Watching: Will Trent S2

2024, Disney

Wrote about Season 1 in the old TV format. I cannot recall if we didn't bother watching this week-to-week for a reason or just forgot about it until it appeared, in full, on Disney. Most of the shows we write about here have a seasonal continuity, but in procedural police shows, everything after season one, and the background being set, the season often ends being mostly a "and this happened" and "that happened" tied together by some tenuous threads or theme.

What 100. Will researches his mother's family, while also dealing with the vision of his younger self and the guilt of not being able to save one of his foster moms. Ormewood deals with the consequences of being an asshole to his entire family. Angie deals with the consequences of getting too involved with a victim. Amanda's past comes back to haunt, shaking Faith's ... faith in her. Its a mixed bag season focused on family and not an easy thing to summarize, as character based procedurals tend to be.

1 Great. Honestly, its the theme of the season -- making family from the people you love. Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez, Battle Los Angeles) was the product of a serial rapist/killer, rescued by a cop but lost to the state foster system. In there, as a child, he connected with Angie (Erika Christensen, Parenthood), and they dealt with life's worst. She's a recovering addict, in an on and off again relationship with Will. They are both each other's greatest strengths and weaknesses. Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin, Quantico) is a classic overt-machismo cop who cheats on his wife and is distant from his kids, until his wife has a breakdown and leaves him. Faith (Iantha Richardson, This Is Us) is Will's single mom partner raising an adult son she had as a teen. Her surrogate mother is also her boss Amanda (Sonja Sohn, The Wire), a harsh but loyal woman. They are all damaged goods to one degree or another, but make a tight knit family, also adding in Nico (Cora Lu Tran, Paradise), once a crime suspect, but now mainly house & dog sits for Will. Said dog Betty is also a stray from a crime scene that Will adopted. 

2 Good. The episode to episode procedural crime investigations are usually solid independent stories, always leaving enough breathing room to allow for full season threads to run between them. As Will investigates his past he finds an uncle from Puerto Rico, and begins to learn Spanish -- must be fun for an actual Puerto Rican actor to pretend he's terrible at Spanish. Angie deals with the fallout for claiming to have killed an abusive father, letting the daughter go free, and it could unravel her entire life. 

3 Bad. The shows desire to tie up loose ends from Season 1 leads to some... well, filler episodes so we can dispense with a few side characters. Also, the season opener is supposed to be a heart-wrenching episode, but ended up leaving me asking, "Why the fuck did you fridge what could have been a cool add-on character?"

Further to what I started saying above... its hard to write about a show like this, beyond "I liked it as I was watching it, but it does not leave anything impactful beyond that I like the characters."