Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency: Start of Season 2

This show might have gotten unfavorable "the book was better"comparisons, it might have gotten lost in the shuffle, or critics pain didn't like it, but this was one of my favorite shows last year. It was wonderfully bizarre, the characters were outlandish and well-cast (they strike me as inhabiting a universe where everyone’s just a little out of tune, like the types who pop up in Terry Gilliam films) and the serialized plot built towards something. But this series is more anthology-like, so it’s really a more a question of whether lightning can strike twice than a continued interest.

So far, I have no idea what to expect and the exposition is more like homework. You need to absorb the information of seeing and characters before you can them intermingle, but then again that's standard (at least for me). We're not at the proverbial drop point in the roller coaster, but it’s getting close.

Dirk Gentley desperately needs some forward progress. Like Dwight of The Office successfully demonstrated and Dina on Superstore is failing to do, there’s nothing particularly pleasant about watching an annoying character continue their irritating ways without gradually becoming aware of how annoying they are. We see Todd bending towards Dirk, but that doesn’t fully break the illusion that Dirk is getting any less useless. At the same time, Douglas Adams’ work is rooted in exposing the ridiculousness in our world (or, rather, a slightly off-center fantasical version of it) and Dirk solving crimes while doing godawful detective work is one of those oxymorons this kind of material thrives on.
Elijah Wood’s screen persona is that of a blank slate a la Tobey MaGuire: His go-to acting move is reacting with wide-eyed wonder with
a little more frustration laced in.

So far, it’s hard to tell what’s going on and this is a series that relishes in taking a while to connect the dots. I can barely remember anything plot-wise except the character work. The two stand-out characters that keep things interesting so far are an oddball police officer who somehow see things on the same bizarre spectrum of causality as Dirk; and Suzy, who is a submissive housewife and secretary to a white trash husband and corrupt boss that is suddenly on the grips of getting some superpowers.