Changing the terms of the agreement.

As La Brea returns, I recall that my thoughts on the close of series 1, in summary, were a lack of coherence and dwindling engagement with characters who do things that seem to make no sense even after ‘the big reveal’. Nevertheless, I thought it had legs and I was prepared to see where it went. That’s no longer the case.

I’m deeply unimpressed with the series 2 opener. Firstly, we get a recap and a lot of script input from Captain Exposition, which I’ll give it a pass for as it has to remind us where we are. Nevertheless I feel like the first series planning meeting was just everyone deciding that the pairings and teams that had been set up in the final episodes of series 1 wouldn’t work and they decided to make quick changes for the sake of the new directions they wanted to take the story in. The result is it feels both forced and rushed.

Don’t even get me started on the stupidity exhibited by some supposedly very clever characters. Putting your arms up and saying ‘steady’ to a massive prehistoric animal that’s about to chase you down? Ambushing (implausibly successfully) a tooled-up group of thugs that outnumber you in weaponry and number? Oh but we need these two people to be with the group of thugs, not this person. Oh OK then, that makes sense. I don’t like so obviously seeing the workings behind the curtain, it pulls me from the narrative.

Then there’s the suspiciously convenient plot points – it was clearly established in series 1 that the sink-holes were geographically specific. Nope, we can’t have the character with a broken artificial leg walk from Seattle to Los Angeles, it’ll take too long – so like magic, they’re actually in LA after all, isn’t that lucky?! Oh and it’s supposedly the next day but this person was stabbed but we need her to be ok so we’ll just say she healed quickly, that’ll do it. No one will notice, it’ll be fine.

I’m already annoyed by the time we get to a simple line that’s delivered in a way that changes the meaning of the sentence, rendering it nonsensical. That feels like a rookie mistake that could have easily have been fixed in post-production audio editing… or do they care as little as me by this point?

Maybe this was a necessarily expositional episode and they have excellent plans to follow up on the new directions the story is going in. Maybe there’s a good explanation for these things and I’m being unfair. Maybe I’ll eat my words by episode 4. I hope so, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Verdict: As we drop from the series 1 cliff-hangers into series 2, we break our legs on an outcrop of rock and land in a heap on the ground. It could be hard to continue. 3/10

Claire Smith