Recap / Doctor Who S25 E2 "The Happiness Patrol"

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The Happiness Patrol

Well, that's one way to beat the blues.

Written by Graeme Curry
Directed by Chris Clough
Production code: 7L
Air dates: 2 - 16 November 1988
Number of episodes: 3

"I can hear the sound of empires toppling."

— The Doctor

The one that got the BBC sued, and the slow go-kart chase.

Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, referred to this story in his 2011 Easter sermon, on the subject of happiness and joy. No, really.

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The Doctor and Ace visit the human colony planet of Terra Alpha, where unhappiness has been outlawed, and people who can't keep a smile on their face at all times have a tendency to... disappear.

While the Doctor befriends a blues-playing tourist named Earl and Ace meets her Girl of the Week Susan Q, the TARDIS gets a nice pink makeover from the Happiness Patrol. Everyone gets thrown into prison a few times over. Well, into the "waiting zone", that is — because a happy place like Terra Alpha couldn't possibly have prisons. They also meet the Kandy Man (who bears a striking resemblance to the advertising mascot Bertie Bassett — not deliberate, but the BBC got in trouble from Bassetts all the same), a psychotic killer robot made of candy, whom the Doctor defeats in a Kerb-Stomp Battle by sticking its feet to the floor with lemonade. The underground Mole Men and the working class join in the battle against the current regime as well, as does a hapless interstellar census bureau employee, after the Doctor runs circles around him intellectually.

The Doctor goes a bit too far in his investigations, though, and soon comes face-to-face with a very powerful gun. In a rather serious scene for what's otherwise the most perfectly camp story in a while, he dares the gunman to shoot him point blank, which causes a Heel Realisation in the soldier and leaves the Doctor able to continue his staged uprising. It all culminates in a sort of song-and-dance number, with the Doctor proclaiming that the oppressed working class people are really tremendously happy and therefore can't be arrested. The Happiness Patrol is very unhappy about this turn of events. So the Doctor tells them that they should now logically arrest each other for being glum. Which they promptly do.

The local dictator, Helen A (who bears a striking resemblance to Margaret Thatcher — deliberate, Word of God would later say) decides to get the hell out before her society comes crashing in on itself. Sadly for her, her gentle husband runs away together with Kandy Man's creator, and the two make off with the only escape pod. And her mutated rat-dog-thing Fifi is killed using The Power of Blues. Helen breaks down crying, realising perhaps for the first time that happiness isn't everything.

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Tropes

• Absent-Minded Professor: Gilbert M built the Kandyman, but has forgotten how to fix him when the Doctor sprays him with lemonade, causing him to harden into toffee.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Given he's one of the most ridiculed villains in Who history, the Kandyman's terror in the face of death is surprisingly affecting. Same goes for Fifi's death and Helen A's reaction to it.
• All Crimes Are Equal: Ostentatious public displays of grief, wearing dark clothes, reading depressing poetry (limericks get a pass), and walking in the rain are all capital crimes in these parts.
• All There in the Manual: The Radio Times listing names the snipers as David S and Alex S.
• Amazon Brigade: The Happiness Patrol.
• Artistic Licence – Engineering: The levers used by the Kandyman to control the Fondant Surprise are made to look as if they have catches at the top that need to be pushed in before the lever can be moved. The Kandyman's actor moves the levers without touching the supposed catches, making it all too obvious that they're dummies.
• Author Tract: One of many critiques of Thatcherism under Andrew Cartmel. Thatcher was viewed by the show's makers (and plenty of the actors) as an ideologue who waved away any criticism.
• Best Served Cold: Ace nearly feeds Priscilla her own wig, but the Doctor nabs her in mid-flight. He barks at Ace to stay frosty or she'll compromise his whole plan — But he also promises that revenge will be sweet, indeed:
  Ace: I want to make them very, very unhappy.
  Doctor: (Voice drops into a hiss.) Don't worry, Ace. We will.
• Big Bad: Helen A.
• Bittersweet Ending: Helen A is finally forced to confront her sadness upon the death of her beloved pet. However, her government is overthrown and the people are free to experience whatever emotions they damn well want, happy or sad.
  • In any other series this would be a Downer Ending, the force keeping everyone happy is gone and misery prevails. Naturally Doctor Who turns it on its head.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Susan Q disarming Daisy K.
• Bond One-Liner: As it's immediately after the vicious execution of a political prisoner, done as a Kick the Dog.
  • Combined with Pre-Mortem One-Liner. In both cases they're deconstructed: the members of the Happiness Patrol keep coming out with these just before or after they kill someone, but they're all uniformly unfunny, half-witted things like "Have a nice death!" or "You look unhappy about something!" that only serve to further reinforce what smug, sociopathic and terrible people with awful senses of humour they are.
• Bound and Gagged:
  • In Episode 2 Ace is briefly gagged for saying "Up the Killjoys!"
  • And Priscilla P in Episode 3.
  • And Daisy K towards the end.
• Breaking Speech: The Seventh Doctor continues his grand tradition of beating his enemies down with speeches that deconstruct their flaws and weaknesses, firstly with the sniper he confronts on the rooftops, and then finally Helen A herself: With her empire up in smoke, Helen plans to flee and find a world more receptive to her monomaniacal ideals— but then, out of the shadows steps the Doctor. "You can't get away, Helen A."
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": Helen A has large capital As on the sleeves of her outfit.
• Canned Orders over Loudspeaker: Helen A never allows her people a single moment's peace. Her broadcasts seem to take inspiration from Brave New World's Mustapha Mond.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: While being held captive by the Kandyman, the Doctor manages to freeze him in place with lemonade. Anticipating a second encounter with (now irate) robot, Seven steals an entire bottle of the stuff from Joseph as he's freshening up someone's drink. Yoink.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Earl Sigma, the offworlder blues musician.
• Comically Missing the Point: At one point, the Doctor comes across an undercover Happiness Patrol agent who makes a rather cruel game of provoking Hope Spots in killjoys he comes across before revealing his true identity with a business card. When he pulls this on the Doctor, upon learning the agent's identity the Doctor cheerfully remarks that the agent might be able to pass on a message to Helen A for him.
• Conspicuous Trenchcoat: Silas P.'s "undercover" garb leaves a lot to be desired. He's wearing a bright pink cardigan under his drab Killjoy disguise.
• Continuity Nod: The Doctor tells Ace that the Brigadier once saw a triceratops in the London Underground. He also mentions that Theta Sigma was his college nickname.
• Covered in Gunge: In a decidedly non-comedic version — Helen A's favourite execution method involves large quantities of hot strawberry fondant, either suffocating you or scalding you to death.
• Crapsaccharine World: Terra Alpha is an inverted Oceania. On the surface, life under the regime is pretty good. Helen A's built over 1000 new factories, has solved the problem of shortages, pipes camp music into every workplace, and has abolished prisons. At night, however, goon squads go around rounding up undesirables and/or blasting them with their fun guns.
• Creator Cameo: Director Chris Clough voices Fifi.
• Culture Police: The eponymous Patrol. A rather creepy use of the trope, as they go beyond enforcing any kind of culture...
• Custom Uniform: When she first appears, Susan Q is one of a group of Happiness Patrol mooks, but she's wearing the more elaborate wig of a speaking character.
• Cute as a Bouncing Betty: The patrolwomen's "Fun Guns". These are later turned on the enemy when Susan Q. defects.
• Death by Irony: Silas P, who took joy in handing Killjoys over to be killed by the Happiness Patrol, ends up inadvertently looking like a killjoy after his encounter with the Doctor and Earl and gunned down by the arriving Patrol.
• Defector from Decadence: Susan Q.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The story has generated a lot of discussion about the political meanings and agendas behind a lot of what's going on, particularly concerning 1980s politics and gay rights among others; Helen A and her cronies are stand-ins for Margaret Thatcher and her government, a young woman describing her realization that she was "unhappy" is played as if she was coming out in another sense (i.e. a 'closeted' blues fan), and so forth. This might also explain the inaction on the part of Terra Alpha's neighbors: Trevor reveals that his purpose is to take a census of everyone who's disappeared rather, suggesting that the planetary government he reports to would rather make lists of the dead than do anything to stop those lists growing...
  • Silas P.'s entrapment of killjoys by blending in among them is a particularly barbed commentary of the police. This tactic is altogether too common with undercover cops looking to cuff 'deviants'.
  • Helen A's policy of, shall we say, managing population through extreme force, is reminiscent to some extent of how Margaret Thatcher brought inflation to an all-time low, but at the cost of high unemployment rates: technical success only.
  • There are veiled references to South Africa, with Helen A's "disappearance" of a township full of Killjoys.
• Double Standard: After the Doctor and Ace both admit to being illegal immigrants to get arrested by the Happiness Patrol.
  Daisy K: He is obviously a spy. She is obviously his accomplice. He can disappear and she can audition for the Happiness Patrol.
• Drowning Pit: It seems the Kandy Man's favourite method of execution was trapping the victim in a tube and filling the tube with fondant, drowning them. The flavour of the fondant varied, Helen A's favourite was strawberry.
• Dystopian Edict: No unhappiness!
• '80s Hair: Like you wouldn't believe. The hairstyles of the Happiness Patrol also call to mind feathered hats from The '40s, another homage to film noir.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Helen A adores her weird wolf-dog thing Fifi.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Even Daisy K, herself a willing and eager stooge of Helen A's regime, considers Priscilla P an out-of-control fanatic.
• Evil Chef: The Kandy Man uses confectionery as a means of execution.
• The Evil Genius: The Kandyman acted as this for Helen A, being her chief torturer and a scientist.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humour: The "happy" characters' actual jokes are limited to sadistic mockery of the people they're killing and torturing.
  • Lampshaded with the "prize" for winning the slot machine in the Waiting Zone — a poorly delivered joke from Helen A — which the Doctor thoroughly deconstructs with respect to its sheer awfulness.
• Exact Words: The Doctor, posing as a galactic census taker, talks his way into Helen A's office where he finds that everything is above-board and legal. 100% transparency. Yep.
  Helen: I think you'll find everyone on Terra Alpha is very happy.
  Doctor: Some people on Terra Alpha are very difficult to find.
  • Ace completely flubs her rehearsal for the Patrol, as she doesn't sing, dance, juggle, perform magic, or tell jokes, and the only songs she knows are paeans to suicideinvoked. When questioned about her talents, the Doctor looks stumped as well, then answers, "She makes things disappear?"
    Doorman: Magic. (checks list)
    Doctor: Nothing magical about the way she does it.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The Doctor challenges himself to orchestrate the complete collapse of a ruthless despotic society over the course of a single evening. He does so without any knowledge of the regime's inner workings, having no plan in place, and willingly getting himself arrested. And he succeeds.
• Fad Super: The Thatcher stand-in Helen A, a crazed, bigoted, hedonistic fascist with a ghastly hairdo and a Henpecked Husband, fitting the contemporary satirical shorthand.
• Fantastic Drug: Whatever those "sweets" are that the Kandy Man puts out, which are described as being capable of inducing all kinds of euphoric effects that you most definitely would not get from actual sweets - not to mention they're also implied to be addictive and even lethal.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Terra Alpha is clearly starting to fall apart at the seams when the Doctor gets there, but he manages to press the right buttons to bring down Helen A's government entirely.
• Fascists' Bed Time: Dusk is the most dangerous time to be out wandering. Andrew Cartmel used this setting as an excuse to shoot the story with minimal light, contrary to standard BBC procedure.
• Faux Affably Evil: The Kandy Man. He considers himself a confectionery artist even though his talents are used more for executing dissidents.
• Felony Misdemeanour: A Type 3. On Terra Alpha, being a 'Killjoy' (i.e. being unhappy) is punishable by death.
• Film Noir: Despite the gaudy nature of Terra Alpha, the 'outdoor' scenes of the story are all filmed in a consciously film-noir style, with lots of long, dark shadows all over the place. A couple of the male characters wear long coats and wide-brimmed fedoras as well. The Doctor and Earl use music to communicate across the city, and at one point the duo sing/play a few bars from "As Time Goes By". Reportedly the story was originally planned to be in black-and-white.
• Fluffy Tamer: Helen A truly loves her snarling pet Fifi.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Helen A's vicious and downright ugly pet Stigorax called Fifi.
• Girl of the Week: This month, Ace gets very close to Susan Qinvoked. Even more explicit in a deleted scene, where Suzie calls her cute.
• Glurge Addict: Helen A, to the point where her execution methods involve sweets.
• Hair-Trigger Avalanche: Fifi is crushed to death when Earl uses his harmonica to cause an avalanche of the unstable crystallized sugar deposits in the pipes.
• Happiness Is Mandatory: And if you're not happy, you get the death penalty.
• Heel–Face Turn: After bonding with Ace over their taste in music, Susan Q deliberately lets her escape, and from then on is on the Doctor's side.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Kandy Man is ultimately killed by the very execution method he was in charge of.
  • Also, after Susan Q disarms Daisy K by Blasting It Out of Their Hands.
    Doctor: Who taught you to shoot like that?
    Susan Q (points to Daisy K): She did.
    Doctor: Thank you, Daisy K.
• Homoerotic Subtext: The story is very easily interpreted as a gay rights allegory. The TARDIS gets painted pink, Ace and her Girl of the Week had to have some rather Les Yayinvoked lines cut just to get past the BBC censors, and the story ends with two men running off together.
• Hypocrite: It should perhaps be noted that hardly any members of Helen A's regime and the Happiness Patrol that we encounter apart from Helen A herself (who practically screams "Stepford Smiler") actually seem... well, happy about anything. The Kandy Man and Gilbert M spend most of their time sniping at each other Like an Old Married Couple whose relationship has long since curdled into outright loathing, Daisy K has a permanent snide, bitter sneer towards everything, Priscilla P spends most of her appearances whining about being assigned to guard duty, the two snipers seem utterly disaffected for various reasons (gender inequality and lack of good firearms), and even the Happiness Patrol Auditions manager seems to be an unbearably sour, rude and miserable man. It's pretty clear that the people who are in charge of enforcing Helen A's dictats about happiness are ultimately just as unhappy as the killjoys they eliminate, it's just that the killjoys are brave/foolish/desperate enough to actually express it.
• Implicit Prison: The waiting areas are specifically not prisons ... but step over the line that marks the edge of the area, and "you're a dead man".
• Impossibly Delicious Food: The Kandy Man describes his favoured method of execution: he creates "sweets that are so good, so delicious that sometimes, if I'm on form, the human physiology is not equipped to bear the pleasure".
  Gilbert M: He makes sweets that kill.
• Improbable Hairstyle: At first glance, Helen A looks to be wearing a hat — but no. That is a combination 80's perm/ponytail with whitewalls and topped off with a big pink stripe(!).
• Ironic Echo: "Happiness will prevail." (smile)
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Helen A protests that the secret police and summary executions only "came later" — after a few stubborn citizens refused to embrace her philosophy. By now, the "routine disappearances" number over half a million(!).
• Killer Robot: Made of candy.
• Lady Land: A subtle example (at least relatively, given many examples of the trope); most of the characters with power and authority in the story are women (the Happiness Patrol, for example, is composed primarily or entirely of women), and it's heavily suggested that Terra Alphan society is biased in favour of women instead of men; at one point the two male snipers gripe that women always get the better jobs — and guns. It avoids most of the usual "utopian Author Tract" tropes often associated with the trope, in that Terra Alpha is hardly a better place because the women are in control instead of the men. (insert real world analogy here)
  Alex: (grousing) Don't see any women doing roof duty. Women always get the better jobs.
  David: Women always get the best guns.
• Lady in Red: Helen A. is wearing what appears to be chair upholstery with sleeves.
• Let Me at Him!: Priscilla stands over the cooked Harold quipping about his fate. This causes Ace to go aggro, and the Doctor snatches her before she does something stupid.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: Before Helen A took over, Terra Alpha had its share of problems. One of the planet's biggest hurdles was overpopulation. The census bureau has strict protocols for address that issue, but Helen smilingly assures them her own methods are far more "effective."
• Let's See YOU Do Better!: Gilbert M all but says this about people who think confectionery is easy.
• Love Hurts: Between Helen A's ruthless Stepford Smiler persona and determination to be utterly happy at all costs, and her strangely bitter-yet-wistful retort upon the Doctor's accusation that her perfect world is a world without love that "I always thought love is overrated", it's implied that something like this might be lurking somewhere in Helen A's backstory.
• Low-Speed Chase: The Patrol's go-karts don't seem to travel much faster than walking pace, which makes the sequence where the Doctor and Ace steal one in order to escape slightly ridiculous.
• Mad Artist: The Kandy Man is a mad culinary artist.
• Magical Negro: Earl Sigma.
• Mauve Shirt: The moment his exposition is concluded, Harold gets electrocuted by the same slot machine whose jokes he denigrated earlier. Apparently, Helen opted to wipe out the whole clan rather than suffer another traitor.
• Mole Men: The Pipe People are the original inhabitants of Terra Alpha who, following colonization, have retreated into the complex of pipes that run throughout the city.
• Motive Rant: Helen A delivers one at the end during her confrontation with the Doctor.
• My Card: Silas is only allowed to slap on the handcuffs once you accept it.
• My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours: The Doctor arranges for the protesting killjoys to gather en mass in Forum Square, knowing that this will trigger a crackdown from the authorities, and two teams of the Happiness Patrol are sent to terminate the killjoys with prejudice. When the hit squad gets there, however, the killjoys have shed their dark clothes, cast aside their funeral dirge and are now firing off party steamers and dancing like its 2099 — and thus are no longer killjoys, meaning the Happiness Patrol can't touch them. And to really sweeten the cake, when the second team arrives they find the first team milling about confused, glum and generally acting like killjoys — and promptly arrest them.
  Doctor: And their logic tells them, twisted though it be, that as such they have no power over me!
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Earl sadly hums on his harmonica, only to frantically burst into polka music when a patrol car drives past, slapping a pink sticker on his lapel.
• Nerves of Steel: The Doctor knows the difference between a lean killer and a coward raining down death from rooftops. He has the audacity to sneak up on some snipers, puff out his chest and dare them to kill him honourably. And then snatches the gun away, when they hesitate.
• Newspeak: There are no prisons on Terra Alpha, only "waiting zones"! —but cross that line and you're a dead man.
  • Helen A's administration is fond of euphemisms. They aren't carrying out purges, merely "controlling" the population with "disappearances." Also, when Helen A meets with Trevor Sigma and the Doctor, she coyly informs Trevor that she's adopted the Galactic Census Bureau's recommendations... but not their guidelines. Trevor is too naive to pick up on this, but the Doctor is not impressed. He later confronts Helen A as she's arranging an execution and throws the euphemism back at her:
    "And which member of the population are you attempting to 'control' today?!"
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Helen A is a sci-fi parody of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
• The Not-So-Harmless Punishment: Standard punishments are doled out by the Kandy Man, who loves "happy" and typically sweet-themed executions, like having molten-hot sugar poured down your throat until you either suffocate or are boiled alive.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: The Doctor tries turning Trevor Sigma into one.
• Oh, Crap!: The first cliffhanger is based around this.
  Kandyman: Welcome to the Kandy Kitchen, gentlemen.
  Doctor: The pleasure is all ours.
  Kandyman: I do hope so. I like my volunteers to die with smiles on their faces.
  • As is the second, where the Doctor is trying to find if Ace is in the Happiness Patrol show coming up, when a member appears to paint a RIP on the poster of the previous act.
  Forum Doorman: Oh dear. Doesn’t look like Daphne S went down too well now, does it?
• One-Letter Name: All the Terra Alphans have a personal name followed by a single letter indicating their social rank.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: The Kandyman, a psychopathic torture robot made of candy.
• Pass the Popcorn: Helen A. munches candies while observing her televised executions.
• Persecution Flip: The conservatively-dressed "killjoys" are the oppressed minority, while Helen A's shock-troopers all resemble painted drag queens.
• Photo Op with the Dog: Once captured (again), Ace refuses to cooperate with Helen A by joining her Patrol. Cue Joseph, rushing in with a flashbulb camera. We cut to a recruitment poster with Ace's stunned expression plastered on it.
• Police State: The eponymous patrol used their "fun guns" and pink uniforms to suppress anyone seeming miserable or unhappy, whom they labelled "Killjoys". Some were executed by means of deadly sweets...
• Psychopathic Manchild: The Kandyman is a Robotic Psychopath with a distinctly child-like voice, personality, and appearance.
• Psycho Pink: The sadistic Helen A has hot pink highlights in her hair.
• Punch-Clock Villain: A running theme in the Cartmel era. The snipers on the rooftops are depicted almost as blue-collar blokes, grumbling about their long hours and viewing the protesters below as mere specks. When the Doctor gets in their faces and thrusts his chest toward the gun barrel, he shames them out of complacency.
• Right-Hand Attack Dog: Although Helen A's pet Fifi initially appears to a Right-Hand Cat, she is actually a very efficient predator, as seen at the end of the serial when Helen A sends her down the pipes to wipe out the pipe people and other dissidents hiding there.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Helen A was intended to satirise Margaret Thatcher, saying things like, "I like your initiative, your enterprise" while her secret police rounded up dissidents. Also, the Doctor persuades "the drones", who toil in the factories and mines, to down tools and rise up in revolt, an echo of the miners' strikes and printers' disputes during Thatcher's first two terms in office.
• Robotic Psychopath: The Kandy Man is extremely sadistic and cruel.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Gilbert M. and Joseph C. Together.
• invoked Self-Imposed Challenge: The Doctor appears to have landed on Terra Alpha with the express intention of seeing if he can bring down a society in just one night.
• Shout-Out:
  • The use of letters as surnames recalls Josef K in The Trial.
  • Ace relates the plot of Mark Dinning's "death disc" song "Teen Angel".
  • Susan Q, the Happiness Patrol member who does a Heel–Face Turn, is probably named in reference to Dale Hawkins's R & B song "Susie Q".
  • Kandyman's kitchen is like a more nefarious version of Willy Wonka's Inventing Room.
• Slasher Smile: By Helen's edict. "And don't forget, when you smile, I want to see those teeth."
• Sociopathic Soldier: Priscilla P
• Stepford Smiler: An entire culture of them, led by a Margaret Thatcher No Celebrities Were Harmed who enforces this way of life with the death penalty.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Helen A weeping over her beloved pet Stigorax, Fifi, as it dies in the gutter. This just minutes after she's been deposed and her consort has betrayed her to the rebels (and skipped off with another man!). This is all a bit harsh, even for Ace, but it shuts the book on the Happiness Patrol for good.
  Ace: Shouldn't we do something, Professor?
  Doctor: (ice cold) 'Tis done.
• Take Me to Your Leader: The Doctor, working under a self-imposed time limit, figures the quickest way to liberate Terra Alpha is to get himself arrested. Amusingly, this takes some doing on his part.
• Take That!: Sheila Hancock confirmed that her performance was based on Thatcher, whom she "hated with a passion".
• Talking Your Way Out: Faced with an enthusiastic sniper, the Doctor simply goes up and demands that the sniper shoot him, end his life; the sniper gives up. It's a CMOAinvoked, but it also ends up making the Doctor look more a little... creepy — both snipers are really unnerved at the end. Creepy or not, however, the Doctor still talks a fanatic into doubting and rejecting all his convictions under the space of a minute while having a gun pointed at him the whole time, which is impressive to say the least.
  • The whole scene was used as the basis of the first Big Finish Doctor Who audio starring Seven and Ace, "The Fearmonger". The play also serves as something of a Deconstruction: Ace tries the same trick on a vigilante terrorist leader and it doesn't end well for her.
• Thoughtcrime: Policed by the Happiness Patrol.
• Tranquil Fury: The Doctor keeps his game face on while being detained by Priscilla and her cronies — but underneath the sly expression, he's clearly fuming with rage.
• Uncanny Valley Makeup: All the Terra Alpha characters. Gilbert M and Joseph C take theirs off while running away together, which doesn't actually make it any less homoerotic.
• Velvet Revolution: The Doctor brings down an entire Fascist regime overnight.
• Villainous Breakdown: Indeed, the whole crux is the Doctor trying to provoke one. If Helen A loses her composure, her whole philosophy is discredited. By Episode Three, Helen A is clearly going to pieces over the state of things but, to her credit, somehow manages to maintain her stiff upper lip... until she discovers her pet dog Fifi, the only thing she has ever loved, is dead. Cue harmonica.
• Weaksauce Weakness: The Kandy Man can be rendered immobile with a quick spray of lemonade to his feet, since it causes his candy shell to stick to the ground. Likewise, he ultimately dies when his body is dissolved by his own Fondant Surprise being dumped on him.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Helen A seems to genuinely believe that being mindlessly joyful all the time is the best, and only, way to live; as such, she probably thinks that killing people who aren't happy enough is doing them a favour. It isn't until Fifi dies that Helen genuinely feels sadness and realizes that her whole philosophy is a pointless endeavour.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: A despairing Susan Q. admits she's nowhere near sadistic enough to be Happiness Patrol material, and thus expendable. "She won't shed any tears over me. Let's face it, no one will. Even if they wanted to, they wouldn't be allowed."
• World of Action Girls: Terra Alpha, given how the Happiness Patrol death squads are predominantly female and, as noted, are implied to get the best jobs and guns.
• Would Hit a Girl: The Kandyman quickly establishes himself this way when he's introduced to Ace, but he's quickly stopped by the Doctor distracting him: and then finds himself constantly going back-and-forth on which one to target when they keep taunting him intermittently.
  Doctor: She's come to look at your oven.
  (Ace grabs a nearby poker, and hides it behind her back while the Kandyman is not looking)
  Kandyman: Has she, indeed? Then she should wait to be asked. (stomps over to Ace and raises his hand) Impolite guests get to feel the back of MY CANDY HAND!
  Doctor: That may be so, Kandyman, but the last time we met, you said you were going to kill me!
  Kandyman: Really, Doctor? Thank you for reminding me.

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"Happiness will prevail!"

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