The second season of TNT’s “Snowpiercer” improves on the lackluster first year by giving the show a much-needed antagonist and opening it up in terms of world-building and depth of character. Having said that, it still succumbs to a serious midseason sag in terms of momentum and increasingly feels like a transitional piece of the track in terms of the entire arc of this show, playing with themes that it won’t really be exploring until a third or maybe even fourth season. Most of all, it’s a program that’s too often cluttered with characters who constantly say what they need and what they’re going to do to get it. Strong new performances, a series-best pair of episodes to start the season, and a great showcase for one of its best stars in episode six make this 8-episode run the best of “Snowpiercer” yet but it’s still a show that hasn’t quite found its track.
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The first season of “Snowpiercer” was relatively faithful to the 2013 Bong Joon-ho film based on the graphic novel by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, and Jean-Marc Rochette. The titular train carries what is left of humanity after a climate crisis turned it into a frozen wasteland. Hundreds of cars long, it is perpetually moving around this dead planet, and it has become a reflection of society with the people at the back of the train (known as the “tailies”) struggling to get what they need from the have-nots at the front of the train. A have-not named Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs) ended up the leader of his people, butting heads with Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly), the woman in charge. There was a murder mystery, a few betrayals, and a shocking revelation at the end of the season when Snowpiercer ran into another train and Melanie’s thought-dead daughter Alexandra (Rowan Blanchard) emerged from the fog.
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Naturally, the other train—known as “Big Alice”—is the focus of season two, particularly its two main occupants, Alexandra and Mr. Wilford (Sean Bean), the Wizard of Oz of this enterprise. Melanie hadn’t let the train passengers know that their leader, the train’s designer, wasn’t even aboard, and his arrival completely changes the tenor of season two by giving it a scenery-chewing villain. As played by Bean, Wilford is a power-hungry sociopath, a man who mentally abuses everyone around him, and has been doing exactly that to Melanie’s daughter for seven years. At the start of season two, there’s an interesting mystery about Wilford and Alexandra’s past and futures that gives the show entirely new energy. It helps that both actors are very good. Blanchard sells the arc of a girl who blames her mother for leaving her behind but knows she still needs her too. Bean knows exactly what to do here, leaning into a brand of wealthy smarm that the character needs to work. He gives the show some of the teeth it was missing in season one.
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The show gets some needed new thematic density to start the season as well. Big Alice is much smaller than Snowpiercer but stronger and with more supplies, making it a pretty clear metaphor for the 1%. Eventually, it becomes clear that Big Alice has a problem: a lack of food. And so a structure is put in place where the trains become symbiotic despite the continued tension between Wilford and the rest of his hurtling creation. At the same time, Melanie’s excursion outside of the train at the end of last season led to another major cliffhanger in the existence of snow, which should be impossible at the Earth’s low temperatures. She spends much of this season trying to figure out how it’s not.
“Snowpiercer” was a show with style but nowhere near the substance of Bong’s film, and that’s still largely true. After introducing Bean and Blanchard into the mix in a solid pair of episodes, the writing falls back to its old routines for the next few hours, almost as if the writers don’t know where to go next or what to do with some of their supporting characters. They introduce an old flame of Wilford’s into the story in a way that’s never really effective, and even start-up another murder mystery, this one for Bess (the effective Mickey Sumner) to solve.
The truth is that uncertainty is a major theme of season two—Layton isn’t certain who to trust, Ruth (Alison Wright) isn’t certain who to follow, Alexandra isn’t certain about her mother’s intentions—and that can make for a show that feels uncertain itself. And the writing here just isn’t strong enough to dig into that kind of theme confidently. For example, it raises ideas like how even revolutions end up with privileged power structures as Layton has become a de facto Wilford of sorts for the tail, but then it moves on to some other plot point or character that’s less interesting. It can be an incredibly frustrating show in how often it feels on the verge of connecting the dots but then starts drawing something else. There are great ideas at play, but they too often remain just ideas, not themes embedded into character or plot.
One of the reasons for that is that “Snowpiercer” often suffers from a self-seriousness that drains it of recognizable human behavior. Of course, no one expects a show about a never-stopping train to be a deep character study, but it’s remarkable to consider how much the characters in Bong’s two-hour movie felt more lived-in than the ones in 18 episodes and counting on TNT. There are so many elements here that work from the ensemble to the craft, but the writing often serves as an anchor on this train, slowing its momentum and potential.
There are two episodes left in the second season of “Snowpiercer” not screened for press, and the first season ended in a manner that really worked, tying together some themes while leaving great cliffhangers for the next year. Maybe that will happen again. The big question is how many viewers will still be on board when the show reaches that destination. [C+]