If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last 23 or so years as a Middle Eastern woman, it’s that if my part of the world happens to be spotlighted in media — particularly American media — then the region won’t come off especially well. To see entire nations reduced to crumbling villages full of loose goats and oppressed women and men painted as barbaric in their beliefs and behavior, with very few exceptions. Not that these are complete fabrications out of whole cloth, but it certainly doesn’t speak for the region as a whole. It took a recommendation from friends with tastes similar to my own for me to tune in to The Old Man Season 1 in the first place, and two days and one binge later, Season 2 became one of my most highly anticipated shows.

Just over two years after the premiere of FX’s twisty thriller series, Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, and Alia Shawkat are back at last for a season that is just as compelling as the first, though it is strikingly different in tone. Gone is the almost dreamlike quality of the first season, whose silence and emptiness and dim lighting often made even the most common locations — a diner, an office, an airport — feel like liminal spaces. Season 2 is significantly more grounded, but this is to the series’ benefit, as to do otherwise would be a massive disservice to the story at hand.

What Is ‘The Old Man’ Season 2 About?

If Season 1 was the “fuck around” season, then Season 2 is definitely the “find out” portion of things. Picking up almost immediately where Season 1 left off, the season follows Dan Chase (Bridges) and Harold Harper (Lithgow), still on their mission to find Chase’s daughter and Harold’s protegé, Emily (Shawkat) after she was taken by Afghan warlord and Season 1 boogeyman Faraz Hamzad (Navid Negahban). Their attempts to covertly access Hamzad’s compound are complicated by the arrival of Omar (Artur Zai Barrera), a young man with alleged ties to Hamzad, but whose loyalties are uncertain, as well as just the general difficulty of accessing their stateside assets.

The other half of the season belongs wholly to Shawkat’s Emily, AKA Angela Adams, AKA Parwana Hamzad. Where Season 1 ended with her being brought to Hamzad’s compound for reasons unknown — at least to her — Season 2 wastes no time throwing Emily into the midst of a family she didn’t realize she had, and one that she very quickly decides to embrace once the truth of her heritage comes spilling out. The result is Emily becoming the season’s standout character, as her priorities are reassessed, and her loyalties broadened, but not shifted, as the Taliban descends on Hamzad’s village.

Jeff Bridges Returns in Fine Form for ‘The Old Man’ Season 2, While Others Stumble

It was pretty widely publicized that Season 1 of The Old Manexperienced production delays due to Bridges’ health scare. I’m glad he took the time he needed to recover, both because that’s just something a person should do when they’re unwell, and also because Bridges returns for Season 2 in damn fine form. A lot of actors could only go so far with a surly on-screen disposition, and even someone of Bridges’ talent and experience might be tempted to coast, but he never does. He gives it his all physically and emotionally — particularly in the physically demanding season premiere — and The Old Man Season 2 is a reminder of why we should never count him out.

It was also an excellent choice on the part of the series to devote the first episode entirely to Bridges and Lithgow, the original old men at the heart of the story. We got to see so little of the two of them actually working together in the first season that watching them play almost exclusively off one another is a huge treat. I admit that my primary experience of Lithgow’s work outside of this tends more towards the comedic (I had a slight Third Rock From the Sun fixation when I was 13), and despite the serious tone of the series overall, it delights me to no end that he still manages to bring that comedic energy with him. While Bridges’ Dan Chase weathers every challenge with a grim acceptance, Lithgow’s Harold Harper always seems about one roadblock away from a full-blown anxious meltdown and goes to great lengths to pretend that he, a man who’s spent decades behind a desk, is extremely cool with being out in the field all of a sudden.

If there’s one stumbling point in the season, at least in the episodes provided for review, it’s the presence of Zoe (Amy Brenneman). It’s not that Brenneman’s performance isn’t solid — it is every bit as layered as it was in the first season — but the question becomes more about where Zoe fits into the narrative as a whole. Her choice to stay with Chase in Season 1 could be chalked up to the adrenaline and the immediacy of the threat they were facing, but the character’s return in Season 2 feels confusing, with her motivations to stay no longer strong enough to justify her presence. I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop with Zoe since Season 1, and as of the fifth episode of Season 2, it still hasn’t. Maybe I’m wrong, but, as of right now, it’s as if the creative team wanted to keep a powerhouse performer in the game without considering that they needed to actually give Brenneman something to do within the larger narrative.

Alia Shawkat Is the Standout of ‘The Old Man’ Season 2
Image via FX

Despite the title, and the presence of three prominent old men, make no mistake, The Old Man Season 2 belongs 100% to Alia Shawkat. Though she delivered a quietly powerful performance in the first season, the web of lies woven by Dan (Haim Abbas) and Abbey (Leem Lubany), ostensibly for her own safety, is so tangled that her character gets lost in it all. In Season 1, Shawkat’s character functions more as an emotional pressure point for Chase and Harper, and, as we learn by the end, Hamzad as well.

My biggest question heading into the second season was how Emily would react when she learned the man she believed to be her father was, in fact, responsible for removing her and her mother from her home when she was too young to remember it. I expected drawn-out drama, and for Emily to slowly piece the truth together for herself after being presented with harsh, objective facts. Instead, that emotional beat is hit fairly quickly in one of the second episode’s most powerful moments, when Emily is left with a home video of herself as a baby being held by a young Hamzad (Pej Vahdat), and left to draw her own conclusions. It’s a messy, emotionally-charged moment, and really solidifies Shawkat as the heart and driving force of the season as a whole. The old men in her life might be dealing with the fallout of their actions, but it’s clear Emily is the one breaking the generational curses and forging her own path forward.

‘The Old Man’ Season 2 Challenges Our Preconceived Notions
Image via FX

Where the dangers in Season 1 were driven largely by internal factors, and the risk that long-held secrets would suddenly spill into the open, the threats in Season 2 are far more conventional for this sort of series, as the arrival of the Taliban provides a ticking clock for Chase, Harper, Emily and Hamzad. The dangers of the Taliban are far more present and tangible — and fortunately, actually presented as a danger to the people of Afghanistan as well, as opposed to a group they might all secretly be loyal to, as too many shows do. It’s a tragically topical take to say that the first people harmed by an extremist group are the ones closest to home, but the show addresses it unflinchingly. This is a level of nuance I’m not accustomed to and makes a show like The Old Man so refreshing.

Because this is a broad way of looking at things, and I would argue one that might go unnoticed by those who don’t know how to look for it, The Old Man also cleverly distills this idea through the characters of Dan Chase and Faraz Hamzad. The latter is presented to the audience from the get-go as a monster, a villain, and a dangerous man, mostly because he’s viewed through the eyes of the former, who’s spent the better part of several decades hiding from him. But the lengths Hamzad goes to in order to protect his home, and those he cares about, from encroaching forces is the same thing we’d expect of any main character, if that main character looks more like what we’re accustomed to seeing and speaks the language we do. Chase is highly motivated in the same ways Hamzad is, often goes to the same violent lengths, and in Season 2, even begins a relentless pursuit to bring his daughter home. The question is then indirectly put to the audience — at least in my view: if you see one of these men as a hero, and the other as a monster, ask yourself why that is.

With this change in the tension, however, a lot of the first season’s chilling, dreamlike vibe is gone. The spaces that are inhabited feel more lived in and less alien. There’s less voiceover, and the characters have fewer visions — and the ones they do have make immediate narrative sense. I do miss that strange, dreamy quality of the first season, but I acknowledge that the story they’re telling in Season 2 wouldn’t work at all if they’d chosen to retain it.

Despite this imminent threat, however, The Old Man Season 2 overall operates at the same speed as the first, really taking the time to draw out the beats and the danger but occasionally sacrificing its own pacing in the process. This is felt most once the series shifts partially back to the U.S., and the stride stumbles as a result. It’s not that things need to be happening at all times for The Old Man to remain interesting, but the story does sometimes operate at a stop-and-start pace that mixes long, silent, atmospheric moments with dense plot beats that happen so quickly that they’re barely over before you realize you absolutely need a rewatch to fully grasp it. Fortunately, The Old Man is engaging enough that a rewatch is no hardship, and with only five episodes provided for review, the series still has a chance to bring the season to a resounding, heart-pounding close — just like it did the first time around.

The Old Man Season 2 premieres on FX on September 12 with its two episodes.

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