City on a Hill Season 2: Contentious Tides in 90's Boston
City on a Hill Season 2: Contentious Tides in 90’s Boston
Note: This review will contain spoilers for City on a Hill Season 1. If you’d like to see my thoughts and recommendation of the series, click here. You have been warned.
Back in Boston with more ambitious legal and crime drama from the small screen is City on a Hill, airing its second season which finished up just a little over a week or so ago. Coming back from the bitter, wrongful resolution of the previous season’s armored truck robberies (with Jackie Rohr’s interference resulting in the death of a friend working on the case), the show takes place one year later. DeCourcy Ward is still acting as the Assistant DA in Boston, and Jackie continues to place himself in vulnerable positions through his reckless actions outside of FBI work. Despite sourly parting ways at the end of the first season, the two are drawn together yet again to solve the case of a little girl who was shot during a gun battle in a predominantly black neighborhood in the city. This opens up a can of worms involving racial tension with the police, as well as drawing the ire of Grace Campbell, a well-respected social activist trying to make her neighborhood a better, safer place for her sons, Anton and Kelvin. As the story unfolds, everyone’s journeys impact the plot, including Jackie’s daughter’s return from a rehab retreat and Jenny Rohr trying to find her place in the world through a Church choir.
What I like about this season is how vastly improved the structure of the episodes are, from the order in which scenes are displayed down to the cinematography itself. While in the first season there was a general connection between everything going on, this season plays much more close quarters with what transpires. Just as before, we get the viewpoints of both the investigators and the criminals, giving us an idea of where the show is going. But, coming in at 8 episodes—two less than its first season—season 2 attempts to deliver a more streamlined story that moves at a faster pace than its predecessor. On top of that, the way everything interconnects doesn’t just happen at the end of the season. Instead, the story threads weave against one another throughout, something that made it much easier to care about the characters as well as the plot because of how interconnected everything felt from the outset. Everything from Siobhan’s bid for a political position to Jackie coming to terms with the demons of his past all manage to have an impact on—or be impacted by—the events of the case and its subsequent results.
This season also had much more dynamic character writing. While it’s clear who the “good” and “bad” people are, it’s also easy to get lost in each of the character’s rooting for them in some capacity and hoping that things will get better. Sometimes they do, but other times they don’t, the hope of the future contrasted by the stark grimness of reality. When things are hopeful, those hopes are lifted to the heavens. But when things are hopeless, it crashes back into the dark. This equilibrium between both hope and lack of it made this season feel like a balancing act between tragedy and triumph. In creating this dichotomy, there was a real sense of humanity to everything going on, one that made character actions understandable given the events of last season while adding new layers of depth to each of the series’ leads.
This is most readily evident in the character arc of Jackie Rohr. The first season, in hindsight, felt like a primer for this one in comparison, acting almost as a prologue to the developments seen in this second act. Jackie’s developments in particular, especially his conflicts of interest within the FBI contrasted with his interactions with his family upon his daughter’s release from rehab, make up the bulk of interesting character arcs throughout the season. He’s much more fleshed-out here than in the previous season, which laid just enough groundwork to make what happens this time around all the more impactful. Kevin Bacon pulls it off very well, including a scene in the middle of the season that may just be the best one of the entire series (you’ll know it when you see it).
Barring that, though, it is very difficult to talk about the main plot of this season without going into spoiler territory. This is because of a very big twist that transpires in the first episode, something that sets the stage for the tragic tale to come. And it’s something that’s just big enough that I would be remiss to spoil it here. All I can say is that the twists of this season alongside the character development throughout for the cast radiate a much stronger story than season one. The first season was City on a Hill gathering the courage to stand on its own two feet. Season two, however, manages to tell a much more engaged, interwoven story with elements of social commentary that are delivered in an expert manner. A very engaging show right down to the dynamics of the camera angles being used throughout the season (often in unique ways that season one never dared to try and sell people on).
Overall, City on a Hill strives to improve in its second outing, and it manages to do so very well. The creators, writers, and producers should be proud of their work, as should the production team and actors that managed to bring everything to life. While the show has yet to be renewed for a third season, I feel like it would be interesting to see what directions Jackie Rohr and DeCourcy Ward can be taken in after such a stellar turnaround. While I’ll have to wait and see, you’re lucky enough that, if you haven’t seen the show yet, now is probably the best time to give it some support by sitting down and checking it out. It’s definitely something you won’t want to miss.
***
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