Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Happy’s Place’ On NBC, Where Reba McEntire Is A Bar Owner Who Finds Out She Has A Much Younger Sister

A sitcom from the ’00s that has seemed to become beloved over the past couple of decades is Reba , which aired on The WB and The CW between 2001-07. It might have been because Reba McEntire was a surprisingly funny sitcom lead, or it might have been because the relationships that were established between the characters drove a lot of the humor. Now McEntire is back in a good old-fashioned sitcom, and she has one of her Reba producers, her old co-star Melissa Peterman, and character actor boyfriend Rex Linn along with her.

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Opening Shot: A bar getting ready to open. It’s owner, Bobbie (Reba McEntire) comes out of her office, makes sure everyone’s ready, rings a bell and says, “Happy’s Place is open for business!”

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The Gist: Happy’s Place is a bar in Knoxville that Bobbie has run for her dad — named Happy, of course — for the last decade, but after his recent death, she’s now the owner. Her bartender Gabby (Melissa Peterman) is always trying to be her friend; her accountant Steve (Pablo Castelblanco) is a major germaphobe, and her waiter Takoda (Tokala Black Elk) can fix anything. The cook, Emmett (Rex Linn) tries to stay in his tiny kitchen as much as possible to avoid interacting with anyone, though he tends to give sage advice when people come to him.

A twentysomething woman named Isabella (Belissa Escobedo) walks in, and she tells Bobbie she’s meeting a lawyer who called her. The lawyer (Michael O’Neill) is a buddy of Happy’s, whom he asked to make out his will. Turns out that Isabella is also Happy’s daughter, and she owns half of Happy’s Place.

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Of course Bobbie is shocked that her father had an affair, and that she’s got a sister who’s young enough to be her granddaughter. Isabella, who didn’t find out about Happy until after he died, has never felt she belonged anywhere, so she feels this opportunity is a fresh start. But she starts off on the wrong foot, asking why Steve sits at the bar while he does his work, for instance.

Izzy does ingratiate herself to the rest of the staff, though; Gabby just loves the fact that Izzy listens to her, when Bobbie never really did. Bobbie, who’s head is spinning, feels like Izzy is making too many changes too fast — she only got there a the day before! But the staff — especially Gabby — likes having her around.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Cheers crossed with Reba . Kevin Abbott, who created the show along with his wife Julie, was an executive producer on Reba , and is a sitcom veteran.

Our Take: One of the things you notice right away with Happy’s Place is that it’s not trying to go for big, broad laughs most of the time. Peterman, who was so good with McEntire on Reba , is there to take most of the physical comedy load, as we see when Steve blasts Gabby with compressed air in Episode 1 and she gets sprayed by a broken tap in Episode 2. Even though her character is largely undefined except for her neediness, her presence allows the rest of the cast to dig into their characters and let the humor come from that.

McEntire proved in the ’00s that she’s a fine sitcom actor, mainly because she can be over-the-top angry or annoyed while being empathetic and easy to root for. Bobbie isn’t much different than the role she played on Reba , but that’s OK. One of the purposes of Happy’s Place was to give McEntire another opportunity to be that character, albeit now dealing with the shock of having a sister who’s 40 years younger than she is that she never knew about.

At this stage of the series — critics got the first two episodes to review — Happy’s Place is pretty much a classic workplace sitcom, where we don’t get much insight into the characters outside the confines of the bar. Will Arnold and his writers expand that universe at some point? Sure. But he’s relying on how the people at Happy’s interact with each other to be the source of the show’s humor, and there’s nothing we can really complain about if that’s the case.

Of course, the first two episodes aren’t exactly laugh riots, but they do set up the relationship between Bobbie and Isabella well, with enough from everyone else to give us an idea who these characters are. We’d rather have that, which gives room for the cast to gel and grow together, than episodes full of lame gags that reek of desperation.

Sex and Skin: None in the first two episodes.

Parting Shot: Bobbie asks her dad to send her a someone “to sort all this out, because I’m lost.” In busts Gabby who says, “I heard a sad voice.”

Sleeper Star: Like we said, Melissa Peterman’s role is the least defined one in the first two episodes, but she’s an expert at physical humor, and her ability to bear the brunt of the show’s slapsticky parts makes her invaluable.

Most Pilot-y Line: There’s some weird logic around a childhood drawing hanging in Bobbie’s office that Isabella finds out is hers, when Bobbie thought she was the one who drew it. Given their age gap, it makes us wonder just how much convincing Happy had to do to make Bobbie believe she drew it decades ago.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Happy’s Place is a throwback sitcom that relies on character humor instead of broad gags, and that’s always something that we will root for.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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