pj season 2- an improvement over the first?
ok so, i’ll admit, i had no idea that pj2 was even out. not sure if im not on that side of the internet or if the advertising was just really poor. but, either way, i decided to sit down and watch it with an open mind. i went in really hoping that some of the issues from season 1 would be improved.
(as a side note, i thought i’d better watch the recap to refresh my memory and realised i never actually finished the first season lmaooo)
right off the bat we have more of the same. im not going to rehash everything ive already said, dont worry, but i do want to bring up a few key points (and maybe give the show a small amount of praise…???). anyway, ‘i play dodgeball with cannibals’…. no you dont? the book was so fun, showing that monsters can attack from anywhere and infiltrate his school. this also shows that its not just percy who’s in danger- its the mortals around him as well. and im fairly sure the actual building gets partially destroyed as well, correct me if im wrong. trying to live a normal life as a demigod has consequences!! apparently not.
the screenwriters thought it would be a great idea to remove any sort of reveal with tyson. the book was so fun with the reveal, but instead we just get, ‘this is tyson, he’s a cyclops’. like??? i also would have loved the show to expand on percy’s feelings toward tyson after he finds our they’re brothers. we do get a tiny bit of it but not really. wouldve been cool to take it even further than the book did.
im going to skip over a lot of the plot, because to be honest, i dont actually remember the book that well. what i would like to bring up though is that the interactions between the characters feel so… off. i feel as though im constantly reminded im watching a tv show with bad dialogue and direction. im sorry, i know i said this before, but i dont feel like the actors a doing a great job either. i know there a some excellent child actors out there, so we can’t completely put that on to age and inexperience. when i watch most of them interact, i feel like im watching actors as characters, not the characters themselves. i will say i think walker scobell did a really good job, and he definitely carried most of these characters scenes he was in. i actually laughed when clarisse caught him after he fell into polyphemus’s cave. his expression and ‘hi…?’ was actually really funny.
i want to quickly talk about clarisse. they casted this gorgeous girl and made her such a sympathetic character that i was kinda on her side throughout the season. they tried to show her and percy as enemies but i got the sense that they really respected each other and kinda didnt like each other because of differing viewpoints. i did not get any sense of hatred or that clarisse is some horrible bully. i actually quite her. i dont know if this deviation is a good thing or a bad thing yet, we’ll have to see how it plays out, just something to mention.
also, percy saying he’d burn everything down for annabeth?? while i love this, it should be happening in a few seasons! dont rush the og slowburn!! i need more of their witty banter, all of their conversations are so deep.
i do actually want to give the show some praise. while many of the problems of the first season remain, there are some small improvements. for example, in season 1, the characters knew everything before it happened. in contrast, i liked the tension when annabeth was figuring out percy was a guinea pig. she didnt go into the scene already knowing. its pretty basic praise (good job show, you did what you were supposed to do!) but it is an improvement over season 1. in fact, while i still dont think this show is anywhere approaching good, i really did enjoy season 2 more and there were some very ‘percy jackson moments’ that made me laugh. definitely an improvement, hoping for an even better season 3 as the kids get older and (fingers crossed) find their feet.
(see- i can be nice!)
very curious to see what others think, like i said, i havent really seen anything else on this.