Paramount + just debuted its new true crime series Happy Face. The limited series consists of eight episodes, with the first two airing on March 20, and new episodes will roll out each Thursday through May 1.
Happy Face is the true story of Melissa Moore, whose father Keith Jesperson was responsible for killing at least eight women in the 1990s. Melissa was just a teenager when Jesperson was arrested.
Episode one of Happy Face opens with Melissa (Annaliegh Ashford) waking up her daughter Hazel and wishing her a happy birthday. That evening, Hazel opens her gifts (15 of them, since it’s her 15th birthday), and Dad gives her a card that came in the mail. She is puzzled about who sent it, but It’s evident that Melissa knows, and is not happy about it.
Later, she buys a burner phone and makes a call, threatening whomever is at the other end of the line and insisting that they NEVER contact her or her kids again. Afterwards, she stomps on the phone, destroying it.
It turns out that Melissa works as a makeup artist for the Dr. Greg Show, and her supervisor Ivey asks her to persuade Dr. Greg’s guest to follow through on her interview. One of the woman’s family members was murdered, and she is pensive about talking about it on camera. Melissa does talk her into it, basically telling her that she may be helping others by being honest and speaking up.
Soon enough, we find out what is going on when Dr. Greg asks Melissa to come to his office. It turns out that the notorious Happy Face Killer Keith Jesperson, now in prison for murdering eight women, has called and offered to give up information about a ninth victim…but only if Melissa will come to see him in person. Although Melissa has never talked about it to anyone other than her husband, she is Jesperson’s daughter.
Her husband thinks meeting with Dad is a bad idea, because she was traumatized the last time she spoke with him fifteen years earlier. But, she decides to do it, and visits the prison with Ivey. Jesperson (Dennis Quaid) greets her as “Missy”, but she coldly tells him to not call her that.
When pressed to sign a release form, he signs it with a smiley face, just as he used to sign letters to the press and police when he was killing women. He tells Melissa that he always needed to see her after he killed. It was important, because she was the only one who could bring him out of the darkness. After each kill, he would bring her a gift.
After his supposed ninth victim, he brought home a trampoline. At this Melissa leaves, upset, and Ivey asks him where he dumped his mystery victim. He responds, “Ask Missy, she knows.”
Melissa has a memory of Dad telling her that knows how to commit the perfect murder, then she looks up info about the Happy Face Killer online. She remembers going to his house after her parents divorced, and seeing a red splotch on a ceiling fan blade. He explains it away, saying it’s spaghetti sauce.
Melissa brings Ivy with her to visit her mom, but it’s clear that she is still experiencing trauma. She says Jesperson is still dangerous, and claims that she once received a menacing phone call, and that sometimes she comes home to find things in the house moved around.
Melissa and Ivy find the old trampoline in a shed, and identify the label that states it was sold in Texas. When they meet with Keith again, he starts to talk about the mystery victim. He says she was a bartender in Texas, and he gave her a ride when her car wouldn’t start. She was nervous until she saw a picture of his kids on his visor. “They all relax once they see you have daughters.”
He says the woman had a guitar, and they ended up having sex. But he insists that he never raped any of his victims, the sex was always consensual. Because, you know, murder is ok, but SA is not. He goes into unsettling details about the difficulty of strangling women, and says he thought this one was dead, but then she started coughing, so he hit her over the head with a wrench. He dumped her body, bought the trampoline, and brought it straight home to his kids.
When he sees the look on Melissa’s face at this disclosure, he says, “You think you’re better than me, but you’re not.” He asks if she has told her own children about him, and she says, “Don’t talk about my kids.”
Melissa finds a clue, and Hazel listens in
Later, Melissa calls her husband and asks him to open her safe, and take out a box filled with trinkets. Once of them is a yellow guitar pick that she remembers her dad giving her, and printed on it is the name of a bar in Texas: Whiskey River.
We see Hazel listening in on the phone call, and she picks up right away that her grandfather is the Happy Face Killer. Being an industrious teen, she starts to research him online.
Melissa does her own research, and finds an article about a murdered woman who disappeared from the Whiskey River bar. Her boyfriend was accused of the murder, and is currently sitting on death row.