We were mostly OK with the first season of Apple TV’s The Last Thing He Told Me because we wanted to see Jennifer Garner in a thriller and her chemistry with her co-star, Angourie Rice, was so good. But the first season was a bit light on thrills. Will the second season do any better?
Opening Shot: A man in a baseball cap and a beard goes up the stairs in a mall-like building.
The Gist: As Hannah Hall (Jennifer Garner) talks to people at a gallery showing of her work, the bearded man approaches her. She locks eyes on him and recognizes him right away: It’s her husband Owen Michaels (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), whom she hasn’t seen in five years. They get close, and it seems he whispers something in her ear. He disappears; he looks away when he sees his daughter Bailey (Angourie Rice) coming up the escalator as he goes down. Then he ditches his disguise and gets in a waiting car.
“HOUSTON. FIVE DAYS EARLIER.” Oliver wakes up in an RV and puts on a dock worker’s uniform. He may look like he works there, but he’s actually there to get evidence for U.S. Marshal Grady Bradford (Augusto Aguilera), who is trying to build a case against the Campano crime family.
Meanwhile, in Austin, Hannah and Bailey are celebrating the birthday of Bailey’s grandfather, Nicholas Bell (David Morse). Bailey’s uncle Charlie (Josh Hamilton) is also there. They’re having a good time when Hannah sees Frank Campano (John Noble) at the party. She and Bailey immediately leave, and she tells Nicholas that they can’t be near anyone in the Campano family, much less the head of that family, mainly because they want Owen dead.
Hannah and Bailey go back to Los Angeles, where Bailey, who is now out of college and living on her own, wants to move on. She also wants to meet Quinn Favreau (Judy Greer), her late mother’s best friend, to get some better idea of what her mother was like. But Hannah comes close to forbidding it, since Quinn is a Camparo, albeit one that has distanced herself from her family. Bailey goes to see her anyway, and wonders if Hannah is too busy being cautious about the past to live her life in the present.
Then the encounter with Oliver throws Hannah for a loop; he gives her a locket that belonged to Bailey. Soon, though, Hannah and Bailey are on the run once again, especially after Hannah got a text that said “Cape Cod” and had to fend off two thugs posing as workers investigating a gas leak. She grabs Hannah and they execute their escape plan. But the person who sent the text isn’t who they think it is.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Last Thing He Told Me, adapted by Laura Dave and Josh Singer from Dave’s novel of the same name, has a similar feeling to the series Little Fires Everywhere.
Our Take: The biggest reason to watch the first season of The Last Thing He Told Me was to basically watch Jennifer Garner return to the badass roots she established a quarter-century ago on Alias. The story itself wasn’t all that intriguing, but at least it had a purpose, which was Hannah finding out things about Oliver, as well as protecting Bailey, after he disappeared. Season 2 doesn’t seem to have much purpose besides sending Hannah and Bailey on the run again, albeit with a different dynamic between the two than in the first season.
Ok, maybe we’re being a bit harsh; the idea is that Oliver is going to reunite with Hannah and Bailey after he helps put the Campanos away. But it feels a bit more like the fact that Hannah and Bailey are inevitably intermeshed with the Campanos, due to the family history of both Oliver and Bailey’s mother will just mean a full season of the two of them trying not to be killed.
The changed dynamic between Hannah and Bailey, though, might be what keeps us watching. Bailey is now a grownup; she fully trusts Hannah and now sees her as a parental figure. It was interesting seeing her assert herself and try to get Hannah looking forward instead of over her shoulder, but it was also interesting that Hannah was proven right about her vigilance. How this new dynamic plays out as they try to not get killed and help Grady Bradford will determine whether this season actually has any emotional impact beyond hoping the two of them stay alive.
Performance Worth Watching: Garner is still the draw here, especially when we see her taking on the thugs and escaping her house.
Sex And Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Hannah gets bad news from Charlie, just as Grady walks in the door of the restaurant of the Cape Cod motel.
Sleeper Star: We’ll always be happy to see Judy Greer on our screens, and we’re curious to see just how her character, Quinn, factors into the story given her connections to the Campano family. We also like seeing Geoff Stults, though his character, Jake, seems to only be tangentially involved in this season’s story.
Most Pilot-y Line: Bailey has a readthrough of the play she’s writing and the dialogue is the exact things that Quinn said to her about Bailey’s mom the day prior.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re still a little annoyed that the second season of The Last Thing He Told Me seems to serve up a thrill-light nothingburger of a story, but we still want to see the chemistry between Garner and Rice, which is the best thing about the series.
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.