So I think it's fair to say that this episode was an improvement over the premiere, regardless of your opinions on the premiere. I realise that I was in the minority last week for being a little mixed on it, but I have to admit this episode went a long way towards solving some of the show's issues.
Last week's premiere struggled in many of the scenes in which Mac was trying to simply readjust to life at home. There was a sameness to every one of these scenes with minimal tonal variance, and it stranded Logan Marshall-Green, who gave a solid but a little one-note performance. This episode continued to prove the show is at its best when entirely focused on its crime aspects, but the quieter Mac scenes were far more interesting this time round, as Marshall-Green was given more to do other than brood silently. One example of this is when he went to see his father's wife Susan, Mac's casually menacing tone giving us a side to the character we hadn't seen up until that point.
The second episode of a show is always interesting. The pilot gives showrunners a chance to show off a little and grab viewers, but in the second episode, a show has to start behaving like a TV show. And this episode does just that, primarily by introducing two cops who are looking into the death of Arthur, as well as the seemingly accidental death of Joni's lover, Cliff. The cop side of the show is hardly original, but at this point, I think some more traditional storytelling is welcome after the slow, meandering pilot.
This episode also tried to add some depth to the show's primary female characters, Joni and Ruth, Arthur's widow. I didn't mention Ruth in last week's review, simply because she didn't make much of an impact. But here she's given more of a spotlight, and while the character is still underdeveloped, I really enjoyed the performance of Nikki Amuka-Bird in the role.
I'm starting to like Joni a little more, mostly due to Jodi Balfour's excellent performance. She was especially great in the scene in which Joni was being questioned by the cops, as Mac's involvement in Cliff's death slowly began to sink in. But the character is still too defined by her relationship with Mac and has yet to stand out much as a character in her own right. I did like the decision to bookend the episode with the tapes Mac and Joni left for each other when he was in Vietnam, as it really helped convey the love they had/have for each other, and how Joni's infidelity hurt that.
But as I said earlier in the review, this show really comes alive when it's fully committed to being a hard-boiled crime drama, i.e pretty much every time Damon Herriman is on-screen as Buddy. The dynamic between Mac and Buddy is slowly becoming one of the show's strongest aspects, and the two attending a gun deal which quickly goes bad leads to the standout moment of the show so far, starting with a really well-executed shoot-out, which was then followed by a brilliantly directed car chase. The car chase itself wasn't anything spectacular, but the fact that it was all shot in one take from inside Mac's car made it an incredibly immersive experience.
Grade: B
So as you can see I gave this episode a grade, which I'm going to start doing for all of my reviews from now on. This is something I do at my blog, but have yet to do at Spoiler TV. What do you guys think? (Also, I probably would've given last week's premiere a B-)
