blends his talents together by having his character be angry and cynical, but also just a little insane at all times. Unlike many other series, his character really does change from episode to episode, either growing or regressing, but still maintains all of the traits that make him so interesting.
Happy, similarly, changes quite a bit over the series, mostly because he starts as a completely innocent creature thrown into one of the darkest corners of the world. Patton Oswalt was, therefore, one of the best casting choices you could make. Oswalt’s voice constantly seems to be slightly inherently upbeat, but can also deliver a tone of being beaten down or overwhelmed when he needs to. In contrast to the cynical Sax, Happy is a perpetual optimist that is slowly tortured by reality (and occasionally actually tortured). He’s constantly being dragged down by Sax, because that’s the only way he can get Sax to help Hailey, the girl he loves.
The show involves a lot of interesting hidden worlds which are contained within the secret rooms of the normal world, ranging from the obscure to the supernatural. A lot of the humor in the series comes from characters from each area being forced to interact and watching how they respond to each other. The portrayals of the supporting characters are pretty great all around.
The writing is superb and it really needs to be to successfully maintain such an oddball premise. It was written by Grant Morrison, the comic book author famous for doing a lot of very imaginative adaptations such as All-Star Superman and a lot of meta-writing where he appears in the work such as Seven Soldiers. He’s also slightly off-kilter, believing that he once died and saw the fifth dimension and learned the true creation of the universe. Basically, he’s perfect for this series.
This is a dark comedy, about as dark as it gets and about as funny as it gets. I’m not going to pretend that it’s for everyone, but if you like the first 20 minutes, it only gets better from there. The first season is over and now available on Netflix, but there’s a second season on the way soon, so check it out!
If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.
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