The first show that I ever reviewed for this site was the first season of this Netflix dramedy and while it didn’t really excite me, the second season was still worth a chance. After all, the showrunners said that they would be trying to avoid all the harshly criticized issues with last season and hoped to push forward with a more cohesive and entertaining story surrounding these 40-year-old children trapped in adult bodies. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.
The main story of season two revolves around these dysfunctional friends from college reeling with the fallout of Sam’s 40th birthday. The group is forced back together after a year apart for the wedding of Max and his partner Felix and have to deal with their unresolved feelings. Ethan and Lisa are getting divorced while Sam is going to couples therapy with her husband Jon (Greg Germann). Meanwhile, Nick (Nat Faxon) is trying to change his ways and dates the more age-appropriate Meryl Morgan (Sarah Chalke) while Marianne is still confused as to why this group has distanced themselves over the past year. Things become more complicated when Lisa brings her new boyfriend Charlie (Zack Robidas) to the wedding festivities causing further tension within the group.
There was plenty of reasons to like Friends from College. The cast alone should have made for a phenomenal show: Smulders, Key, Savage, Parisse, heck even the supporting cast was great with Eichner and Germann, but it always failed to find a proper tone for its story. The characters were dealing with very serious, traumatic events in their life and yet it was never serious or funny, but rode a weird gray area in between that neither had me empathizing with the characters nor laughing at them.
While this season instantly reminds us of the fallout between the characters for their web of affairs, thanks to the commentary of Eichner’s Felix, they promise to avoid adultery for this season to focus on the relationships between these characters. Unsurprisingly, they are unable to avoid these affairs and the toxic friendships of this group making it hard to understand why they continue to stay friends when everything seems to go wrong when they are around each other.
However, the storylines are more well thought out as many of the characters are dealing with feeling lost and having their own midlife crises. This gives the actors a ton more to work with rather than being archetypes thrown into overdone and unlikable situations. Gone are the days of Fun Ethan, pushover Max and playboy Nick as these characters start to realize that they need to grow up, but don’t necessarily know how to. Of the cast, the most compelling of the season is Smulders’ Lisa who is going through multiple crises at the same time and Smulders delivers a fantastic, heart-wrenching performance for her character. Regardless, these characters are still terrible people so it’s hard to truly invest in their well-being.
Thankfully, the show is shot beautifully as Nicholas Stoller uses a many well framed shots and set designs to make a very aesthetically pleasing series, but that’s where the positives end as this show is tonally all over the place. At times, it feels like it wants to use subtle high brow humor, but then turns to gag jokes and vulgarity. The moment it starts to become sentimental and emotional it hits us with a curveball and changes its tune. These abrupt transitions make it difficult to connect with these characters’ lives. For a streaming show, this goes against its bingeability.
This season of Friends From College is marginally better than its mediocre freshman year, but not by much. The shift in focus from affairs to midlife crises gives the actors more to work with in creating characters beyond their unlikable archetypes, but this is a deep hole to dig out of. The stories try to feel relatable and empathetic, but the tonal issues throughout the season send a confusing message on whether or not you’re supposed to laugh at or feel bad for these characters making it hard to care about their situations. From its average characters to its even more average story, this season tries to fix the issues with season one, but ends up continuing to be a bland dramedy that feels just as lost as its characters.
Score: 4/10
What did you think of Friends From College? Was this season worth 4 hours of your time? Let me know in the comments!
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