Am I Being Unreasonable? is one of those shows that may have been a blip on your TV-watching radar. After all, it debuted on Hulu two years ago (longer than that if you were watching it in the UK on the BBC) and it was a quick six-episode season. But all you have to recall is one scene to have all of it come back: What happened to one of the members of a couple where both people were cheating on their spouses.
AM I BEING UNREASONABLE? SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A woman runs in slow motion out of a building hosting a memorial service.
The Gist: The woman running is Nic (Daisy May Cooper), and she just revealed at the memorial service for Alex (David Flynn), the brother of her husband Dan (Dustin Demri-Burns), that she and Alex had been having an affair. What Dan, their son Ollie (Lenny Rush) and Alex’s wife Suzie (Amanda Wilkin) don’t know is exactly how much Nic had to do with Alex’s death.
Nic gets into a cab, and before the driver (Tom Davis) launces into a story about taking care of a crow that ultimately got euthanized, we find out that Ollie had a seizure at the memorial, but Nic still left. After she leaves the cab, she walks through an alley and sees visions of one of the teens (Yohana Ephrem), who along with her boyfriend (Samuel Bottemley), witnessed what happened in Alex’s last moments.
In flashbacks, we see how everyone found out about Nic and Alex, namely when Harry (Ankido Hussen), son of Nic’s bestie Jen (Selin Hizli), played one of the videos that Jen secretly recorded of Nic talking about how much she loved Alex. We also see why Nic seemingly left Ollie behind, despite his health crisis; let’s just say Ollie has his own dark secrets, and helps his mother when some of hers are revealed.
After Dan froze her credit cards, then berates her for her narcissism as she returns to the home they shared, the only place she has to turn is to stay with Jen, despite the fact that she has no idea why Jen recorded their private conversations.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As the first dark and twisty season revealed, Am I Being Unreasonable? is in the family of dark comedy that includes Baby Reindeer, though the Netflix hit was much more serious at times than this show is.
Our Take: Created by Cooper and Hizli, Am I Being Unreasonable? set a dark precedent in its first season that we’re not sure it can duplicate in its second. After all, we find out that the affair between Alex and Nic isn’t as lovey-dovey as Nic made it seem, and we find out that Nic was directly responsible for Alex’s death. We also find out that Ollie, who aligns with his mother more than anyone realizes, has some strange tendencies of his own. Oh, and Jen becomes “obsessed” with new friends and records them for kicks.
It seems that the second season will consist of Nic suffering the consequences of her actions, in addition to what she did to Alex haunting her the longer she goes without anyone finding out what exactly happened. The only person that Nic seems to care about other than herself is Ollie, and she’ll protect him at all costs. But for the most part, it doesn’t feel like Nic is going to be doing anything to mend fences for any other reason than self-preservation.
While the second season isn’t going to be quite as twisty, it certainly is going to be as funny, as the crow monologue by the cab driver and Nic’s vision of Ollie being a cat killer would indicate. Of course, any references to The Real Housewives Of New York, which seems to be Nic and Jen’s favorite show, will never not be funny.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: The teenage girl who witnessed Nic and Alex calls her boyfriend after she spots Nic.
Sleeper Star: We still think Lenny Rush’s Ollie is the best part of the show; he’s much wiser than his years, and Rush’ s ability to make Ollie’s darkness believable makes the character really compelling to watch.
Most Pilot-y Line: Ollie wiggling his way into a hospital vending machine is a funny sight gag, but seems strangely out of place in the scene.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Am I Being Unreasonable? continues to be one of the darkest of dark comedies out there, though there may not be as many twists and turns as the first season had.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Am I Being Unreasonable?’ Season 2 On Hulu, Where Nic Suffers The Consequences Of Her Affair And Other Misdeeds appeared first on Decider.
