"Homecoming," Year Two

Minor spoilers for the first season.

Amazon's "Homecoming" is one of those shows that probably should have stayed a limited series. Its primary selling points were its star, Julia Roberts, and its director, Sam Esmail. Neither are involved with the second season, though writers Eli Horowitz & Micah Bloomberg remain onboard. Esmail has been replaced by the perfectly serviceable Kyle Patrick Alvarez, while our leading lady is now Janelle Monae, playing a new character, Jackie.

Jackie wakes up in a rowboat on a lake, with no memory of who she is or how she got there. A string of clues and encounters leads her to believe that she was with a man named Alex who attacked her, and there's some connection to the company Geist, which was behind the Homecoming program in the first season. Returning cast members include Hong Chau as Audrey Temple, who has been bumped up to almost a co-lead, and Stephan James as Walter Cruz. A few other familiar faces make brief appearances. New characters include Geist's founder Leonard (Chris Cooper), and a Department of Defense representative, Bunda (Joan Cusack).

It's rare that a puzzle box mystery series unfolds quite as mechanically as this season of "Homecoming" does. The first two episodes (of seven) show Jackie working her way from the boat to the offices of Geist, uncovering one odd thing after another, and setting up a series of questions. Who was trying to call her when she accidentally dropped her phone in the lake? Why did she and Alex have a fight the previous day in a local bar? Why is there a cantaloupe in Alex's hotel room? The next four episodes set about showing us exactly what happened through flashbacks and answering all those questions. The revelations are neatly spaced out enough to be satisfying over multiple episodes, but there's also a maddening shallowness to the narrative. "Homecoming" feels too preoccupied with plot mechanics to really give enough time and attention to its characters. And that's frustrating, because there's no shortage of acting talent here, and the setup has plenty of potential.

With only seven half-hour episodes this year (down from ten), the show is streamline down to the essentials. It doesn't have many pauses in the action, and there are barely any notable side characters. It maintains a sinister mood and keeps the established storytelling device of ending every episode on an extended static shot - sort of a visual ellipsis. However, I came away from this season feeling like I hadn't gotten to know Jackie and Audrey nearly as well as I should. There's a big, audacious ending that doesn't quite feel earned, because the show doesn't spend enough time with Walter Cruz.

The show retains its high production values, and accomplishes the rare trick of being accessible to newcomers, because its mystery is fairly self-contained. However, it never manages the same degree of thrills or is nearly as visually or aurally striking as the first season. Losing Julia Roberts was unfortunate, but Sam Esmail's exit had a much bigger impact on the show. Gone are the Hitchcock and Kubrick influences, and the stylistic idiosyncrasies that remain feel like they're just there to maintain consistency with the first season.

The performances are still good enough that they make the season worth the watch. Janelle Monae is very good, playing two different sides of the same coin to great effect. While I like the Audrey character here, and Hong Chau does a nice job of giving her some moral shading, I also think that taking her in a more conventional direction from the previous season is a bit of a disappointment. Cooper and Cusack both managed to make the best of their limited screentime, and I wish that we'd gotten more of them.

"Homecoming" was such an unusual, singular series when it premiered, and I'm not surprised that the new season is much less ambitious and seems to have lost a great deal of nerve. It often feels more like a side-story or a half-hearted epilogue than a proper continuation. For those who enjoy mystery shows and for fans of the main actors, it has its charms, but they're pretty minor ones. If Amazon wants the series to continue, they have some work to do.
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