Stuck 2: Is The Second Season On Netflix As Convincing As The First?

The arrival of Ficarra and Picone in the world of TV series thrilled us. We had written it in the review of Incastrati, an original product of the Netflix team, and we had reconfirmed it in our invitation to restart Italian seriality precisely from the title of the Sicilian comedians, discovering instead with their second season that perhaps we were wrong, even if we have to admit it to reluctantly. Despite Stuck, returning to the March 2023 Netflix catalog was thought of as a show to be released in two moments, thus not prolonging the narrative too much, and therefore being created immediately as a two-season product, this second departure on the streaming window seems almost disconnected from the previous one. Simplified and reduced to the only sketches on which the actors concentrated more, making the atmosphere of the story confusing from the first episode, seeming more cobbled together than how it was left.

Weaker storytelling and comedy

It was on a road in Sicily that we left Salvo and Valentino in the finale of Incastrati and it is more or less in the same situation that we find them again. The attack is less convincing than it was for the first season, having to enter the story in media res for script reasons, however not allowing the viewer to easily frame the previous context from which, then, the series wanted to restart .

A dragging the audience on the sly if one considers the curiosity that the initial episodes of the debut had managed to arouse. This time they don’t even try to tease the viewer with fun, not inserting any effective elements like those of the first season: the deconstruction of seriality, Salvo’s passion for the crime show The Touch of the Killer, how the protagonist’s risk being accused of murder. With Stuck 2 the jokes follow one another all the same, taking inspiration from the clichés about the Mafia, about a Sicily where everyone takes it easy, where there is always delay, and where you can go unpunished if you are engaged to one of the bosses of the police. Writing a narrative that proceeds a little tired as it wasn’t at all in its debut, and which also conditions a comedy that is, therefore, more artificial and phoned by the characters. Especially from its main players. This is a pity, both for how we had been able to appreciate them precisely with Incastrati and after the exquisite performance under the direction of Roberto Andò in the film La stanza. A saw them relegate slightly where one more leap was expected, for a final that had to not only be at the level of the season released last year but even surpass it.

Wedged and…strapped

Of the first impressions that we hope will be denied in the continuation of the series, in particular as regards the intertwining of the different narrative lines of each character. Wishing the show to find its gloss that also justifies the chaos with which the first episodes of Incastrati 2 start in fourth place.

Episodes that need to be directed again after this preliminary heeling, to understand whether or not the series will be put back on the right track and lead to the satisfactory solution of the Chinese box in which the protagonists have become trapped. Because Ficarra and Picone can do more on the small screen.