Season one of AMC’s NOS4A2 (an adaptation of the excellent Joe Hill novel) was a bit rocky, but there was so much hear in the good vs. evil tale, that as a viewer, it was easy to look past its faults. We were given such a layered and fleshed out protagonist in Vic (Ashleigh Cummings) and one devious villainous vampire in Charlie Manx (Zachary Quinto), each actor giving 200% to a tale of a fractured woman being enticed by evil and finding her place within the first season, leading up to a really finale in which we assumed Vic defeated Manx and saved children the vampire had stolen and brought into his world.
When we catch up with the aftermath of season one, we’re given a good almost decade later, in which the season begins giving us as viewers the assumption that all is finally well. Obviously, it’s not whatsoever. The first couple of episodes, NOS4A2’s second season allows us as viewers to see what happens to survivors of trauma and horrible events, something that is great to see. Then issue is, that the show’s second season doesn’t make much of it. Vic is eventually resurrected and pretty annoyed by having been beaten by Vic and the second half of the season is mostly about stripping away any normalcy that our heroine had attained.
The problem lies in how all over the place season two’s writing is. What made Hill’s novel so great is how we were able to connect with its characters, good and bad, making the story something enthralling to experience, but with the second go around of the TV series, a lot of that magic is lost, replaced with threads of story that seem to became frayed as the season goes on, and when we’re supposed to feel bad about the direction the show goes in later in the season, we’re instead just kind of asking ourselves, “Really?…is THAT it?”.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Unfortunately, with the Blu-ray release of NOS4A2’s second season, we’re not given much in the area of supplemental material. A comic-con panel and a few short EPK-like docs involving your typical talking heads saying how great it is to work on the show and so on, but a more in depth look at why the season took the directions it took would have been welcomed.
If you’re a completist and already have the first season on DVD/Blu-ray, you might pick this one up just to have it, but with such a fractured and somewhat misfire-heavy second season and the lack of much in the supplemental area, you might want to pass on this one.
There’s enough to stay on board with on this season, but the direction the show goes and how inconsistent the threads end up being, it runs the risk of losing viewers. Here’s hoping for a return to form with season three.
