This, coupled with the show’s bizarre tangent to Nassau where white teens John B and Sarah end up running the show when it comes to a criminal gang of adult Black characters, continues to give white characters positions of power in stories that are specifically about Black people (and often, the wrongs perpetrated against them). There is also the very troublesome subplot, or multiple subplots, regarding treasure stolen from a freed slave long ago, which is currently being fought over by two white families whose ancestors destroyed his life and everything he built and then took it all for themselves. And what should have been a major moment of intimacy between two characters is not even hinted at happening until much later, when one casually brings it up, before it’s dismissed as unimportant (because of guns, yelling, gold, etc). But the show is ultimately only interested in violence even characters who are in love don’t share more than one chaste kiss throughout the entire season, but they are beaten to hell multiple times. There are still moments when things quiet down, the kids look like kids again, and they talk over each other and rib one another and have crushes. It’s a shame, too, because Outer Banks is well-shot, has a gorgeous setting, and its actors are fun to watch-it could be at least somewhat compelling teen television. If you only have 10 episodes with which to tell your season arc and you have each of your characters almost killed in the same three ways, over and over again, you’re really not trying. Instead of endless horizons and an escapist teen dream, the show becomes a kind of high school Bourne Identity, except full of incredibly dumb decisions and plot repetition. It’s all about ratcheting up the action to the highest, most improbable degree. But in Season 2, for the most part, none of that matters. Initially there was some occasional weight to the drama, especially regarding John B losing his father and being on his own, JJ’s abusive home life, and even something to the romance of a rich girl who gives it all up because her family is legitimately horrifying. Instead the group gets involved in absolutely insane adventures that go beyond the realm of reason so fast you’ll get the bends. Outer Banks has always operated as a kind of “what parents?” fantasy, where for the most part things like school, jobs, and family aren’t really on the front of one’s mind. No one was expecting Outer Banks to be high art, but it’s not even good background television at this point, thanks to all of the constant screaming, shooting, and near-death experiences. To escalate from kids turf-warring around a bonfire to having everyone trying to kill everyone else all of the time to bringing a holy Christian artifact into the equation just takes everything to to the limit-and that is not for the best. But after a certain point, Outer Banks gave up on any semblance of character development to rush whole-hog into being some kind of teen-led action franchise focused on tracking down a billion dollars worth of gold. There was also the hint of buried treasure, which propelled much of that season. In the early days of Outer Banks, the group of “wrong side of the tracks” (and impossibly good-looking) Pogues-including Pope (Jonathan Daviss), Kie (Madison Bailey), and JJ (Rudy Pankow)-battled class issues and sometimes difficult home lives on the sun-soaked marshland. Season 2 picks up about a week later, when they find themselves heading to Nassau as their friends and families briefly mourn them before they make contact. At that point, our Romeo and Juliet couple, poor Pogue boy John B (Chase Stokes) and rich Kook girl Sarah (Madelyn Cline), were escaping off into a hurricane together and were later presumed dead. or even Friday Nights Lights-ish teen drama aesthetic to something much more violent and complicated that would be hard to extract itself from. When Netflix’s Outer Banks closed its sudsy first season, I wrote about how the show took a hard turn in the wrong direction from an O.C. Ah yes, life in the OBX-that being the Outer Banks of coastal North Carolina-where teens have no parents, swimsuits are acceptable casual wear, school is optional, and you and your friends are international fugitives wanted for murdering a cop while in pursuit of half a billion in gold bars.
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