I’ve often felt that one of the charms and appeals of kdramas is that there is only one season. There are emotions, there is plenty of quiet character moments, angst, and a beginning, a middle and an end all in one season that American show would stretch out over 5 seasons. It’s not really in the kdrama formula to have a season two. It just doesn’t seem to work all that well (although series like Kingdom or Age of Youth have managed it or series that are independent continuations of each other like the Reply series). And I think this second season of The Uncanny Counters sort of proves that. The story was over. It had a beginning, middle and end. It doesn’t need more.

The plot here is predictable and there is nothing there that adds to the narrative of the first one. There is a lot of room for character development, but the drama doesn’t use its time well at all instead giving us rather silly, fluffy moments between the characters and overall, it just feels rather poorly done. As if the people behind this didn’t really care or didn’t feel like it needed to bother with the plot all that much.

Instead of giving us more time to delve deeper into the characters they give us a cardboard cutout of them and a few romantic moments between some of the characters that are totally cute or sweet but add nothing to the story itself. Nothing that happens really matters. There are no puzzles to solve or mysteries to uncover, backstories to explore (like why the bad guys are bad) which pretty much takes away a lot of tension from the narrative. Everything is easy. There is no real desperation or intensity in the story. The struggles they had that made them interesting in the first season are no longer there. There is no battle going on here.

Many of the characters don’t work the same as before and neither do their superpowers. The character who struggled in the first season doesn’t struggle now. So Moon seems almost invincible and way too rugged and cold when he was the soft heart of the story last season. He doesn’t even feel like the main character here or the sensitive as the heart of the series and we are not following him learning more about his powers. But there was still no decent successor to him to fill that main character, fish-out-of-water role so the story has no anchor or focus.

Our characters have nothing much to do but try to fight some very dull and colorless bad guys. They are not being given time to grow organically so they will change with the narrative. They have changed, without us getting to see it as it all happened off screen between the two seasons, to serve the oh-so-generic, bare-bone plot that this new series has to offer.

While the plot of the first series felt like a story that has been retread a little too often, it also managed to find some fresh and exciting angles on the very common underdog superhero story with some good tension and humor along with a great lovable cast and characters. And although the actors and characters are still lovely, the story here doesn’t really nothing to say here. Not about human greed or corruption or humanity. At least not in an exciting new way. Everything is a little too simple or convenient to hit it’s mark properly.

On the surface, the series is cool, flashy, with funny moments and some really cool special effects and fight scenes, but that was never really what made The Uncanny Counters, or any sci-fi for the matter show fun to watch. People may start watching genre shows for the setting; dragons, swords, superpowers and all that but people keep watching for the plot and the characters. The character struggles, seeing those less fortunate stand up for something bigger than them, people coming together and working together using their powers makes for an exciting narrative and hopefully a good story. It’s so much more than just some superpowers. The previous series seemed to understand that, but this feels very much surface level to its approach to a story.

This series seems rather dull. The story is missing something and both the old characters and the new ones we are meeting do not have the same charm and depth as in the previous season. There isn’t really any story going on, very little momentum or character moments that move the story forward. It just sort of tugs along. Everything is too easy, too predictable and there is very little real conflict going on, apart from cool fight scenes, or characters growth which makes it really boring to watch because nothing really happens. Or matter. There is nothing about season two that stays with you after watching it. If you have nothing to add to a story, don’t make season two.