It's sassy and smart, but there's a dark acuity to the humor that fits in with MTV's recent edgy efforts like Awkward.

Happyland is definitely a fun show with a lot of original potential. It just needs to trust itself and the ingredients it has already in the stew before going for outlandish soap opera stories over grounded character-based work.

A comedy with a fair amount of melodrama mixed in. The comic parts--fistfights between costumed characters, cattiness in the costume room, training sessions with militarylike intensity--can be pretty funny.... The melodrama is more uneven.

Santos very nicely balances her conflicting roles as the kid who wants to experience life and the teenager who finds she has become the mother. We’re rooting for her, the same way we root for the teens in other MTV dramas. The network does this stuff well.

Fans of teen soaps may enjoy Happyland for the lark that it is but veterans of the genre may also move on quickly: Even the happiest place on earth gets old after a while, and the same goes for what’s ultimately a likeable but fairly generic series.

The show saddles its mix of comedy and soap-like drama with tired, well-telegraphed twists and on-the-nose dialogue.

Actually, the show is so bland, it feels better suited for ABC Family