Season Two

My suspicion is that going into Season Two everyone knew they were living on borrowed time.

After a couple of set-up episodes at the very start ("Vows" and "Instinct"), they pretty much put the pedal to the metal and started blowing through stories that otherwise might have taken entire seasons rather than tight little two-parters.

In some cases it paid off. We got to the meat of the Perrin plot before I'd had a chance to get really irritated with him. In other places, characters such as Mellie / November / Madeline were under-served simply because there was no time.

And you could see them short-handing things. How Ballard found Echo, for example, was covered in exposition instead of seeing it play out. We simply had to imagine the conversation where he phoned Boyd and told him what was going on.

I can only imagine them looking at the list of things that had to happen in ten episodes and despairing what had to be cut out. It works for the most part, as they strip down to the most important story, themes, and characters. A certain focus is created when you have to be that ruthless in your storytelling.

There were so many interesting things left on the table, but it seems to me that they got the bones of what they wanted to say out there, if not the blood and guts.