Joe Lansdale’s gruesome twosome return for a
second season.
After
a solid debut season that adapted the first Hap and Leonard novel, Savage Season, the second go-round turns
its focus to the second book in the series and uses it for a fancy subtitle: Mucho Mojo. A subtitle that proves apt,
as there is much mojo to be had in this brief, no-frills run of six hour-long
episodes. The last season ended on a tantalizing and thoroughly-creepy cliffhanger,
following Hap and Leonard as they attended the funeral of Leonard’s estranged
Uncle Chester. Chester’s house is left to Leonard in his will, and the very
last shot of the season showed a tiny skeleton crumpled beneath the floorboards
in Uncle Chester’s basement. It turns out that Chester Pine held more secrets
than anyone thought possible, although we find out his motives weren’t quite as
sinister as initially thought. Leonard’s uncle was trying to solve a spate of
child killings, and once he and Hap discover the literal skeleton in Chester’s
closest, the two find themselves inheriting the mystery.
Last
season focused mainly on James Purefoy’s Hap, so it’s only appropriate that
this go-round turns it’s attentions to the other half of the equation. In
Leonard Pine, Michael Kenneth Williams gets yet another role he was born to
play, and the multitalented actor gets to really dig deep on the character this
season. Whether he’s dealing with the implication that his uncle could have
been a child murderer or taking a vengeful piss on the unconscious body of a
drug dealer he just waylaid, Williams has a run on the gamut of emotions
displayed for everybody’s favorite gay black Republican badass. We also get to
see the softer side of Leonard, as he takes in a young runaway named Ivan and
becomes something of a surrogate father. In the book, Ivan is a young kid Hap
and Leonard find overdosing underneath their porch, who goes on to die at the hospital.
I think it was a smart move to have Ivan live and become one of the main
characters on the show, as his relationship with Leonard mirrors Leonard’s own
with his Uncle Chester while growing up. Seeing the prickly Leonard soften up
in the presence of Ivan leads the series to both its most amusing and poignant
moments.
Hap’s
main story this season revolves around his blossoming relationship with the
smart and attractive Florida Grange, Chester’s lawyer who now has to represent
Leonard once he becomes a suspect following the discovery of the body beneath
Chester’s house. The romantic entanglement between Hap and Florida was a much
bigger part of the novel than it is here, but the upside is that Florida gets a
bit more play-time in the show than in the novel, where she virtually disappears
once the hunt for the killer is on. In the show, Florida remains a strong
presence throughout, staying neck-and-neck with the East Texas boys as they
attempt to track the killer down at the carnival on the night of his next
victim. Tiffany Mack acquits herself to the role well, as a tough African-American
woman who had to fight tooth and nail for everything she’s accomplished thus
far, and still finds herself having to prove her worth constantly due to both
her race and gender. And although the end of their relationship doesn’t leave
Hap as heartbroken here as he was in the source novel, Purefoy once more
embodies the wounded masculinity of Hap, an eternal hopeless romantic who can’t
help but hope for the best but always seems to catch the worst.
The
mystery that Hap and Leonard get involved with here is engaging throughout,
with the reveals and reversals all well-placed across the tight, six-episode
season. The unsolved murders of nearly a dozen black children allows the show
to cast a wide net in the topics that it explores, touching on religious
fanaticism, institutional racism and the depths to which mankind can sink when
it is allowed. It’s here that the show most diverges the most from the source
material. The mystery and it’s resolution are essentially the same, but the
show throws in a last-minute twist (two, if we’re being honest) that is all its
own. The multiple resolutions wind up being a bit of a mixed bag, honestly--they
come a little too late in the game, making them feel tacked on at the last
minute, and the reversal in the very last episode suffers from a kind of “reveal”
fatigue. It does pay off a thread that was set-up all the way back in the first
season, involving the powerful Sheriff Valentine Otis (played by the incomparable
Brian Dennehy) and his son Beau, who is responsible for killing Hap and Leonard’s
fathers when they were younger in a drunk driving incident. It’s a satisfying
payoff, although the narrative pretzels itself one too many times to get to
that point, robbing it of much of the intended effect.
But
leveling it all off is the chemistry between the two leads, who prove that no matter
what avenues the show explores or which direction they take next, Purefoy and
Williams will be able anchors to hold everything in place with funny quips and
martial arts badassery. Much like the last season, this one ends with the
promise of the story taking some wild turns into even darker territory. As far
as cliffhangers go, it doesn’t quite measure up to season one’s shocker, but
the prospect of Hap and Leonard getting to put the hurt on the KKK is a
tantalizing prospect that only the most hard-hearted will be able to resist.
Bring on Hap and Leonard: Two-Bear Mambo.
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