It feels like a long time since I reviewed the first season of "Black Monday". Looking back, it was about 15 months ago. I watched that season in a day, as I did here having let it mount up on the Sky Planner before blitzing it. I said in my review of the first season, that I thought maybe a second might be a mistake - as it seemed to wring all the plot it could from the story there. Although I think my fears were probably correct, eventually I was won over enough to feel positively about this run.
Having orchestrated the Black Monday Wall street crash, Dawn (Regina Hall) and Blair (Andrew Rannells) have their own trading house now, which Dawn runs on a day to day basis whilst Blair has become a political operative, lobbying and schmoozing in Washington. Mo (Don Cheadle) and Keith (Paul Scheer) are lying low in Miami and though seemingly both are enjoying their new lives - it doesn't take much for Mo to arrive at an elaborate scheme to get back to Wall Street.
Because I thought they used up all of the shows premise in the first season, I was concerned about this second season because, unlike other ensemble comedies, I don't 'just' want to spend time with these characters, perhaps because they're all awful people. It's the story that I want instead. I felt I was justified in that feeling for the first episode or two, but then the seasons schemes come in and there are some clever and satisfying plot moments.
My other concern from the first season was that it felt like some of the actors, Scheer and Rannells, for example, were in a much broader comedy than the rest of the cast, so tonally it was a little off. Things are much more even here, but they did it by bringing the rest of the show up to the broader level that they were doing. Maybe that sacrifices a bit of the performances that Cheadle and King brought to the first season, but it does make for a more even show.
Whilst I don't think that it was hilariously funny throughout the whole run, there were enough moments to make me feel positively about the whole endeavour and know that I'll be back for the third season.
