Good Omens 2 is Unnecessary But Mostly Fun

 

On July 28 Amazon dropped Good Omens 2, the six-part sequel to the original Good Omens based on the novel by Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett.  The novel from the late 80s was about the angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley teaming up with some humans to cancel the apocalypse.  The series stayed pretty close to that.

There was never a sequel to the novel.  I'm not sure if Gaiman and Pratchett ever had serious discussions, though certainly both were plenty busy from the 90s until Pratchett died in 2015.  Because of this, I wasn't all that hyped on a sequel series.  I mean it would pretty much by definition be exceeding the book and with Pratchett dead it was pretty much Gaiman's show.  He did write most of the first draft of the book, but Pratchett was the one who really molded it into a finished product.

Anyway, that's why when the series dropped I didn't rush out to watch it.  Eventually I didn't have much else to do so what the hell--pun intended.  I watched it in 4 days since all the episodes were available and they were only an hour at most.

This second series sets its sights a bit lower than the first one.  There is no apocalypse to prevent.  Instead, the bone of contention is that the angel Gabriel (Jon Hamm) has gone missing.  He turns up naked and with no memory in London, near the bookstore Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) runs.  As Heaven and Hell start looking for Gabriel, Crowley (David Tennant) helps his buddy Aziraphale to create a miracle that hides Gabriel from both sides.

Then there are four more episodes that in hindsight don't really matter much.  A copy of Buddy Holly's "Every Day" leads Aziraphale to Edinburgh and a bar called The Resurrectionist.  There's also a statue of Gabriel in the cemetery there.  In a flashback we see Aziraphale and Crowley meet the original "resurrectionist," a surgeon who had people bring him dead bodies to use as cadavers for medical training.  We also get the story of Job, where Aziraphale and Crowley fool the angels to save Job's children.  In 1941, Aziraphale and Crowley meet some Nazi agents in London; the Nazis are killed but come back as zombies to spy on Aziraphale and Crowley as they perform a "catch the bullet" trick as a warmup act for strippers.

While Aziraphale is in Edinburgh, Crowley is trying to get a record store owner Maggie (Maggie Service) and coffee shop owner Nina (Nina Sosanya) to hook up so Heaven and Hell will think that was the miracle they created.

Meanwhile the demon Shax raises a demon army to attack the bookshop and find Gabriel.  And the dim angel Muriel is inexpertly spying on the bookshop as "Inspector Constable."

There are a lot of pieces and it's one of those unfortunate mysteries where once you get the solution you realize almost none of it actually mattered.  I mean, they didn't even need to leave the bookstore to find out what was going on with Gabriel.  During a standoff at the end, everything is explained and once you think about it, you realize most of what happened was fun but not really important--like this season itself.  It was basically a whole aquarium full of red herrings.

The end at least temporarily breaks up the Aziraphale and Crowley bromance and promises that a third season could do something bigger.  So like Avengers Age of Ultron this was really more of a placeholder season just helping to set up the bigger event.

Overall I enjoyed the show but like I said in the title, it's really not a necessary extension of the original.  Sheen and Tennant are great separate and together, but it's a shame we have to focus so much time on Maggie, who's pretty much a nonentity, and Nina, who's just unpleasant.  Hamm is mostly befuddled as he blunders around the shop.  The flashbacks are neat, but they don't really add anything.  As I said, the solution was right there the whole time like Poe's purloined letter.

I'd like to see a third season but I hope it does set its sights a bit higher.

(PS:  One thing I don't understand is why they keep saying Maggie's store has no customers.  Vinyl is huge right now.  Gaiman seems like the type to have a lot of vinyl so I'm not sure why he wouldn't know that.  Unless maybe she's not selling the right kind of vinyl?  I dunno.)