Season Review: Close Enough Season Two

Close Enough, the long delayed spiritual successor to Regular Show, returns to HBO Max with new episodes. This would be the second year in the row that we’ve seen it focus on Los Angeles, the current virus capital of the world, and have all the characters be doing things that I’m guessing are not currently permitted. Hopefully that will be the last as we inch closer to the end of this pandemic, but it’s good to see more of this show after it’s great opening season that finally premiered last April. And just like that first season, this one continues the mishaps and relatable shenanigans of Josh and Emily, two Gen X parents raising their daughter Candice while also dealing with their friends, jobs, and other over the top situations of being parents.

However, while Season 1’s episodes put Josh and/or Emily basically at the center of each of its eight episodes, this season (which is also eight episodes) spreads that focus across the rest of the main and supporting cast. Josh and Emily get a couple episodes about themselves, but then we have a couple episodes focusing on Alex, Josh’s creepy friend and roommate, a couple about Bridgette, Alex’s ex-wife and Emily’s partner in their folk rock comedy duo, a couple for Pearle, the retired cop landlord, a couple for her adopted son Randy, and even one for Candice and her teacher, Mr. Campbell. That’s not to say these characters didn’t have presence in the last season, but they were clearly on the side at the time. And the results of this are a bit more mixed in quality than last time, with some premises feeling a bit played out for animated sitcoms and others putting neat twists on them. None of them are outright bad, but there are definitely some weaker ones in the batch, which gives me the impression that they were picked out as the B group after the audience was more or less acquainted with Josh, Emily, and Candice.

I also couldn’t help but notice the pauses for ad breaks amongst this season’s episodes, much like the first eight. This was understandable then as this show was originally meant to air on TBS, which has commercials and therefore need places for the story to pause for an ad. But seeing them in this season makes me wonder if we’re still working our way through the backlog of already completed Season 1 episodes that never made it to air. We already have a third season of this show on the way, but now I’m fairly certain that those might just be the remaining episodes already made, as opposed to new ones being made exclusively for HBO Max. Not that I dislike any of what we’ve gotten so far, but is this show actually still happening or are we just seeing it trickled out before it’s suddenly cancelled? Will we get episodes that don’t have suspicious ad break pauses if these first three “seasons” do well enough or is it being burned off like Tarantula, just slowly? HBO Max already hasn’t been great at advertising its original animated shows, but we’ll see.

Whatever the answer to that may be, more of JG Quintel’s work is always welcome on my screen, so even if this wasn’t as good a batch of episodes as last time, it’s still cool to see more of his style being seen. Hopefully we’ll get to see far more over the next few years, possibly even in a time when the world isn’t besieged by a deadly virus! In the meantime, if you enjoyed the first season, you will no doubt enjoy the second, if maybe to a lesser extent. So, make sure to give it a watch to show that there’s still a demand for this type of programming. It’s as regular a show as you’ll see in these times.