Yeah, they go some weird places. That’s what I love about the show. There are radical changes to the zombies both after the nukes and after the black rainbow. No fast zombies at the start though. At least not that I remember. Need to do a full rewatch at some point.
One thing I like about this so thus far is that it doesn’t have those cheap and sudden scare. They really made the environment suspenseful by just being empty and bright. It’s like how Bioshock Infinte is suspenseful in daylight. And this made you think a lot about what would you do if you were this person. And I thought a lot about holding up in a house. Lock yourself up, get yourself armed or something and just wait it out maybe? There doesn’t seem to be a ton of people around and most of them are on the move. So, staying put and locked up seems to be the most logical senses, no?
Checking this out on the strength of Hyams work in Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning.
This is really good! Just finished the episode where the guy is trying to escape the one zombie. The show is played dead straight so when he got the axe caught after 30 minutes of tense cat and mouse it was funny and I laughed, but in retrospect it let the tension out of the episode.
Yeah I really enjoyed that episode from memory - he spent the night on top of the bus or rv or whatever while the zombie prowled around not able to get up on the roof with him?
Overall the series was good so I’m looking forward to season 2.
Netflix tells me season 2 drops in the US this Thursday.
-Tom
Yeah. I’m pumped. Season 1 was the cat’s pajamas.
S2 is confusing. People killing people and I don’t know why which removes a lot of the tension.
Edit: Okay, it gets mostly explained later. Could not stop, watched it all.
Good to know…watched the first two episodes and saw it changed from Season 1’s everyone trying to help each other for the most part – and when they didn’t, the results felt magnified – to just another standard dystopia where mankind is once again the biggest threat in a world full of zombies.
Yeah it becomes more clear after ep 3. I am pretty sure now those characters were all new, and it was intentional choice to confuse people, and not that I just forgot season 1.
What I don’t remember at all is the importance of the Korean lady. Everyone wanted to kidnap her instead of just killing her.
Welp, once again episodic TV has broken my heart. There are some nice sequences in season two, and it certainly opens with a bang. In a way, I’m glad to see Hyams willing to use digital effects in a way that he wouldn’t or couldn’t in season one.
But overall, what a huge disappointment with almost none of the appeal of the first season. It’s partly the characters’ fault. The huge swirl of new cast members coming and going and coming again, and the four survivors it tracks from the first season spend most of the running time separated from each other. I did like some of the new characters.
It’s partly the fault of the script. The overall conceit of everyone chasing the airplane was great. But why so many long and ponderous conversations, whispers fraught with meaning, soap opera worthy reveals? Less blind terror from season one and more considered moral reckoning, worthy of Walking Dead. Sadly, Jaime King does not sell her new ruthlessness very convincingly, and ugh, the poor young woman who plays her daughter is just so flat and unexpressive (not to mention I’m bitterly disappointed that the end of season one wasn’t her imagination, and that, yes, her daugher was actually waiting for her in a huge abandoned stadium). I’m embarrassed how many episodes I watched without realizing Spears was Spears; I blame the beard. And as @wisefool mentions, it’s weird how Sun spends the entire season being captured for some indeterminate reason. As for Lance, well, Lance gonna Lance. At least his character felt consistent and didn’t get wrapped up in the unlikely coincidence of it all, which was bad enough in season one but was really turned up to 11 here. I guess it kind of works with the airplane as a nexus for all the characters.
It’s partly the direction. It feels less confident. They actually have music in season two. They’re scored the action, just barely, but enough to make sure you know how to feel during a scene rather than trusting the actors to carry it. There wasn’t any music in season one, was there? Just the creepy cicada sounds, right? But there’s an actual score here from time to time, and I didn’t really need it. And way too many overly talky scenes. There are entire episodes in season one with almost no dialogue. But here, everyone has a lot to say and they’re going to take their time saying it. Which leads me to my next complaint:
So much padding! A strong opening, and a decent final episode, but then there are the six episodes in the middle, turgid and uninspired and narratively tangled for no good reason. Season one of Black Summer shuffled the narrative around to show the breadth of what was happening. It felt like the action was willing to split into a “Meanwhile, over here, this horrible thing is happening…”. But season two constantly feels like “Oh, hold on, let me back up and explain this thing here that you don’t know about yet…” It was almost like the flashbacks in Lost rather than a way to set up concurrent complex scenes, like the heist episode in season one.
So, season two of Black Summer gets a big thumbs down from me. :(
-Tom
Well that is a shame. Thanks for taking one for the team!
Note that I’m not trying to wave anyone off! If you’ve seen the first season, you might as well follow through. And there are some top-notch action sequences, especially the opening episode and the closing episode. The chase in the closing episode is pretty darn amazing. John Hyams’ single-camera masterclass choreography with an exhausting physical performance from one of the actors and just the right amount of digital manipulation from his post-production team.
Also, be sure to look out for the appearance of Cones of Dunshire: The Card Game, which is a minor plot point.
-Tom
Well I’m in episode 8 and someone should have waved me off :(
I think I ended up liking it over all. The dialogue was vague a bit too often and so I couldn’t tell if that was simply how Canadians conversed with one another during an Apocalypse or if some scenes are just going to be a little confusing because that’s what happens sometimes when you improv a conversation. All I know is that I kept wondering who writes likes that.
Just finished season 2, and I liked it more than season 1.
There was still plenty of nonsense decisions, but I like the grim brutality of survivors fighting over scarce resources. The character arc of Spears from S1 to S2 was wonderful…
Not perfect, but would recommend.
I tried watching this, and just couldn’t get in to it. It felt really flat and lacking in progress. Just people aimlessly running about.
Holy smokes S2 E1 was action packed! Watching characters panic and make really bad decisions because a former human is trying to eat them never gets old apparently.
Hey guy driving with the zombie on the roof, hit the brakes and then run his zombie ass over! Except he’s panicked and crashes instead. Lemons - totally see it coming and yet would be disappointed had it not played out the way it did.
You’re in for another treat in the final episode. Now you just gotta plow through the intervening six episodes…
-Tom
There is some of that, but I think you might not have gotten to the season’s connective tissue, which is the airplane. Ultimately, it did a pretty good job of pulling together what felt like a lot of disparate narrative threads.
-Tom