The writing is excellent as are everybody’s performances. This show has some of the most expressive eye work in the game–the scenes between Milchick and Natalie are tours de force.

If you’re examining scenes divorced from the show, I agree with you. One of the things that attracted me to the show was the fantastic casting and acting. This worked in season 1 because the characters knew as much about what they were doing as the audience, which was not much.

The reason this falls apart especially in season 2 is that big things have happened which should dramatically affect a human being, and our characters mostly shrug it off with “that was weird, I guess we should go back to what we were doing before”. The treatment of the Season 1 finale on Season 2 was unforgivable.

• Mark found out that his Outie’s wife was essentially being held hostage by the entity that controls Mark S’s very existence. That should have a profound effect on someone and he went back to work.
• I don’t think we ever saw Helly R telling Dylan or Mark about what she saw during the OTC event.
• Dylan didn’t get to experience the OTC, so he gets let off the hook.
• Irving was the only one that reacted as a human would to the OTC. He lost the love of his life, fought for truth knowing oblivion would be the reward, and he did it anyway.

I remember watching the screen after the OTC finale in S2 E1 when Mark S is awake again on the severed floor and thinking “okay, shit is going to go down. He’s been lied to all this time. A normal human would be pissed beyond imagination.” Instead after a conversation with Milchek where Mark S backs down, Mark S goes back to work. WTF?!