The Netflix comic adaptation returns for a second season of cheeky action / comedy montages, time travel paradoxes, and pending apocalypse.
Netflix’s The umbrella academy It is the story of a dysfunctional family with a variety of superpowers who occasionally find a way to combine their talents to do remarkable things, but far more often fall victim to their own egos and insecurities, bringing the world closer to the brink of an apocalypse.
The show occasionally finds a way to harness the powers of a solid cast and tremendously talented crew to deliver almost surprisingly good television moments, but far more often it falls victim to boring characterizations and repetitive stylistic choices. The latest trends make it interchangeable with super anti-hero teams like Doom patrol, Boys or Legends of tomorrow.
When we left the dysfunctional sages of the Academy, they had just neutralized the violinist who manipulated sound waves Vanya (Ellen Page) to avoid an apocalypse, only to accidentally activate another one when massive pieces of the moon began to break apart and hit Earth. Using his inconsistent ability to manipulate time and space, Number Five (Aidan Gallagher) can pull his adoptive family away from the disaster in 2019, only to accidentally drop each one of them in the same Dallas alley at different individual points. in a three-year period leading up to the murder of JFK. Number five actually arrives on November 25, 1963, and is shocked to discover that he is in the midst of a World War III instigated by Russia, so he has to go back and reunite the gang to avoid the apocalypse they caused. by avoiding the apocalypse they caused. preventing the apocalypse.
You with me?
Diego (David Castañeda), who throws knives, has been thrown into a madhouse along with the mysterious Lila (Ritu Arya); the amazing Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) has become a kind of civil rights organizer; Klaus (Robert Sheehan) has become something of a cult leader (with Justin Min’s Ben still a ghost); Luther (Tom Hopper) is using his super strength (and his ape torso) to uncover the knuckle box colluding with a famous figure from the Kennedy assassination; and Vanya is on a farm, where she befriended a frustrated housewife (Marin Ireland) with a troubled son.
The details of how these characters got to where they are and how Number Five will bring them together is the momentum of the season, which only occasionally seems to be happening alongside the time travel saga of the murder of Stephen King (and Hulu) Kennedy. 11/22/63.
There are parts of Umbrella Academy, based on the Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá comic series and supervised by Steve Blackman, which seems impressive to me. Overall, it’s an engaging and well-produced show, and there are scenes that capture the energy and dynamic range of the comic book frame as well as anything you’ve seen on television.
I am also a fan of the characteristic motif of the show, the action scene or the montage with an ironic or semi-ironic selection of the soundtrack. Nothing in the second season equals the catharsis dance ensemble in “I Think We’re Alone Now”, but damn if they don’t keep trying, at a rate of two or three per episode, one of which generally feels free while the another is usually the highlight of the hour. I especially liked a warehouse fighting game for Spencer Davis Group’s “I’m a Man,” as well as a series of well-choreographed failures for a boy band classic.
Another thing I actively love Umbrella Academy It’s the locker room, especially for Kate Walsh’s The Handler, last seen heavily shot, which doesn’t have to be an impediment in a show that includes time travel and ghosts. Those costumes are part of the show’s often nutty cartoon, which produces inspirational snapshots, like the new authority figure on the Commission who has a fishbowl containing a giant goldfish per head.
The performances in Umbrella Academy They’re a mixed bag, especially since my two favorite pieces from the first season were Cha-Cha by Mary J. Blige and Hazel by Cameron Britton, both absent. I forget about Luther and Diego whenever they’re off screen, and while Hopper and Castañeda are decent when the show allows them to find humor in the personality of their characters’ tough characters, all too often they are used for psychology exercises. weak and weak. in the pathos
Page is actually the only main cast actor to successfully achieve the dramatic rhythms that fall elsewhere. Gallagher is very good at the hard part of a fifty-something man trapped in the body of a school boy. Sheehan is a skilfully skilled physical comedian and when Klaus is written like that it is a lot of fun to watch him.
I think Raver-Lampman is the most frustrating part of the cast, because she is a very observable actress and the show has no idea what to do with her, adding and removing parts of her character without any consequence. She’s caught in the worst part of the second season as Umbrella Academy writers seem determined to remind us how cleverly Watchers – the best of super antihero teams – covered the history of race relations in the United States. the Watchers The secret seems to have been two things: narrative centrality and specificity. Umbrella Academy It makes Allison dabble in the Civil Rights movement in the season’s “F” or “G” plot, so essentially marginalized and irrelevant to the point of being close to the offense.
And even closer to the offensive is the way the Civil Rights movement is treated with a hollow nebula: a sit-in comes as a novelty in 1963, when the Civil Rights movement actually moved from that tactic after 1960, and almost without taking into account anything that is really happening in Dallas at the time. It is bad writing, particularly when the provocative comment on the elimination of black women in the Civil Rights movement was there to explore.
Still, I saw season two with a good sense of what the entire main narrative was and what the characters were looking to accomplish, which was definitely not the case during the first season. That clarity made it easier to focus on the parts of the show I loved and let my interest waver when it came to the things I could take or leave. So that’s an improvement.
Cast: Tom Hopper, David Castaneda, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Robert Sheehan, Ellen Page, Aidan Gallagher, Justin H. Min, Ritu Arya, Yusuf Gatewood, Marin Ireland
Creator: Created for TV by Steve Blackman, developed by Jeremy Slater, from the Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba comics
It premieres Friday, July 31 on Netflix.
