After a year of learning from home, the student body returns to Bayside High. This one again includes the transplants from the far less wealthy Douglas High School, which was closed due to budget cuts.
The kids - and their parents and teachers - will have to face a new host high school tribulations and wacky shenanigans this year, most significant of which is the regional 'Spirit Competition', in which the Bayside kids will face off with their nemeses from nearby Valley High.
All is fair in love and war, and the Spirit Competition is absolutely a war. The jinks, they will be high.
This second season of the sequel-slash-reboot of the 90s TV series of the same name picks up more or less where the first season left off, albeit with the acknowledgment that an entire school year pretty much happened off screen.
The cast remain great fun, bouncing off one another well, and while the writing is often deliberately overboard and exaggerated, it is overboard and exaggerated in really smart ways. A lot of time and attention was spent on getting just the right mix of silliness in place, such as the amusing little references to Elizabeth Berkley's role in the notorious box office bomb Showgirls.
It's also nice to see more long-form story telling taking place over this season. While every episode continues to feature an immediate focus and plotlines that are resolved within it, the writers have also included the loose season-long arc of the Spirit Competition as a framing mechanism for the episode-by-episode shenanigans. This helps make the season feel more connected and less 'episode of the week'.
It also results in some entertaining character arcs. Coach Slater and Mac Morris both get solid character development as they learn a few life lessons while remaining still recognisably the same people, and Aisha's new romance is all kinds of adorable.
Alas, the show has not been renewed for a third season. I would absolutely have been turning up for Senior year, if it was.
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