Last week, Sam Adams rather presciently floated the idea of the success of a series’ second season being infinitely more important than that of its first. Indeed, as we head into August and the final stretch of this summer TV season, that theory has proven useful in assessing the state of various sophomore shows currently pushing through the July heat.
Of the three programs I’m speaking of here, the lowest-profile is certainly Casual. A Hulu premiere last year, the half-hour series primarily showcased a minor comeback for directing producer Jason Reitman and a stellar lead performance from comic actress Michaela Watkins. While beginning in familiarly uneven fashion, it built into a thoughtful family saga, boasting compelling character dynamics, strong acting and fine cinematography. In Watkins’ Valerie Myers, creator Zander Lehmann provided a fascinatingly ordinary heroine: a middle-aged divorcee navigating the waters of digital dating and virtual interaction. In her brother Alex, played by Tommy Dewey, the show presented an irritable – albeit well-drawn – representation of contemporary social anxieties, manifested out of a troubled upbringing. And the third prong to Casual, Valerie’s daughter Laura (Tara Lynn-Barr), completed the puzzle, as a teenager struggling to balance her excessive maturity with the self-destructive tendencies typical of any person her age. The season’s end left the trio on an island, with nearly every bridge beyond them burned and even the links between them greatly tested.
The loosely plotted nature of Casual compelled fair questions about its longevity. But, brilliantly, Lehmann and his team have responded by attempting a most modest, understated second act. The heavy family dramatics that fueled the back-half of season one – culminating, among other things, in a botched suicide attempt – have not shifted the series’ paradigm. Its strength is in its observational moments, as ever – but with an even narrower focus on life’s minutiae, Casual is attaining surprising vitality. Valerie feeling out her first adult friendship in quite some time; Alex coming out of the darkest period of his life by revisiting old habits and old loves; Laura moving into her final years of adolescence by experimenting sexually, romantically and educationally – all are realized with such poignancy, such blissful subtlety that the degree to which they resonate is near-miraculous. Further, they inform one another, offering in cumulation an effective take on our modern notions of – and struggles with – real connection. Perhaps it’s because Casual operated so under-the-radar last year, but the restraint demonstrated throughout this sophomore campaign feels impressive – and rare.
This might be why I feel as much affection as I do for Casual right now, amid the Emmy nomination hoopla and ongoing conversations surrounding buzzed-about series. Getting attention is more difficult now than it used to be for quality television, and the choice to avoid more salacious or thinkpiece-friendly content is especially admirable in that context.
Or maybe I’m just comparing to the heinously indulgent second season of UnREAL, which after a promising first year and an even more promising start to its second has, outside of isolated moments, really lost itself. Lifetime’s foray into prestige programming was a risky and provocative effort from the get-go, as a critical take on the making of a fictionalized version of The Bachelor. Co-creators Marti Noxon, a TV veteran, and Sarah Gertrude-Shapiro, a Bachelor alum, powerfully drew out such reality programs’ ability to reduce human beings to abstractions; more specifically they presented two smart, powerful and cunning women using their intellect and persuasive abilities to humiliate other complicated women, by forcing their worst selves out on national television. The expression was aggressively feminist, intoxicating in its entertainment value and unsettling in its depiction of the making of a cultural phenomenon.
Key to the show’s success were a few principles: that the contestants of its Bachelor-esque series (titled Everlasting) would be shown to us as humans first, and then deconstructed as juicy television subjects second; that the shock value of the show-within-a-show machinations would not outweigh the commentary on social structures; and that the relationship between hardened mentor Quinn (Constance Zimmer) and impressionable (if also, increasingly jaded) mentee Rachel (Shiri Appleby) would remain the cornerstone of the series. The first season also had a somewhat significant legitimacy problem, from rather preposterous temporal constraints to the depths of darkness that the producers (of both UnREAL and Everlasting) would plumb. In thrilling and infuriating fashion, these issues kept UnREAL on shaky ground – elements inherent to its DNA.
What has happened to UnREAL this season speaks to a problematic relationship with “stakes.” Whereas a show like Casual built on its strong first season by smartly scaling back to keep its characters in-focus, UnREAL has done virtually the opposite. The thread between Rachel and Quinn remains the selling point, and amid the overcaffeinated plotting happening around them, the performances of Zimmer and Appleby still make for engrossing television. But with the second season nearly over, UnREAL has already tried – and failed – to integrate Black Lives Matter, the men’s rights movement and one too many love interests into the proceedings. The contestants this year are opaque on and off the Everlasting cameras; the only one of note, Ruby (Denee Benton), was forced into a premature exit and defined too singularly by her race. Most critically, the moral conflict at the show’s center has been replaced by soulless one-upping – and again, this goes for both UnREAL and Everlasting. It’s all too much being thrown at the wall, without enough sticking. The thematic bluntness of the show was to its benefit when kept to few core ideas; the clunkier integrations of race, romance and mental illness this season have rendered the show laughably on-the-nose, particularly regarding its borderline offensive take on police brutality. Some of this has been attributed to the departure of Noxon, a veteran hand credited with shaping the series’ many spinning arcs last year. While I dislike speculation of that kind, it’s hard not to compare the relatively controlled first season to where we are now.
UnREAL represented a major change of pace for television last year, revising the “antihero” trope through a feminist lens and placing Lifetime – a proudly chick-flick network – on the prestige map. Its parallel was Mr. Robot, a similarly ambitious new drama that received broader praise for its cyberpunk aesthetic, its unconventionally beautiful cinematography and its twisty scripts. UnREAL could claim the spikier and more complex narrative of the two, but in the end I found Mr. Robot to be the more cohesive, auspicious product. Both walked a tightrope, playing with genre and character in narrow boxes that could feel suffocating if not properly expanded. We’ve already witnessed the struggles UnREAL has had in that regard – and, disconcertingly, Mr. Robot might be headed in that direction too. As it bends reality and space while taking assertive stances against corporate America, Mr. Robot season two is risking preachiness and self-satisfaction at the expense of its art. Rami Malek remains a fascinating lead, and creator Sam Esmail is still crafting startling images behind the camera – but I wonder whether Robot, which took big swings and often connected last year, will be forced to learn the lesson of UnREAL, or will step back and play to its strengths, and make good on its potential. Fortunately, the jury’s still out. As this summer is proving, more can be less. Sometimes, it’s best to keep things casual.