There’s something truly magical about a Mike Schur show. Despite being half hour comedies, there’s so much heart baked into each episode – so much care given to crafting each character – that you get to the end of a season and find yourself desperately wishing you could have just a couple more minutes with that crazy gang of misfits. This special blend worked magic on Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn 99, and The Good Place*, and now it’s just as potent on the second season of A Man on the Inside. After an incredibly successful first season a year ago, our favorite senior PI (in training), Charles (the great Ted Danson), is back with a new case to solve and some interesting suspects to investigate. And while the mystery doesn’t quite work as well as the one back in season one, the series is just as good this time around for a host of different reasons.
*Another hallmark of a Schur show? Familiar actors from other Schur show’s popping up. He – and his team of writers, directors, and producers – like to use a lot of the same folks, to great impact. And one, in particular, is deployed brilliantly here.
Season two’s central mystery is discovering just who is trying to sabotage the $400 million dollar donation from a rich, pretty awful alum (Gary Cole, playing a complete scumbag with aplomb) at a small liberal arts college. The suspects? The various faculty members who stand to lose their jobs if that money comes in and that man gets a chance to reshape the school in his image. And the crew Schur has assembled is pretty impressive – Linda Park, Max Greenfield, Sam Huntington, Mary Steenburgen (Ted Danson’s real-life wife) and Oscar nominee David Strathairn – but in a change from season one, we spend far less time investigating life on campus and far more time learning about the show’s central characters. Sure, there’s overlap – Steenburgen’s Mona is Danson’s Charles’ love interest, Strathairn’s Dr. Benjamin Cole is a misanthropic English professor who hates Charles (to hilarious effect throughout) – but the story is much richer for the amount of time we spend learning about Charles, Julie (Lilah Richcreek Estrada, who steps up to the plate in a big way this season), and Emily (Mary Elizabeth Ellis, who is asked to carry entire sequences without Danson and rises to the challenge).
And this is where I’ll come back to what I led with – the deep heart infused within the comedy of this show lifts it above and beyond your average comedy series. Because boy, is that heart on display this time around (as it was in the final episodes of season one, as well). We learn much more about Julie – including meeting her estranged mother, Vanessa (a spectacular Constance Marie), and her mother’s dipshit boyfriend (could it be anyone other than Jason Mantzoukas?). We learn about her childhood, why she has a hard time trusting other people, and just what is going on between her and Didi (Stephanie Beatriz, who returns in a recurring role)*. We also learn more about Emily, outside of her role as mother to three of the dumbest, but still pretty lovely, boys in the world, daughter of Charles, and wife to the unflappable Joel (Eugene Cordero who continues to be great). We get to see more about what she wants out of life and how she’s grieving the loss of her mother – something we didn’t get much of in season one due to her worries about her dad. And Charles? Well, he’s still Charles and he’s still friends with Calbert (Stephen McKinley Henderson, who remains an absolute delight).
*There are times when I – like many queer people – read a bit too much into interactions between characters on a show because we’ve all been conditioned to read the subtext as maintext. But the vibe between these two characters actually does get addressed, so for once, I was impressed that the writers actually opted to notice chemistry and try to figure out what to do with it rather than just ignoring it.
Watching A Man on the Inside isn’t quite like a warm cup of tea at the end of a long day, but it definitely feels far more comfortable that many shows. Schur and his team have a clear idea of who their characters are, what they want, and why they act the way they do. Nothing feels forced or overdone. The jokes are there – and they are funny – but there’s a humanity in every action taken that is often missing from comedies these days. If you’re in the market for a series that will make you smile, tear up, and sigh with happiness all in the same episode, this is the show for you. I really hope there’s a third season coming our way, but even if there’s not, I’ll be thrilled with the time we’ve had with these lovely people.
A Man on the Inside is currently streaming on Netflix.
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