12 Monkeys Season 2 (TV series review).
To continue into a second season, ’12 Monkeys’ needed to extend its problems and show more was going on than just an infection that kills the majority of human population. Eight out of twelve messengers were sent into the past to ensure the virus was made and to ensure certain paradoxes were fulfilled to prevent interruptions. With Dr. Cassandra Railly (actress Amanda Schull) now stuck in the future and the Splinter time travel equipment needing a year’s repair, things take their…er…own time. To survive in the past, James Cole (actor Aaron Stanforth) had combined with his earlier self making it impossible to time travel but, of course, things don’t stay one way forever and things can be forced to change when alternative decisions are made and then we really enter spoiler territory and things don’t get better but far worse.
If you like thinking who is who then this series will make you ponder on who various people are, including the fabled Witness. Everyone gets a chance to shine and alliances rapidly change and are often forgiven. This is why it makes writing about what happens so difficult because there are so many spoilers. If I tell you one thing, then I’ll have to tell you another and then you’ll have to wonder whose hit list you’ll be on.
I will say that this is a well-written and acted series and they play with all the time travel tropes with a flourish and only if you are a Primary will you be able to keep track of the alternative futures and past but then you would also be seen as mad talking to yourself all the time. Whatever, don’t scribble pictures of angry chimpanzee heads unless you want James Cole on your case. This is one series that I’m not entirely sure how it will end in its third season and that raises the quality edge.
The worse thing about the deleted scenes in the extras are them being identified by the episode name which doesn’t actually have them in the episode titles. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to have them identified with the numbers on each disk? With deleted scenes where they are less than the episodes on the disk, it’s better to wait until you’ve seen them all.
Only two episodes have audio commentaries and Emily Hampshire sounds as crazy as her character. If anything, I wish there were more of them, commentaries that is, because they are insightful and a reminder of the weather conditions they are often working under.
Hope it’s not too long before season 3 on DVD.
GF Willmetts
March 2017
(region 2 DVD: pub: Universal Pictures. 3 DVDs 13 * 43 episodes with extras. Price: £ (UK). ASIN: 830 696 7)
cast: Aaron Stanford, Amanda Schull, Kirk Acevedo, Barbara Sukowa, Emily Hampshire and Tom Noonan
check out website: www.universalpictures.co.uk
