Before
I get into things, let me say this first: talking about the new season of Black Monday won’t be feasible without
spoiling some developments from last season. I’ll try and avoid major season 2
spoilers going forward, but anything from season 1 is on the table.
Really
glad to have Black Monday back.
Watching the season 2 premiere reminded me how much I enjoy it, despite its
occasional messiness, and it’s been quite a while since I had some new Andrew
Rannells content. While the first two episodes of the season aired back to
back, I’ll just focus on episode 1 today and come back around to episode 2 for
the next Book of Rannells review.
After
the explosive finale last season, we kick things off with a new world order.
Following their coup, Dawn and Blair have taken over Mo’s firm. Dawn revels in
finally being an equal partner, but Blair continually getting all the credit
for their shared work does start to get under her skin. As she runs the
day-to-day trading at the firm, Blair is the golden boy who “predicted” Black
Monday (rather than semi-inadvertantly caused it,) the one who gets on the
magazine covers and schmoozes with senators. Mo, meanwhile, is on the run.
Maybe
absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I thought this was a really strong
opener. It deftly establishes how things have progressed for our major
characters since we last saw them, with everyone in a new place and in some
ways a new person (trying to be, anyway – scratch the surface of any of them,
and they quickly reveal that they’re who they’ve always been.) The show does an
especially nice job with Dawn, showing her transformation from long-suffering
but ambitious trader to the big boss, rebuilding the firm in her own image and
desperately trying to show how she can run things differently/better than Mo
did.
Since
Mo himself has disappeared to parts unknown, his screentime comes mainly in the
form of flashbacks with Dawn, from the days before The Jammer Group. It’s neat
to get some more insight into what they used to be like, both separately and as
a duo, and the flashbacks also offer some fun glimpses into the pasts of other
characters we know now.
Blair/Rannells
has a pretty great episode, in my opinion. It’s fun to see how he’s tried to
morph into the new rock star of Wall Street (he takes steroids now!), while
also navigating the outcome of his gradual realization last season that he’s
gay. Although he and Tiff went through with their wedding, everything is above
board between them, and she’s happy to serve as his beard in exchange for the
prestige of being the Wall Street hotshot’s wife. Their dynamic continues to be
awesomely hilarious together. (Plus, they go to a swanky shindig that, if I
recall correctly, is a birthday party for Nancy Reagan. I very definitely sang,
“Nancy Reagan, / Meanest and thinnest of the First Ladies / Moves into the
White House,” to myself.)
Speaking
of nods to Rannells’s other works, this season features a new guest star: none
other than Tuc Watkins, who played Hank to Rannells’s Larry in The Boys in the Band. Watkins appears as
the House Minority Whip (Tiff: “that always sounds racist to me,”) a
family-values conservative that Blair has to sell on bank deregulation. Their
scenes together are also terrific, and a highlight of the episode for me is Blair
feverishly trying to race through his 25-point lobbyist sales pitch before
Congressman Harris makes it back to his hotel room.
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