The second season of Lady Dynamite is available November 10th, only on Netflix.
Despite bingeing the first season of Lady Dynamite last year rather quickly, I didn’t really enjoy it. The oddball comedy was just too strange for my liking. It’s was one of those shows that you completely forget about during hiatus. Since then I’ve developed more of an appetite for offbeat humor, but still found season two of Dynamite outlandish and nonsensical. It’s difficult to pin down who exactly this show is for. That being said, the sophomore season is a clear improvement over the first.
Being hosted on a streaming service like Netflix means total creative freedom for content creators. That perk often benefits subscribers, who get to watch Aziz Ansari’s Master of None or Nick Kroll’s Big Mouth. But executives should have thought twice before forking over a 13-episode order to Maria Bamford. The creator and star of Lady Dynamite clearly would’ve benefited from some network notes.
Maybe I just got used to the bizarre vibe of the show, but the new episodes felt like they had a point. Maria is trying to navigate the new relationships in her life, while still using flashbacks and forwards to fill in the story. Unlike Season 1, these installments are semi-grounded and lead somewhere.
The guest stars were a big incentive for me to continue watching the episodes when the “plot” was spinning in circles. The Season 2 lineup includes Andy Samberg, David Spade, Fred Armisen, Jason Mantzoukas, Jenny Slate, Judd Apatow, Judy Greer and Weird Al Yankovic.
Ana Gasteyer absolutely steals the show as the delightfully vulgar Karen Grisham. The foul mouthed Hollywood agent is hilarious and by far the best character in Lady Dynamite. In the season premiere, she encapsulates what the show is striving for in one sentence: “It will be so unbelievably groundbreaking and inventive in its comedy that alt-comedy Twitter will choke on its own jizz.”
That over-the-top meta moment didn’t work for me, but if you’re a fan of Bamford’s stand-up, give Lady Dynamite a try.
I give Lady Dynamite Season 2 a B-.
TV and City 