‘The Rig’ Season 2 Review - Always Busy But Never Exciting

The first season of The Rig thrived on its mysterious atmosphere. We were largely unsure of who the true enemy was. What caused all those natural disasters? What's that glowing light in the water? Where is the earthquake originating from? Why are some people acting so strange? Are they possessed by a ghost? Should we really blame a supernatural entity for all the mayhem? The Rig Season 1 kept us in the dark, which turned out to be its biggest strength. We were invested from the beginning to the end. Season 2, however, has an opposite effect. All that intrigue, all that suspense dissipates within the first few hours when you realize that, this time, the show doesn't know how to move the narrative and develop its characters. The second season is always busy but fails to elicit genuine interest or excitement. After an engaging first season, it feels as if you are now watching an emperor without his clothes. Creator David Macpherson comes across as creatively bankrupt. He kills time before giving us a light show at the end.

When the season begins, we find Magnus' (Iain Glen) crew on another rig run by Coake (Mark Addy). What does everyone do here? They look at Coake with a lot of hate and dispense lines that solely move the plot forward. The directors - Alex Holmes and John Strickland - point the camera toward the actors, who dutifully regurgitate lines from the script's pages. The Rig Season 2 is visually bland. The images plainly depict the ongoing events. There is no intrigue, no excitement, even during an urgent rescue operation. A character comes close to drowning in the cold water, but we simply don't care about his survival or his existence, for that matter. A psycho secretly walks around the rig with a gun in his hand. Before this, he threatens to shoot a character. Scenes like these should elevate your heartbeat. A filmmaker who is an expert at manipulating the audience can take them on a nerve-racking ride through such a tense situation. Neither Holmes nor Strickland, however, prove themselves capable of pushing the emotional buttons of the audience. All they do is just turn on their camera and let it passively record the events.

The characters are placed inside confined spaces, yet it feels as if the rooms are big and spacious. There is no sense of claustrophobia, so the potential of a rig setting is completely wasted. When the characters are not delivering plot-related information, they speak sentimental hokum (they talk about their sad personal life). If such sappiness is meant to make us care about these puppets, then well, it fails to work its charm on the audience. Things become so wearisome that you start wishing for cheap pleasures, like violence and sex. The former is present in small, ineffective doses, while the latter is entirely absent (except for a kiss in the sixth episode). All the walking and talking merely offers us this lesson: The hotshot businessmen are corrupt and wicked. The employee who bends over backward for his boss is not good either. Also, one shouldn't fight with nature because you will always lose this battle. "When nature kicks, it doesn't miss," says a character. The man, or rather the man in the suit, is your typical unidimensional, power-hungry bad guy, complete with (invisible) horns and a tail. Squint and you might also see a trident and discover that the color of his skin is red.

Season 2 sometimes takes us out of the rig and into the chaos of the outside world, where people who are injured and have lost their homes find shelter in camps. These scenes, though, don't move you with their visuals of pain and suffering. The bodies, and the frantic movement of the doctors, are all impersonally displayed as if they are screensavers or generated using CGI or green screen or whatever. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that The Rig Season 2 falls short of expectations. Molly Vevers' smile, however, exudes warmth and kindness and turns out to be the only good thing about this show. A character, at one point, replies to a query by saying, "Plenty of action, not too much fun." "Yes, exactly!" I shouted. His words can be used to criticize this show.

Final Score- [3.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times