Freeform's Cruel Summer returns with a lukewarm second season: TV review

Limited series have become the equivalent of trial marriages for cable networks and streamers. When they don't catch fire (or initially heat up only to burn out at the end of the season), they complete their self-contained stories and disappear into the void. (Technically not a cancellation!) But when audiences fall in love with a limited series, the networks are more than happy to extend the track, even if it's narratively prohibitive.

That's the case with Freeform's "Cruel Summer," the clever and twisty teenage mystery that debuted in 2021 and has become the most-watched series since the network rebranded in 2016. Technically, "Cruel Summer" wasn't announced as a limited series, but it came to such a complete conclusion that extending it after its curly state might have reeked of desperation. After considering several options, including the return of the same ensemble as new characters, the producers opted to anthology the series, promising new stories and new actors each season.

Season 1 elements that survived Season 2 can now be considered the foundation of series. This takes place in the recent past, post-internet but pre-social media. There's always a fractured narrative that bounces back in time and features a pair of teenage girls with differing perspectives on traumatic events. There is also an underlying dialogue about what sexuality and consent look like for young adults who are just beginning to develop their sense of agency. "Cruel Summer" is essentially what "Damages" would have been had Glenn Close and Rose Byrne's characters met in 5th period pre-calculation rather than a corporate law firm.

This time the fateful encounter takes place in Chatham, an idyllic Pacific coastal town that replaces the idyllic suburban Texas from Season 1. Megan (Sadie Stanley) is an aspiring white-hat hacker with a lot on her plate between school, a part-time job at waiting tables, and a reverse relationship with her mother. fickle Debbie (KaDee Strickland). Debbie's latest capricious decision is to invite Isabella (Lexi Underwood) to join them in Chatham on an exchange student. When Isabella becomes interested in Megan's platonic best friend Luke (Griffin Gluck), a complex love triangle spirals out of control.

While the broad strokes of "Cruel Summer" are all covered, based on the screened seven episodes for critics, Season 2 lacks the layers and nuances that made the first season so engrossing. Take, for example, the series premiere's cold open, which established the show's rigid time-jumping format. The main character wakes up on her birthday three years in a row: the first, she is sweet and bookish; in the next, she is confident and elegant; and in the third, she is an isolated pariah who would have done better not to wake up at all. It's impossible to look at him and not be mildly curious about the events that led from one iteration of the character to the next.

Megan and Isabella's story uses the same format, but over a shorter time period. Rather than the year-long gap separating each storyline, the entire season takes place over a year, with a different iteration of Megan and Isabella's friendship in the summer of 1999, the winter of the same year, and the summer of 2000. (One of the best decisions was to make Y2K anxiety a mainstream theme.) But here, less doesn't look like more. It's a much smaller set with fewer supporting characters and side quests, but the story feels like it's shrunk with scope and cast. As strange as it may seem to criticize a mystery series for focusing too much on mystery, it is the failure of season 2, mainly because the core of the whodunit is not very interesting.

Performance isn't as strong either. Stanley, who remained a bright spot on "The Goldbergs" even as the show faded around her, is perfectly solid as Megan, as is Underwood as Lexi, though she was much better in her last. domestic thriller, "Little Fires Everywhere". But the actors have less to chew on in this relatively thin story and fewer opportunities to play different shades of the same character. (The exception is Paul Adelstein, a live thread as Luke's father.) None of the performances sound like a potential star like that of Chiara Aurelia and Olivia Holt in Season 1...