‘Outer Banks' Season 2 Review: Netflix Teen Soap Adventure Gets Even Bigger

‘Outer Banks' Season 2 Review: Netflix Teen Soap Adventure Gets Even Bigger

The Pogues remain a tremendous attraction, but a concert predicated on outdoing themselves, no matter how endearing, can only go so far. 

“Outer Banks”

Jackson Lee Davis/Netflix

How do you kick off Season 2 of one of the year's biggest unexpected TV hits? Naturally, the main character of the performance tells the audience, "Here's a nice fact: Everyone you know will die."

Never say the “Outer Banks” aren't full of surprises. Those out-of-the-blue touches don't always land as planned, but over the course of two seasons, this Netflix comedy centered on adventure-seeking teenagers has seldom chosen the dull option. It's a program that is frequently as perplexing as it is fascinating, owing to the fact that one of those tends to follow the other.

With the apparently little potential for improvement after its first season concluded in a centuries-long quest for a massive treasure of shipwreck gold, “Outer Banks” Season 2 rapidly shifts its focus offshore. Its core star-crossed pair, John B (Chase Stokes) and Sarah Cameron (Madelyn Cline), have fled to the Caribbean, far from the comforts of coastal North Carolina. Sarah has virtually forsaken her family to join with the gang of "Pogues" that John B is the nominal head of, and the two are on the run primarily because John B is designated a fugitive for a crime he did not commit.

Back at home, the remainder of the couple's close-knit buddy circle is working hard to clear John B's name. The skeptical police department refuses to accept any of their proof. The public perception among the area's country club type appears to be that someone from The Cut's working-class neighborhood is responsible for the murder that sparked the John B search. While the allegations are flying as fast as the emotions, Kie (Madison Bailey), Pope (Jonathan Daviss), and JJ's (Rudy Pankow) closeness to an even greater truth about the area's wealth makes them much more of a target than previously.

“Outer Banks” has a habit of painting itself into a corner. Despite the broad overhead vistas of the North Carolina coastline and wide-open waterways, this continuous story of riches and treasure and any number of heinous offenses has centered on a few key people. The majority of this group is capable of managing the many ways in which these characters must jump from location to location and fistfight to fistfight. On some level, it becomes tiring to witness how many times a half-dozen individuals can circle around each other's destinies and survive so many hazardous shootouts and life-or-death showdowns.

“Outer Banks”

Jackson Lee Davis/Netflix

Conflict is plenty in the world of "Outer Banks," yet it never seems to be enough. The amount of times the program fabricates an issue for the Pogues or Sarah's grieving family to encounter over the course of an entire season is staggering, simply because going from Point A to Point B would take too long to fill up an episode's duration. A lost phone, car difficulties, and some animal encounter: this show's approach of catastrophizing the ludicrous would be more artistic if it allowed for more variation. Instead, every new issue feels life-threatening, even if it is only a small annoyance. (One laughable predicament involving an unfortunately timed construction truck is the closest the season comes to being self-aware about its own cavalcade of coincidences.)

Two performances from the program best exemplify how "Outer Banks" is able to flourish, nearly against all odds. Ward Cameron (Charles Esten), Sarah's father, has gone from disapproving, overprotective dad to a vicious criminal genius in record time. Esten has managed to match the show's tone at every point, feeding into the terrible desperation that this gold conspiracy has inflicted on him and his family. JJ, a Pogues member attempting to make the best of a life shadowed by an absent, violent father, balances out the other side. As each member of this friend group does their best to help with a variety of rescues and escapes

The Pogues remain the show's most valuable asset. When there is a lull in the action, their back-and-forth is easy to follow. When "Outer Banks" allows them some breathing room to learn about and from one other, the result is something grounded and fulfilling. Season 2's inclusion of some of the freewheeling high school kickback moments that dotted prior episodes is as perplexing as it is pleasant. (How should the approaching danger of a goon squad of treasure-hungry obsessives who will stop at nothing to collect their prize be dealt with? Obviously, go to a beach bonfire.) Season 2's bookends are high-stakes conflicts with more sinister powers — Doing to pretend the first never occurred and the second isn't unavoidable is either the show brilliantly focusing on a type of youthful naiveté or the program trying its hardest to bring back what viewers enjoyed about the first season.

Aside from those perplexing excursions, the “Outer Banks” has other sections that aren't merely pretexts for more sun-drenched peril. With the gold in a safe place, the program concocts yet another set of cryptic riddles and indirect indications to secret places. This one is more overtly a quest than the previous one, satisfying the hunger that placed the first season in the CW-styled middle ground between "The Goonies" and "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." As this year's "Panic" shown, a program with that premise can swiftly sour - there's a deceiving degree of complexity in presenting a soapy adventure like this. The show's relative popularity, while being framed in a way that mitigates its most destructive tendencies, is a tribute to how effectively everyone involved manages to play along. Maybe it's a program that tries a little too hard at times, but it's easy to think that "Outer Banks" fans viewing Season 2 will find a lot of what they're looking for.