Review by CJ

Director:
Brian Dannelly, Scott Speer, Jamie Travis, Daniel Stamm, Oz Scott, E.L. Katz, Rodman Flender, Gil Kenan, Leigh Janiak, Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer, Patrick Lussier

Writer:
Kevin Williamson (based on the film series created by), Jill Blotevogel, Dan Dworkin, Jay Beattie, Michael Gans, Richard Register, Meredith Glynn, Brian Sieve, Anna Christopher, Heath Corson, Steve Yockey, Eoghan O’Donnell

Starring:
Willa Fitzgerald, Bex Taylor-Klaus, John Karna, Carlson Young, Amadeus Serafini, Kiana Ledé, Santiago Segura, Tracy Middendorf, Anthony Ruivivar, Tom Maden, Bryan Batt, Sean Grandillo

Other notable appearances:
Tom Everett Scott, Sosie Bacon

Running time:
39-43 minutes per episode

Number of episodes:
12 + a two-part Halloween special

The town of Lakewood is on-track to normality after the events in season one of Scream, until the killer’s partner appears to finish what was started.  

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. I gave season one of Scream a critical panning but returned for the second season. There are a couple of reasons for this. One was purely morbid curiosity with a dash of masochism, but the other was that a good friend told me the second season was an improvement on the first. … and they were right.

While the second season of Scream isn’t the best horror television show around, it is a vast improvements on the first season. Season two has taken what was a bumbling mess and turned it into a slightly clumsy untidiness. It still has its flaws, but it also has characters who are actually likeable, an interesting plot continuation and slightly more convincing dialogue.

The characters have evolved in season two of Scream to be more developed, dimensional characters and I actually ended up caring what happened to them.

The red herrings were more convincing this season, I must admit. Giving away much more than that on the topic would be telling.

There are more meta references and meta references about meta references which make season two of Scream more amusing. Throughout the season, the dialogue has seen an overall improvement and the acting benefits from it. Meryl Streep doesn’t have to worry about being overthrown by anyone based on these performances, but they are good performances for the double whammy of the horror genre on television.

The Halloween special was completely unnecessary. The 12th episode would have been the perfect ending to the series, but they got greedy and decided to tack on a two-part Halloween special that reopened old wounds and left it open for the third season. Fine. Cliffhangers are a part of life in TV land. Here’s the rub: it has been announced that season three will be a “reboot” featuring a new cast and setting. So the Halloween special merely opened a cliffhanger from which viewers will now hang indefinitely.

I still don’t believe that Scream the TV series should be associated with the film series, but I enjoyed the second season far more than the first and found it to be better quality all around. Enjoying the second season is dependant on having suffered through the first though, so I would only recommend it to final girls or guys who made it to the end the first time around. No guarantees that you will get to the end the second time around though.

Rating:

“Is she drunk?”
“Either that or she’s recently suffered a blow to the head.”