Though there is no shortage of remakes that fail to capture the spark of the original work, there are none that are quite like Bel-Air. Drawing from the broad narrative beats of the 90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, though without any of its charm or wit, the first season increasingly bordered on being a parody of itself. This begins to make a bit more sense when considering that the original impetus to creating it came from a fan-made short YouTube trailer that essentially was a confined sketch and should probably have stayed as such. That it has now been stretched into two seasons of television has laid bare just how thin of a concept and approach this is. This second season of Bel-Air isn’t a complete disaster by any means, with some moments in the first four episodes offering hints of potential, but it is also defined by a sense of directionlessness that continues to drag it down. Where the original series managed to hit necessary dramatic notes precisely because they were juxtaposed with the comedic tone, this streaming reincarnation remains one-note and rote despite the best efforts of its cast.

Season 2 picks up two weeks after the events of last season, which culminated in Will (Jabari Banks) packing his bags and leaving the mansion to go out on his own. It isn’t a spoiler to say that this separation is not permanent, as Will is still in touch with most of the Banks family save for Uncle Phil (Adrian Holmes), with whom he remains frustrated. Their tension becomes a centerpiece of the first few episodes, despite the attempts by Aunt Vivian (Cassandra Freeman) to keep everyone together while also pursuing her art career. While all this is going on, Carlton (Olly Sholotan), Hilary (Coco Jones), and Ashley (Akira Akbar) all have their own respective storylines as they try to make their way in the world. There is romance, drama, and conflict that the series continues to dutifully cycle through. However, just as all this is playing out, one has a growing sense that there is little actual significance to anything and that the show is spinning its wheels. Most seemingly important developments are soon undone, only to get replaced by ones that are familiar and played out before they even start.

Image via Peacock

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In particular, the show is still not sure about what to do with Carlton. Much of this issue dates back to the first season, where his primary purpose was basically to be a villain to Will. This isn’t necessarily bad in theory, but it was never natural in execution. When the series decided that it was just going to mostly forget about this, it was a bit clunky, though the shift couldn’t have come a moment sooner. Where Season 2 begins to encounter some of the same problems comes down to how Carlton will regress as a character only when the narrative needs him to. As his fellow students all come together to organize at their school, Carlton seems to be going in a new direction than he has prior — that is, until he isn’t, and we are almost back at square one again. For all the ways his character has supposedly grown since we first met him, there is an odd insistence on keeping him caught up in the past. This will explode into the present in an abrupt fashion, making it hard to feel like there is actually any development of his character taking place; instead, he is reduced to being an empty impetus for conflict to fill time.

That is where the tension at the heart of Bel-Air becomes most apparent. At times, it is a sitcom in a structural sense, with each character going through their own subplots. Lost from this are all the jokes that made the original alive and joyous. The way this is all shot conveys that it is meant to be very serious stuff even as it is often visually flat. The bigger problem is that it is hard to take Bel-Air as seriously as it clearly wants to be taken. References to real issues come across as being potentially interesting only for the show to then largely sidestep them for more superficial storylines. It isn’t as easily dismissible as being lip service, but it is not much better than that. There could be plenty of room to update the material for our present moment and offer more focused observations as a result, but Season 2 is far too unfocused without any particularly insightful payoffs to each new path it goes down.

There are the decisions facing Will that could be compelling, as he finds himself at a crossroads in his life, but there isn’t a strong foundation underpinning it all. Uncle Phil, whose warmth was a central part of the sitcom, feels cold here. He brings in his own separate storylines, but this only ensures that there is an emotional distance that is hard to shake. Part of this could be understandable in that Bel-Air is just about everything going down easy, but that becomes harder to swallow when there is little that is actually substantive. The hearts of the cast are all in it, with Freeman in particular the real driving force in key moments, but the show itself does them no favors as they must battle to bring something more to the story. Even when they find it, everything is too fleeting and forced.

Image via Peacock

If anything, Season 2 is playing everything a bit safer this time. While much of the first season didn’t work, at least it was taking some bigger swings. The echoes of that continue to be felt here, but they now ring even more hollow. Though the latter half of the season is being set up as containing some more significant narrative elements to build around, they are telegraphed in cliffhanger teases at the end of episodes that are more tiresome than anything. There is little worth getting invested in — especially when, as seen with Carlton, characters can just be reduced down to the broad strokes we already know and never grow much beyond that. It isn’t that he needs to be “likable,” as plenty of shows can be about deeply unsympathetic characters, but there ought to be some greater complexity to him. The show is clearly grasping at this, but any moment of greater depth is dashed as soon as it starts to bump against the tepid confines of the story. When it all comes down to it, Bel-Air Season 2 goes through the motions of the family dynamics without anything sufficiently dynamic about it as a whole.

Rating: C-

Bel-Air Season 2 premieres February 23 on Peacock, with new episodes releasing weekly.