The Happy Place

**The Happy Place** is the second episode in the second season of the Final Space series. It aired on June 1, 2019 on Adult Swim and July 8, 2019 on TBS.

## Plot

The crew gets trapped in a happy ship where things aren't what they seem, and Gary must confront the human cost of having lost earth.

## Summary

The episode opens with Gary, Little Cato, Nightfall, KVN and Mooncake discussing how to wrestle control over the Crimson Light from Clarence. Mooncake has an idea that Gary finds repulsive, and Nightfall volunteers to assassinate Clarence. Little Cato offers to claim the ship, the Ventrexian way, and Gary agrees. This however turns out to be marking all your property with urine. Gary is initially disgusted by it, but when Clarence and Fox try to counter Little Cato’s markings with their own urine, Gary joins Little Cato to take them on.

What follows is a lengthy showdown in which both sides try to out-piss each other, with a break in between where take a drink for more ammunition. Mooncake joins the fight with purple droppings. They only stop when A.V.A. reports a ship is approaching them. Gary considers the ship to be too ominous looking to be good, and thinks it’s wiser to run, but the Crimson Light is caught by the mysterious ship before it can lightfold. As the Crimson Light is being pulled into the ship, the crew arm themselves for a fight. However, the ship is manned by a bunch of cute looking aliens called the Fluffles, and their leader Hushfluffles. He welcomes the Team Squad to “The Happy Place”. Supposedly, a paradise.

Clarence, spotting a business opportunity, decides to pretend the ship is his, and sell it to an unsuspecting customer. The rest of the crew is given the chance to go to “their happy place”; a dreamworld where all your dreams and desires come true. Hushfluffles picks Gary to go first. When asked how he knows Gary’s name, Hushfluffles claims Gary is famous because he lost a planet. Nightfall doesn’t trust it however. Hushfluffles takes Gary to some sort of pod, and injects him with Hyper 7-6. Then the pod closes and is lifted into the sky, where multiple other pods are stored. A cable is attached to Gary’s neck.

Gary falls asleep, and finds himself in a dreamworld where he is an action hero that specializes in dance battles. He has anthropomorphic cookies as a wife and children. Dream-Gary is called back into duty to stop The Overlord and his army of Frost Bears, which only he can do. His wife and kids back him up, so Gary goes to the city, and takes out the Frost Bears with his dance moves. All goes smooth, except for some strange nosebleeds. The final bear standing informs Gary the Overlord took Gary’s wife and kids hostage. Gary kills the last bear and hurries to the Overlord to rescue his family. He locates the tyrant, and takes him on in an ultimate dance battle. With help of an army of antrophomorphic cookie-dancers, Gary beats the Overlord.

While all of this happens in the dream, Gary is slowly being drained of something through the cable. The rest of the Team Squad is being given a tour, but then Ash notices lots of shriveled corpses being dumped into space. Nightfall demands to know where Gary is, upon which the Fluffles show their true colors, and attack the team. The Team Squad escapes from them by fleeing into the sewers of the ship. They stumble upon a near-death man, who tells them the whole ship is a power plant that harvests the energy from people while they are in their happy place. Everything in the galaxy is powered with this energy.

Clarence meanwhile has found two potential buyers for The Happy Place: Tagaleechi and Fraskenhaur. He pits them against each other in a bidding war. The Team Squad finds a room filled with pods, and searches for Gary. They first find a pod containing Tribore, who is dreaming that he is a great resistance leader, and quickly wake him up. Tribore quickly realizes the danger and joins the search. In his own dream, just as Gary has rescued his family, Hushfluffles turns on him and kills them. He claims that Gary will now feel the way Hushfluffles felt. At that moment, Mooncake finds Gary’s pod, breaks through the glass, and disconnects the cable, instantly waking Gary.

Hushfluffles reveals himself to be a human named Todd H. Watson. His wife and son were still on Earth when it was pulled into Final Space; something he blames Gary for (based on Quinn’s last message to Gary before she detonated the anti-matter bomb). He opens fire on the team from the various pods. Meanwhile, after some bidding (with a third buyer named Raymond temporarily joining in), Fraskenhaur wins by offering Clarence Seventy million dropnoids. He insists however that Clarence seals the deal by shaking all of his dozens of hands. He is still doing so as the Team Squad fights itself a way back to the Crimson Light. H.U.E. is too slow, so KVN has to cary him. When Fraskenhaur insists Clarence shakes the arm from his rectum, Clarence decides to beat it and joins the others. The Crimson Light escapes The Happy Place, but Todd swears it won’t end here.

Some time later, Gary sits by himself on the bridge, feeling bad for what happened to the Earth and Quinn. The others ensure him it wasn’t his fault. They will get through this, as a Team Squad (although Gary isn’t sure yet he wants to include Fox and Ash in that Team Squad).

## Cast

* Olan Rogers as Gary, Mooncake and Tribore
* Conan O'Brien as Clarence
* Ashly Burch as Ash Graven
* Steven Yeun as Little Cato
* Tika Sumpter as Nightfall
* Fred Armisen as KVN
* Tom Kenny as H.U.E.
* Jane Lynch as A.V.A.
* Ron Funches as Fox
* Alan Tudyk as Todd H. Watson

## Final Thoughts

For behind the scenes of this episode, see https://www.adultswim.com/videos/final-space/final-thoughts-s-2-e-2.

## Trivia

* This episode, alongside The Toro Regatta premiered first on **The Soda Parlor**, Olan's hybrid retail place, during the party premiere ofSeason Two.
* Watched by 418.000 viewers when it premiered on Adult Swim.
* Currently the lowest rated episode on imdb, sitting at 7.4/10
* This was one of creator Olan Rogers least favorite episodes
* This episode was subjected to a lot of executive meddling. According to Olan Rogers, the original plan was for the episode to be set in a space arena. The Hyper 76 that Todd injects Gary with would have send Gary into an unstoppable rage, and cause him to fight Little Cato. That way, Todd’s revenge would have been watching Gary kill everything he loves.. Rogers also disliked the piss joke at the start of the episode, but the network executives forced him to put it in.

## References

1. ↑ My Season 2 Episode Rankings (no spoilers), Posted by
u/olanrogersofficial on Reddit
2. ↑ What the original episode 2 was supposed to be.
3. ↑ Olan Rogers comments on Reddit