Kaley Cuoco has been on a roll with her comedic choices in the last few years, putting in an Emmy-nominated performance during the two seasons of The Flight Attendant and continuing that vibe in the first season of Based On A True Story. The second season of the latter show has just debuted, and like the second season of her previous show, it feels like a season where we like spending time with Cuoco and company, but are unsure there’s enough of a plot to have made the second season worth doing.
Opening Shot: We see the face of a baby boy.
The Gist: It’s been three months since the son of Ava Bartlett (Kaley Cuoco) and her husband Nathan (Chris Messina) was born, and Ava has been having trouble pumping a decent amount of breast milk. When they talk to a lactation consultant and get asked if the baby’s birth was stressful, we see a flashback of the couple cleaning up the scene where Ruby Gale (Priscilla Quintana) was murdered, and her husband Simon (Aaron Staton) walking in on them. Ava pretended the blood was her going into labor, then actually goes into labor as they leave.
There’s also other stress in their lives, namely the fact that they’re paying Matt Pierce (Tom Bateman), aka the Westside Ripper, to “find himself” in psychiatric care in Mexico. But when Matt sends Nathan a text, it’s a picture of him chilling in a hot tub at an expensive spa. This makes Ava stressed when she sees her little sister Tory (Liana Liberato) in the reflection of Matt’s sunglasses.
Ava wants to go to Mexico to drag her sister back home, but Nathan goes instead. He tries to resist the relaxing siren song of the resort where Matt is staying but he quickly gives in. Matt finds Nathan sacked out in a hammock.
Matt tells Nathan that he’s a changed man, and that he’s doing all he can to keep his “disease” — his addiction to murder — at bay. The two re-bond at the spa, especially at a Burning Man-type bonfire circle where Nathan tries to recapture his manhood, which he thinks has disappeared.
When he finds Tory, he tries to dance around the fact that Matt is a serial killer, but Tory tells him she knows, and she thinks he has changed. In the meantime, Ava tries to reconnect with her serial-killer-podcast-listening friends and just can’t deal with their obnoxiousness anymore. Then, after hearing that Simon was released on bail, she goes to his place, breast pump in tow. As she pumps and talks to him, a text from Nathan tells her that she needs to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Somehow, Nathan gets Matt to promise to send Tory back home to go to law school, as she originally planned to do. Little does Matt or Ava realize that Matt will come back with her, and Tory will be wearing a ring.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We’re staying with calling Based On A True Story an LA-based Only Murders In The Building.
Our Take: Season 2 of Based On A True Story, created by Craig Rosenberg, has a bit of a “why did this get made?” vibe around it. Yes, Rosenberg left an opening at the end of Season 1 by having Matt continue to haunt the Bartletts once he threatens to take them down with him if they turned him in. But for the most part Season 1 felt like a pretty complete story. Season 2, while still funny, feels like the kind of story someone cooks up when given another season with only a sketch of a plan of what was going to happen.
Even though in Episode 1, things seem to be back to normal-ish with the Bartletts, despite Ava’s new-mother stress, Nathan’s worries about Ava and how he’ll provide for his family, and the overarching guilt over covering up Ruby’s murder. Ava even finds a like-minded friend in Drew (Melissa Fumero), who is also a new mom. Matt seems to truly be “sober,” in his words, to the point where Tory trusts him implicitly.
But you know there are going to be more murders, and it seems that the Bartletts are going to be spending the season trying to figure out if Matt, who is now pretty much integrated into the fabric of their family, is back at it or not, all the while wondering if Tory is next.
While there’s story potential there, the premise of Season 2 definitely seems looser than the juicy one that drove Season 1, which was to have Matt do a podcast with them instead of turning him in.
Still, we continue to be drawn in by Cuoco’s ability to enhance the words on the page with looks, hesitations and other physical mannerisms that make what she’s saying feel more natural than other actors might portray. Messina is his usual on-the-edge-of-rage self. And Bateman plays Matt with just enough menace that you know that, while he’s trying to be “normal,” thoughts of murder don’t lurk that deeply in his psyche.
All of this means that Based On A True Story continues to be a very watchable, well-paced show. But the foundation of Season 2 feels a lot less solid than what we had in the first season.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Tory comes back to the Bartlett house with Matt in tow and a ring on her finger; Ava cheers for them in such a fake manner that wine splashes out of the glasses she’s holding.
Sleeper Star: Priscilla Quintana spends the first episode as a bloodied ghost with a dart sticking out of her neck, haunting Ava’s guilt. That’s some good comedic acting, right there.
Most Pilot-y Line: Casey Wilson, playing “Boobie Bev”, and Rory Scovel, as the bonfire guru trying to connect the men in the spa with their manhoods, both appear all-too-briefly as guest stars in this episode.
Our Call: STREAM IT. While we still like seeing Cuoco and the rest of the cast of Based On A True Story, we’re still not buying that the Season 2 story will be as good as what we saw in Season 1.
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.