Firefly Lane Season 2 Review: Confirms the Strengths and Weaknesses Of The Previous One

Cast: Katherine Heigl, Sarah Chalke

Creator: Maggie Friedman

Streaming Platform: Netflix

Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

After a long wait, the Netflix series returns which in its small way has managed to gather a large number of fans, who pushed for the production of a second season, which later turned out to be the last one but with almost double the number of episodes and released in two parts (the second will arrive in 2023). As we will explain in the review of Firefly Lane Season 2, the serial returns with all the characteristics that had represented the strengths and weaknesses of the first season, but raises the bar by recounting the profound crisis that the friendship between the two protagonists experienced in the 2000s.

Firefly Lane Season 2 Review: The Story

Maggie Friedman, already behind the scenes in series that spoke of sisterhood and friendship between women such as Eastwick and The Witches of the East End, has temporarily set aside the magic with Firefly Lane. Instead, she focused on the friendship between women with no powers other than those of survival in a world of men, apparently difficult to maintain over the years, and with a nod to stories such as My Brilliant Friend, in which one of the two is always a bit envious of the other, including boyfriends. The two protagonists of this story are strengthened by the known and loved faces of their interpreters, Katherine Heigl (whom we know from Grey’s Anatomy and who is Tully Hart) and Sarah Chalke (Scrubs, who is Kate Mularkey). However, the two manage to remain friends, through ups and downs, over the decades only up to a certain point in their history, as the finale of the first season had anticipated.

And it is from there that Firefly Lane Season 2 picks up, from the deep crisis between Tully and Kate, outside a church for a funeral. Whose? How much time has passed? And what could have ever happened to push them away so much after all the great difficulties they had overcome in 30 years? The new 9 episodes will try to answer these and other questions, waiting for the final ones to arrive with the New Year. The now-tested narrative scheme is always the same: time jumps back and forth, to tell the evolution (now also involution) of the relationship between Kate and Tully and between them and those around them.

Firefly Lane Season 2 Review and Analysis

The time jumps, however, are excessive and sometimes confusing, ending up weighing down rather than lightening the narrative and risking losing even the most attentive and experienced spectators along the way. This can be seen from the idea of ​​superimposing the year of the story at the beginning of the season and then not doing it again: perhaps it would have been a bit didactic, but certainly useful, given the many (too many) narrative levels involved. Even the different photography, the different hairstyles and the often fake make-up to tell the different moments in the life of the two don’t always help.

Firefly Lane Season 2 is proof that two charismatic protagonists don’t make a great series and can’t save the problems of a shaky script. It is not enough to want to also talk about important issues – such as the LGBTQ+ one and the war in Iraq – retracing the history of journalism in over 40 years. The dream job of both has become that of only one (Tully), with the other who has trudged after her friend but now she wishes things to change (Kate). A constant in the life of the two is certainly Johnny Ryan (Ben Lawson), their former boss who over the years has had a different and complicated relationship with both of them. As well as the other men in the life of the two friends, now at loggerheads for something terrible that happened some time ago.

However, the fracture is well represented and allows the two interpreters to often travel alone on stage, and carry on their storyline without the other. But this is to the detriment of the moments of great chemistry between the two, which were the real strong point of the show. By contrast, there are many more sequences in the past with teenage Tully and Kate, again well played by Ali Skovbye and Roan Curtis. It is no coincidence that in a story of friendship between women, the program of which Tully is presenter and star is titled “The hour of the friends”.

Nor is it a coincidence that at this point in the story being told, i.e. that of a profound breakup, the program has closed forcing the two protagonists to reinvent themselves, together and alone. They will also have to find a new balance with the women in their lives: on the one hand Tully’s mother, Nuvola (Beau Garrett) and on the other Marah (Yael Yurman), the teenage daughter of Kate and Johnny. Will they be able to overcome the difficulties and become friends again or is it a relationship destined to end up in the drawer forever? This twist mystery side and the numerous and continuous time jumps are aspects borrowed from This Is Us and seem to satisfy the criteria of the Netflix algorithm, as well as the two leading actresses, recognizable and close-knit. But will they be able to satisfy the spectators?

Firefly Lane Season 2 Review: The Last Words

Firefly Lane Season 2 confirms the strengths and weaknesses of the previous one, namely the strength and charisma of the two protagonists Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke, and too many plans and time jumps, together with the slightly artificial makeup of the young performers. However, the first part of the second and final season offers an evolution or rather an involution of their relationship: the breakup of friendship and the mystery to be revealed as to why it happened.