Alright, so after my initial post on this series, I thought maybe my views of “The Umbrella Academy” were a little tainted. After all, I’d been watching a couple of other shows beforehand that were just not working for me, and it’s not my typical type of show. Plus, I feared that I was becoming cynical just because I’d watched enough shows to see story arcs and things play out, and I was afraid that I would be too quick to judge a decent story arc as contrived. So I was actually looking forward to giving this second season a chance, with a fresh mind on it. There was so much potential in season one that I was hoping to see play out. But now I can confirm: season two is actually worse than season one, because it was exactly the same but it had some woke agenda thrown in. So I’m gonna try to type this thing out real quick and get it over with.
So, first of all, I could tell that the show is running on thin ice and unsure of whether they could get a season three. They couldn’t even get the actress back to play Agnes, and they didn’t even get any confirmed actors to play the Sparrow Academy kids at the end, which they most certainly would have if they were going for a season three without a doubt.
But at least we got some questions answered from season one that I was wondering about and figured they would never answer, like why Grace was a robot, why Pogo could talk, stuff about Reginald’s history that was hinted at last season but then never followed up on. I wish that had been more of a focus, maybe with the opportunity to jump around in time all over the place and find out about their family’s history. That could’ve played nicely with the Commission trying to track them all down through various points in time. I’m not sure how closely to the comics they were trying to stay, but I heard that they changed quite a bit, so I’m not sure why that wouldn’t have been a viable option.
And something like time jumping and discovering at least a few more details on the family’s history would’ve probably done wonders to the extremely slow, plodding pacing and buildup. I get delayed gratification in storytelling, but for some reason the UA thinks that just putting in random action scenes every episode keeps the plot driving forward, but I was realising sometime during episode six that the gang had done almost nothing of substance for the entire season. And why would they have when the plot was so straightforward that there was nothing for them to do? It was actually the same general setup as last season, and Vanya causing mass destruction for good this time to mirror her evil deeds last year didn’t really excuse the repetition of the story.
Then we got this random family of Carl, Sissy, and Harlan. Carl is a bit of a jerk sometimes because he has a bit of an ego, and he does have a vice in his indulgence of drinking, but he’s made out to be the devil incarnate, and he has dialogue forced in haphazardly to make him seem worse than he actually is. He’s hardworking to provide for his family, and he’s loyal to his wife, even with the taxing task of taking care of their special needs son. It’s definitely true that he can be neglectful of his family’s needs at times and it’s very lightly implied that his love for his family may have run cold, but he’s still determined to provide for them and give them as good a life as he can, even if for selfish reasons. He sounds pretty average, honestly. And he made good points about having to compete for his wife’s attention all the time, wanting to put Harlan in a facility with professional care and education, and, as I already said, working hard and staying faithful. Other than the fact that he was a white guy with a Southern accent (you ever notice how calling white characters automatically bad always goes down easier when they have a Southern accent?), I’m not sure why he was made out to be so awful. Was he beating his wife off-screen and I just missed it? He even had a fair point telling Vanya to leave in private, even if, again, he did it in an egotistical way.
If you’re wondering why he did that, let’s talk about the worst story arc I’ve ever seen for who used to be my favourite Hargreeves family member. Vanya, after having a great and unexpected story arc, which was actually one of the best parts about season one, she was driven into the ground when she and Sissy, Carl’s wife and Harlan’s mom, randomly fall in love after like a year of living together and suddenly it’s driving Vanya’s entire character. There was no point to it other than making Vanya bisexual, and it didn’t serve the story. In fact, it made it worse. Klaus’ sexual orientation has always served the story and his character, and his love story in Vietnam last season developed his character and actually helped to turn him from a clown into someone the audience could take seriously. Vanya, on the other hand, became emotional goo and made a bunch of really stupid decisions, abandoning her reserved and wiser nature that we all loved last year and just going off the deep end. It was like watching a totally different character.
None of the other characters had this kind of a trash arc with the random people they had associated with in the early years of their stay in the 1960s. Like, imagine if Luther, upon finding out that Allison was married, went and made out with his boss, and they randomly started a relationship. Wouldn’t make any sense, right? But Vanya, still reeling after losing the love of her life last season, nannies for Sissy for a solid year, making Sissy her boss, and then randomly starts a relationship with her, and it drove the story significantly. I would love to hear an explanation of how Vanya’s arc had any merit whatsoever.
Of course, it was 1963, so this once-action-driven show had to be loaded up with lots of civil rights talk and make every single white cop ever born out to be the spawn of Satan. Naturally, there’s nothing wrong with fiction portraying the civil rights movement and the difficulty of black life during that time, but it’s not what I signed up for when I went to watch a time travel superhero show. They tried to do the Greensboro lunch counter bit, but that was in North Carolina, not Texas, and it didn’t turn into a riot involving half the city’s population, for heaven’s sake. It was too much agenda in a show that didn’t have much of any when it started. But I should’ve known better than to think any show in 2020 could go five minutes without woke crap in it.
I liked Five, of course, and I’m glad they let him drive the show, though I could’ve done with more Klaus; he was shoved in the background for those last couple of episodes. And Ben had a nice sendoff too… which was invalidated at the end, but who cares. Also, their dad is an alien somehow, and now I can never take this show seriously again. All the family drama and psychological considerations of Reginald’s parenting are now just completely worthless, because the answer to everything is now “alien”. I really just wanted more time travel. If there was a spinoff show just about Five, his life and times, and working against the Commission, that would be an infinitely better show than the UA.
And one more thing I’ve got to mention is the music. They got Jeff Russo, one of the biggest names in TV scoring right now (think “Fargo” and the current Star Trek series’), but they don’t use his music for alot of the important stuff. They just license popular music, mostly really bad covers (like the very humourous Swedish cover of “Hello” and the worst cover of “Bad Guy” I’ve ever heard… and remember, this season takes place in the 60s), and they rarely use Russo’s incredible talents for anything of significance. Only for piddling little scenes and then actually some real action and emotional bits at the very end did Russo actually get to flex his muscles. Most of the time the licensed music doesn’t fit, and it’s always just a fadeout with no end. I don’t know what Russo thinks about this, but if I was the main composer on a flagship Netflix series and then I composed like five minutes’ worth of music for a 45-minute episode, I’d probably be slightly offended. Russo’s also a rock guitarist, which means that he could’ve just as easily written better songs than the licensed ones but in the same style, and they would’ve fit better, and he could also have written the orchestral stuff that was actually in there. Let the guy stretch a little.
I think a big problem with this show is that the people working on it think it demands the respect that “Stranger Things” does, when it’s really only slightly above “Lost in Space” (which I also had problems with last year). “Stranger Things” earned its following; you can see the first season holding back a bit, giving reasons to want to like it rather than assuming that the viewer must already like it. But the UA just goes headlong and presumes to think that you probably like it regardless, because why wouldn’t you? But there are actually quite a few reasons. And, much like I said about season one, this show is painfully average, and it’s not the worst show, but it’s not fantastic either, and it only touches on the surface of what it could be and leaves most of its potential just sitting there. Altogether it makes for an extremely lukewarm experience, and if that sounds unpleasant… it is.
There’s more I could say. So much more. But in the end, the point is to just skip it. It’s not worth your time. It’s just not. It could be an insane show, like nothing we’ve ever seen before, but it’s not. It’s not that good. Move on. I think I might.
One Man and His Banjo 