‘Happy Town’ follow up

Image via Wikipedia

This isn’t exactly a review because I couldn’t make it through the entire first episode of ‘Happy Town’. A lot of people might not get it, but I found the music derivative of ‘Eastwyck’ and ‘Desperate Housewives’ (two shows not really known for the backing music) and extremely distracting. On those brief occasions when I could block out the music, the dialog was filled with heavy exposition. The characters seemed like they were spouting out lines in a script instead of having conversations. After watching a show like ‘Treme‘ where everyone seemed to be actually talking with one another, this was painful at times. I finally had to tap out when the secret high school lovers were in the music room. I think they were talking about how life was too short or something, I know they had to give their entire family trees and the reasons behind their “Romeo and Juliet thing” when I realized life was too short to waste on a show I wasn’t liking at all.

The show wasn’t all bad. The locations and interior sets all looked very good. Some of the actors were good in their roles. MC Gainey, Steven Webber and Robert Wisdom all come to mind as people who were very good in the little that I saw of them. Of course they were all from three of my favorite shows (Lost, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and The Wire), so they have built up some good will with me. Amy Acker and Sam Neill are both fine actors and might have developed interesting characters, but I didn’t see it. Unfortunately, none of the other actors or characters stood out as being particularly good or interesting, which is a shame because I wanted to like the show.

Happy Town wants to be a truly scary TV show and it may hit its stride after a couple of episodes, but I won’t know because unless I hear glowing reviews from a number of people I know, I won’t be watching any more of it.