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Schmigadoon! Season 2 Review

The second season of Schmigadoon! is another solid season that was deeply flawed, but highly entertaining to watch.

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“Happy endings don’t exist,

But here’s a pearl you may have missed,

Every day can be a happy beginning“

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Unlike the first season, this one left the fifties and we settled in the sixties – a darker, more sexual era of musicals. This season started off with a bang. That first episode was instantly memorable, so much fun and very funny as well. However, the remainder of the season settled into overly familiar, slower and much less energetic episodes.

Tituss Burgess was the newest addition to this cast and he was the most welcome addition. He instantly fitted within this campy universe and his narrating was hilariously cheeky. Another standout is Jane Krakowski. She was delightfully kinetic and just a joyous screen presence. She was so well used here. Others aren’t as memorable, though most got their moments to shine.

Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key are the standouts obviously. Cecily Strong had excellent line delivery throughout this season and she was a very amusing presence. Key was reliably goofy, funny and charismatic. I do have to say that these two have never clicked to me as a couple. They seem to me more as friends than as partners. I loved their dynamic, but I simply never bought them as a couple.

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Schmigadoon! is technically superior. The choreography is fantastic, the songs are mostly quite good albeit not great, and the season is well shot, edited and directed. The season was at its best when it was satirizing the musicals of this era through a tongue in cheek approach, but it was at its worst when it was focusing on crime elements that were too silly and uninteresting.