“The End of the F***ing World” Season 2 Review by Josh Davis
November 14, 2019 7:12 am |
In the opening voiceover of Season One, James (Alex Lawther, “The Imitation Game”) tell us his name and age, and offers, “and I’m pretty sure I’m a psychopath.” As a child, he once stuck his hand in a deep fryer to try and feel something, and later graduated to killing animals for sport. When that doesn’t move him, he decides to try and kill his classmate Alyssa (Jessica Barden, “Hanna”). Wackiness ensues, and the two set off on an adventure together.
Later in the first season, the pair spends the night in what they think is an empty house, only to be woken up by the owner, college professor Dr Clive Koch (Jonathan Aris, “Sherlock”). Koch tries to rape Alyssa, but James stabs him in the throat, killing him and dousing Alyssa in his blood, and prompting a police chase that ends in more bloodshed.
Season Two picks up two years later. James has mostly recovered from a gunshot wound after fleeing from police and earning a suspended sentence for manslaughter. Alyssa, still traumatized by her encounter with Koch, has tried to move on. She’s working in a diner and becomes engaged to a local boy.
Enter Naomi Ackie as Bonnie (“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”), a young woman who, after a stifling childhood, goes to work at a local college and becomes entangled in an unhealthy relationship with Koch. She’s jailed after killing a romantic rival and, upon being released, is now out for revenge against Koch’s killers.
Meanwhile, James and Alyssa reunite after Alyssa runs away from her own wedding, and they again set off on an adventure without any real purpose or goal. They’re being pursued by Bonnie, played expertly by Ackie as an almost nonverbal woman with post-traumatic stress disorder.
James, for most of the season, carries around his recently deceased father’s ashes, clinging to the last family member he had and looking for a final resting place, while Alyssa suffers from frequent flashbacks of the sexual assault she suffered and the murder she witnessed.
The tone of the show is somewhere between Wes Anderson’s “Rushmore” and the Coen Brothers’ “No Country for Old Men,” and there’s no avoiding the obvious “Bonnie and Clyde” comparisons set up in Season One and continued here.
Lawther and Barden have great chemistry. Both are naturally deadpan and neither show much emotion, but that makes sense for their characters and how they’ve each and in their own way experienced trauma.
The closing episodes ramp up the tension and include a harrowing final confrontation with Bonnie, climaxing with one of the most shocking scenes of the series thus far.
Somehow, the show also manages to find comedy in many of the strange, awkward and still moments between the two leads, and there’s a well-earned emotional payoff in the finale.
Like the first season, “The End of the F***king World” features great acting, a unique tone, and a stellar soundtrack. There really are no other characters on TV like James and Alyssa, and there’s no other show quite like it.
PCL Rating: Tupperware
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: FRESH 🍅
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