‘Quantico’ season 2, episode 1 review: Alex Parrish faces new threats
The season premiere of “Quantico” arrived on ABC Sunday night, and by and large, this has the potential to be a much better show then season 1. Whether or not it actually meets those expectations remains to be seen, but there is a lot of good stories happening.
The biggest thing that the writers did successfully this time around is frame the time jumps from one era to the next better. We know that the “future” story will be a year past the arrival of Alex Parrish to The Farm. This is her new CIA training facility where she is going to be doing just about everything she can in an effort to ensure that she uncovers a conspiracy being set up by Owen (Blair Underwood) the head of the group who may be secretly recruiting members to a rogue organization. If what we saw in the future turns out to be true, then the resident author of the new recruits (someone who we’re tempted to call Richard Castle since “Castle” is no longer on the air) could be one of them. The story is structured in a way that is fairly simple, but there is room for it to unfold in a few different, but interesting ways.
One thing we especially like is the emphasis on Alex’s past. Season 1 is not forgotten, and we get repeated reminders as to what she went through. In some ways, it makes her more of a celebrity in her new group; yet, at the same time it means that she has more bad habits in the eyes of the CIA, who view themselves as more proactive than an organization they consider to be extremely reactive in turn.
Also, tension is forming already between Alex and Ryan over what can be considered their job skills — he is far better than her at lying, and having the two infiltrate this organization at the same time gives the two added pressure since there are feelings somewhere in there. We do miss some of the season 1 regulars, but at the same time maybe they’ll be back in some form. In particular, we do think that Shelby needs a heck of a lot more material than she had in the premiere.
Yet, from all of this in the past to the future (where a takeover may be leading to the death of several political figures), we do think that “Quantico” is in a better position than ever before to deliver the goods. We’ll just have to wait and see if it reaches that potential. Grade: B.