Season 2 vs Season 1

I feel that one of the issues I have with season 2 is the way it feels focused on just giving us the adrenaline rush of a narrative surprise.

I felt that with season 1 I got to experience the suspiciousness through the perspective of the characters. It felt like there was so much attention to detail in mirroring workplace dynamics, experiences with disrespect, questions of personal freedom, ways to cope with common struggles that we all deal with, and taking them to their logical extreme so that I can not only put myself in the shoes of the characters but ask be forced to ask some pretty philosophical questions about the society, economy, workplace, relationships I find myself (and we all find ourselves) in during our daily life.

It felt like we were right there with the characters feeling the confusion and slow realization they were having that something is wrong, and they need to find how to escape it. The same way some may feel when becoming disillusioned with their company, their religion, their family structure, their government, their society’s class structure. (It even showed us different coping strategies in our main characters; Helly fought her circumstances, Irv conformed, Dylan practiced mental escapism in little ways, and Mark stifled his inner feelings and wore a happy face).

Now it feels like it’s been flipped upside down, or maybe inverted is a better word, that we are being shown more overtly what is happening narratively and the characters are being used as narrative tools.

The feeling I get is no longer that I’m close up with the characters inside this world coping with its strangeness intimately, now I’m fully aware that I’m looking at my TV just trying to figure what the next big reveal is. The next plot point that will be progressed. But it’s starting to feel like it heading somewhere too obvious; the end of Lumon and the resolution of Mark’s arc. But I personally miss when the point of Mark’s story (at least the message I got) was to show us how people compartmentalize when they struggle to cope with grief in real life. Not when it was actually to find Gemma.

A lot of people won’t agree with me, and I’m not trying to convince anyone that they should not like this season or anything like that. Just speaking about how I feel like I’m watching something other than what originally got me interested. This season has made me feel more like a detached observer of a story that knows generally where it’s headed (obv not the specific details of how we’ll reach there) than a participant in a bizarre reality that is a metaphor for mine.

This is my personal opinion, if you don’t agree, maybe we just like different things. But don’t be one of those Reddit a-holes that thinks their personal interests are the law and anyone who sees things differently is necessarily wrong.

Excuse me if I’m not explaining my thoughts well, I’m a bit fried right now, lol