The second season of Crackdown aka Crackdown 2 picks up from the same point where season one had ended. The plot here focuses on the a plane being hijacked and taken to Afghanistan where a new enemy awaits the IB team back home with an even stranger demand. What happens next? The story is interesting but it isn’t anything that you haven’t watched already. And so I was more looking forward to the screenplay to create tense moments like in the first season. Unfortunately, the screenplay standing at 8 episodes of roughly 30 odd minutes each flatters to deceive and is nowhere close to that in season one.

The drama itself begins on a skiddy note wherein it did succumb to the creative dilemma on whether to reboot the world or to just continue with the momentum of the first season. This is often a challenge for most series and this one did end up being kind of middling. So you are reintroduced to the old characters while being introduced to a few new ones. The problem is that the new characters needed a little bit of the world building themselves in order to invest in them. And when that doesn’t happen(or rather is kept under wraps as a mystery for the final act), you are disconnected in the drama.

The proceedings are watchable but the writing isn’t focused enough to keep you invested. In fact, the events were a little too scattered for my liking as opposed to being focused to the main plot. A couple of subplots did not quite add up to the main plot too and rest assured the main plot would have been unaffected had those not been there too. My point was on utilizing that time in creating a tense hostage situation which would have resulted in a compelling viewing. Another drawback was the characterization here of most characters. Most of them were one-dimensional and that made the drama that much more simplier as opposed to being layered. And what a simplified drama needed was to create those moments that did not arrive until the thrilling final act.

The final act of the drama does save the drama to an extent of giving it a ‘watchable’ status. It was left too far late in the day but the flashback portions did have a good purpose and it did make for a compelling watch. It almost resurrected the drama from the dead which was some much needed good news for the second season. Also, what it did was setup things really well for its third season which I am assuming might be the last. But that doesn’t quite take away from the fact that the drama was found wanting for most parts of the duration. On the hindsight, I wished the flashback to be executed like a parallel track which would have made for a significantly better impact in what eventually was a disappointing screenplay.