For each Silothere is an equal and opposite Silo. After passing his first episode of season 2 following a single character in near-total silence, the second season of Graham Yost’s post-apocalyptic mystery packs enough characters, dialogue, and plot catch-up in Season 2 Episode 2 to choke a horse — or fill a silo, if you like. If it is less effective than its predecessor, it is because it is too busy to follow the guiding principle of the series: keep it simple, stupid.

But it’s hard to find too many faults with “Order,” so named after the secret book that Mayor Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins, soft-spoken and impossibly tall) consults on the true nature of the silo in a vault. very hidden, only with him and the judge. Mary Meadows (Tanya Moodie) has already entered. At the time, she was his apprentice, or “his shadow”, until an incident 25 years ago caused her to quit smoking and then drinking.

Now Bernard needs his help again. Since they saw Juliette Nichols refusing to clean the silo’s external camera and just…turning around and walking away over the hill and out of sight, instead of drop dead like everyone elsethe place is chaos. The Raiders, commanded by Bernard’s deputy and future spook Robert Sims (Common), and the deputies, under the nominal control of new (and secretly very ill) Sheriff Paul Billings (Chinaza Uche), have their work cut out for them. enforce curfews and repression of rebellion.

Their real problem is the Down Deep, as the mechanical innards of the Silo are called. This is where all of Juliette’s friends and accomplices live: Walker (Harriet Walter), her mentor; Shirley (Remmie Milner), her best friend; Cooper (Matt Gomez Hidaka), his shadow; and Knox (Shane McRae), the head mechanic, the man Juliette followed back in the day – and the man who revealed her location to the authorities. Knox wants to keep things quiet, fearing retaliation if they commit any form of sabotage against the Silo. Shirley is looking for answers, and besides that, blood. Walker, who is briefly arrested by Down Deep’s mild-mannered deputy Hank (Billy Postlethwaite), just wants cool heads to prevail before anyone does something stupid. If they really want to rebel, they have to play smart.

Bernard certainly does. In a clever political move, he gathers everyone in the silo to hear a big speech about the seemingly miraculous event that took place earlier that day. Naturally, he can’t reveal the truth: Juliette, with the help of Walker and his ex-wife Carla (Clare Perkins), replaced the faulty tape used by the IT department (once Bernard’s stronghold) to deliberately kill everyone the ones they sent to “clean” with duct tape which worked. So he takes credit for it, saying the IT department has developed an incredible new tape that can help people survive the “toxins” of the outside world longer than ever before. It’s the first day of a new era! The first step towards the surface! Hooray!

Even Judge Meadows is impressed, despite her distaste for Bernard – and, I imagine, there is no shortage of physical withdrawal symptoms from quitting alcohol. She agrees to co-sign her lie in front of everyone and offers a small monetary gift to everyone in the silo to keep people happy. In exchange, she has a simple request: she wants to go out, using the same heat tape that Juliette used. She’s tired of being the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain, she says; now she wants her hot air balloon, her escape.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, we also get a brief glimpse of Juliette’s semi-estranged father, Dr. Pete Nichols (the always touching Iain Glen), who copes with the apparent loss of his daughter by throwing himself back into his work as an obstetrician. (Her discovery that the authorities regularly sabotage the fertility chances of families with rebellious ancestors is one of the reasons why Juliette fought against the authorities.) But the other inhabitants of the Silo are not as sure as the doctor that his daughter is dead. . All over its brutalist concrete expanse, graffiti began to appear reading “JL” – Juliet Lives.

Would it have been okay if she lived in this specific episode? Of course. Robbins, Common, Moodie and Walter are lively screen presences, but Juliette’s steely gaze East the show. I completely understand the decision to bifurcate these two plots, for the moment anyway. Still, there’s no doubt that writer Fred Golan and director Michael Dinner knew they had an uphill climb, or upstairs in this case, facing them with this episode. There are, of course, flaws in the plot: Shirley’s rebellion is fairly routine, and I heard the word “tape” more in this 45-minute episode than in the hundreds of hours of television I’ve watched all year round.

But — a bit like this review! — this episode has a task to accomplish: it must reintroduce the world, the story, the plot (from the big picture to the more concrete storytelling mechanisms), and the characters to the audience. All the first episode had to do was show Rebecca Ferguson Indiana Jones herself through an abandoned silo. In other words, the degree of difficulty here was higher and for fewer rewards. If the task was simply to refresh my memory and re-engage with the story, mission accomplished.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about television for rolling stone, Vulture, The New York TimesAnd anywhere that will have itReally. He and his family live on Long Island.