Crime
Happy Face
Paramount+’s Happy Face capitalizes on the nation’s obsession with true crime—and some details may make this show a nonstarter for families.
Since the dawn of space exploration, humans have wondered if life on other planets exists. Books, movies, TV shows, even songs have speculated about this.
And one of the greatest questions we’ve wondered about is, if aliens exist, just how will they react to humankind—with kindness, hatred or perhaps just confusion?
Netflix’s show, Alien TV, believes that for the most part, the little green men would react positively—at least in that they wouldn’t actively try to destroy us. Rather, they’d send a news crew to Earth to investigate things such as the bicycle, gymnastics and camping to figure out not only how these things work, but why human beings like them so much.
Whether or not the aliens will find the same enjoyment in human comforts remains to be seen.
The show is silly. It aims to show us how a species unable to communicate with humans directly (since they speak completely in an alien language, sans subtitles) might learn how to do simple tasks, like riding a bike, with no prior instruction on how to do so. They do have a couple of reference diagrams, but they’re often incomplete and are poor substitutes for an actual teacher.
Ixbee, Pixbee and Squee are animated, it’s true, but the world they’re interacting with is not. That being said, they react to injury and violence much in the same way that traditional cartoon shows do—lots of bumps and bruises, but no permanent damage.
Parents interested in letting their littles watch this show will find little to object to, outside some occasional crude gags and bathroom humor. It’s a lesson in perseverance, since no matter how many times the aliens fail, they try, try again.
The crew of Alien TV learns about trains, barbershops and gnomes.
A rival alien TV crew fights with Ixbee, Pixbee and Squee over a shrink ray and later kidnaps a gnome. Not realizing the gnome isn’t a living creature, an alien tries to resuscitate it after it is dropped from a great distance, smashing it to bits in the process. Aliens fall and get tossed around, but none are seriously hurt.
An alien vomits (offscreen). A horse flatulates. Someone blows a raspberry. Members of both alien crews purposely mess with each other’s spaceships out of pettiness.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
Paramount+’s Happy Face capitalizes on the nation’s obsession with true crime—and some details may make this show a nonstarter for families.
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