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Sweet Tooth Season 2 Review

The second season of Sweet Tooth is a disappointing season that failed to compete with its more memorable predecessor.

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“Sometimes it’s okay to bend the truth if it helps someone you love“

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This show will be a trilogy of three seasons, so the second installment suffers from your standard issues that plagues most mid chapters in trilogies – an uneventful, stalling narrative, slower pacing, separating its protagonists for too long and too many storylines going on at all times. It tried to do too many things, not fully succeeding at any one of those.

Through the Dr. Singh character, this season tackled the scientific obsession. This eventually led to the breakup between him and his wife. Their romance is very powerful and both are very well developed and wonderfully performed by their respective actors. Although this storyline got repetitious as it went along, it did end on a strong note.

But the pandemic storyline was not as interesting as the hybrid story. Yes, the post-apocalyptic elements are solidly explored and the search for Gus’ origins led to some fascinating revelatory moments, but overall the virus subplot was far from riveting.

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My main issue with this season is that it devoted way too much screen time to The Last Men. General Abbot is a terrific villain – one-note, but menacing and quite memorable. Neil Sandilands delivered a terrific performance for sure and the toxic sibling relationship between him and his brother was superbly explored and psychologically insightful.

However, everybody else was underdeveloped among the villains and way too much time was given to the zoo section where the hybrid kids were trapped. The escape was very memorable and thrilling, but it came way too late in the game. Most of this season, thus, felt entrapped and confined literally and figuratively.

I also did not quite care for the Bear character and her batch of friends and allies. They were underdeveloped and not that interesting in my opinion. Aimee Eden, on the other hand, was lovely as the mother figure and her death at the end was most definitely felt. The highlights continue to be Gus and Tommy Jepperd. They were reunited way too late in the game, but individually they were also great and superbly developed. Jepperd’s complex emotions were well handled and Gus’ backstory was very intriguing while he was also given a lot of agency that was necessary for this season.

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But Sweet Tooth separating them for almost the entire season was a poor choice that led to an uneven, frustratingly slow and uneventful season. Gone were the fable and magical elements of the first season in favor of way too much military stuff that never appealed to me in the slightest. It was well executed, but again too much action and not enough genre storytelling hurt this season in the long run. The score, cinematography, VFX and production design are all strong and so is the acting. I just wish that it had a brisker pace and a more eventful narrative.