TV Obsessive
NOS4A2 Season 2
Brien: Last Sunday, NOS4A2 Season 2 premiered on AMC, and every indication is that this season is going to be just as great as last season. Admittedly, I am a bit biased. The show is carrying a 6.7/10 rating on IMDB and an audience score of 68% of Rotten Tomatoes, so it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. The series is based on Joe Hill’s novel of the same name. In case you are somehow unaware, Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King, who has strongly inherited both his father’s looks and writing style.
The show centers on a battle between two “strong creatives,” Victoria McQueen (Ashleigh Cummings) and Charlie Manx (Zachary Quinto). Strong creatives are able to manifest supernatural abilities through a particular meaningful object, referred to as their “knife.” Vic can find people or objects, transported directly to them by riding her motorcycle (an upgrade from Season 1’s dirt bike). Manx’s knife is also a vehicle, an antique 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith, which allows him to feed on the psychic energies of children and remain immortal.
At the end of Season 1, Vic defeated Manx, leaving him aged and in a coma. The battle cost both of them their knives, and also the life of Vic’s boyfriend and father of her yet to be born baby. Season 2 picks up the story eight years later, which I think is a spectacularly bold move. The first episode is titled “Bad Mother,” not because that is intended to continue on to the implied explicative, but rather because Vic herself has turned out to be a bad mother to her son, Wayne. The events of Season 1 left her a mess, and she still has it in her mind that she is the one destined to kill Charlie Manx.
When news reports tell of Manx finally passing in a prison hospital, she literally burns bridges in her life to get to him and find out the truth. Manx has actually died, but of course it doesn’t last long, as his faithful henchman has simultaneously tracked down the Wraith and begins to restore it, restoring Manx in the process. Manx’s own offspring, daughter Millie, is front and center in the first scene of Season 2, and the second episode titled “Good Father” promises to explore their relationship.
Now, I will admit, the show can get corny in that way that Stephen King / Joe Hill novels often times do. But as always, once you accept and look past the premise, it’s the characters that make their stories worth reading and/or watching. Cumming’s Vic McQueen was so compelling last season, as a teen caught between her quarreling parents, striving to get out of a dead-end life, and fighting mental demons that were every bit as bad as the physical ones. Zachary Quinto was also clearly having a ball playing a bad guy again, bringing the same quiet, menacing intensity that he brought to his role as Sylar on Heroes.
NOS4A2 wrapped up filming just before the pandemic quarantines kicked in, making it one of an ever scarcer pool of new content on television right now. Both seasons consist of 10 episodes, making it fairly easy to binge Season 1 now and get caught up so that you can be watching Season 2 week-by-week (sorry, but I’m old school and will forever favor the latter). I highly recommend checking it out, especially if you are a Stephen King fan.
Those are our recommendations this week! What are yours? Let us know in the comments!
