To binge or not to binge: American Vandal Season Two
Lucas Torborg
A&E Editor
The highly anticipated season two of the Netflix original series American Vandal is a s**t load of fun and has far more to offer than just poop jokes.
Last year Netflix released a little show called American Vandal. The show was a mockumentary about a high school prank involving the image of a penis being spray painted on the school’s faculty’s cars.
The season follows an investigation of who really spray painted the phallic symbols. As a parody of Netflix’s “Making a Murderer” the show was surprisingly met with critical praise for being hilarious while also carrying great social commentary underneath.
Can the new season of American Vandal live up to the original season or will it suffer from sequelitis? Season number two of American Vandal is ironically about just that number two. The prank this year involves poop and a lot of it.
The creators of the show, Tony Yacenda and Dan Perault, keeps the show feeling fresh and new by setting this prank at a private school rather than a public school. This was a smart decision as it gave the show the opportunity explore different problems within high school, that are especially evident in private schools.
Season two also provides a new cast besides the documentary crew who narrated season one. Unfortunately, break out star of season one, Jimmy Tatro, is not in this season.
However, this provides for new high school stereotypes and characters to be explored in the newest season that were absent in the first. Season two may be less funny than season one, but it offers a far more interesting story that is extremely realistic and sometimes even heartbreaking.
Season two’s centers around Kevin McClain, a student at St. Bernadine Private High School. In the fall of 2017, the lemonade given out during lunch was poisoned with laxatives causing every student in the school to poop their pants. This event would later be coined as “the brown out”.
The school has convicted McClain as being the “S**t Burglar”, the alias of the prankster who leaves a picture of a poop emoji at the scene of each crime. Claiming that he was seeking revenge on all the students who bullied him and nicknamed him “s**t stain McClain” after pooping his pants in grade school.
McClain is expelled and and on house arrest for something he claims he was wrongly accused of. The documentary crew from the first season crew is sent to solve the crime and to unveil the secrets behind the school.
Saying anymore plot details about the season would surely ruin the viewer’s experience. Although, season two may be funnier and have a much better prankster, the new season is by far the superior season. The new season is highly addictive to watch having the viewer continuously guess who the burglar is. Most people will not be able to see the ending coming.
What this season does phenomenally is create highly complex and layered character based on the high school cliches nearly everyone has experienced. Whether it be the extremely awkward and pretentious nerd, the extremely popular arrogant jock who runs the school, or the stuck up rich girl, these students more than they appear on the outside.
Although this show may appear as if its just full of poop jokes it is far more than that, it is layered with social commentary about the modern American high school and the masks they must wear to fit in.
Feature photo by Lucas Torborg | MSU Reporter.