Sweet Toothwas a very enjoyable family drama that had the benefit of dropping onto Netflix at the best imaginable time. The series started development in 2018 but didn’t really begin shooting until 2020. Thanks to that coincidence, its impact as a post-apocalyptic drama set in a world ravaged by plague became overwhelming. As the second season drops into a very different world, it manages to keep most of its charm.
Sweet Toothis an adaptation of Jeff Lemire’s DC Comics series of the same name, which only finished publication a couple of months before the show’s first season dropped. The showrunner for the projectis Jim Mickle, whois also known for films likeWe Are What We Are. Mickle steps in to write and direct the season 2 premiere.
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For the uninitiated,Sweet Toothtakes placein a post-apocalyptic worldthat has been utterly ruined by a mysterious plague called the Sick. Most of the human population died over the previous decade, leaving small pockets of survivors and roving bands of hunters to pillage the corpse of the United States. On top of wiping out most of humankind, the Sick also led to the mysterious birth of hybrid children, who enjoyed a random combination of human and animal parts. A group called the Last Men, led by a bizarre figure called General Abbot, seeks every hybrid kid they can find for their wicked experiments. Into this strange world steps 10-year-old Gus, a naive boy with antlers whomust cross the countrysideto find his mother. His reluctant guardian is a towering ex-pro football player named Tommy “Big Man” Jepperd, and his closest ally is a dedicated hybrid protector named Bear.
Season one ended ona down note, with Gus captured by the Last Men and Jepperd suffering a bullet trying to save him. As the second season opens, Gus is held in a large cage with an assortment of his fellow hybrids. Bear’s foster sister Wendy is the group’s heart. The hybrid kids are generally charming and likable, though a few of them are fairly one-note characters. Hybrids come in all shapes and sizes. Some, like Gus, are humans with a couple of unique features. Some are more like animals with human eyes. As Gus comes to understand his new surroundings, he begins to formulate a scheme to escape. There’s a ton of fun to be had with this cast of animal kids, all of whom possess unique abilities that give them an edge. The juxtaposition between theircharming Amblin-inspired actionscenes and those led by adults is appropriately jarring.
Most of the first season was broken between two main storylines.Gus’s journey across Americais occasionally interrupted by the life of Dr. Aditya Singh. Dr. Singh is a desperate man, doing everything in his power to save his ailing wife. His wife Rani is suffering from the Sick, and he’ll do anything to save her. In the first season, Dr. Singh gradually descended to staggering depths to protect his wife. Now he’s working with the Last Men, and the two plots have been drawn together. Dr. Singh is convinced that the hybrids have the secret to curing the Sick, and his experiments into that idea have killed dozens of Gus’s kind. When he gets Gus into the operating room, he learns that young Sweet Tooth might be the last kid he needs to pick apart. Singh is a challenging character, and his interactions with Gus are a new harrowing aspect of this season.
The season two premiere delivers much of what fans love about this show while establishing its new elements. The show’s sense of humor can be too childish, its young actors can be a bit off-kilter, and its world-building can be a bit exhausting, but the strong writing and characterization make up for any shortcomings. Beyond the promises of almost any other Netflix project,Sweet Toothdelivers somethingfor every viewer. Its target audience is probably somewhere between 10 and 15 years old, but there’s some nuance to its writing that will fly over the head of anyone that young. The show is setting up some painful social commentary that will likely rival the gripping work done in the previous season.
Sweet Toothis still deliveringon the unique promise of its premise. Though the pandemic is still very much ongoing in the real world, lockdown is a thing of the past for most, so there were some valid concerns about the show’s impact. Despite the ever-changing world,Sweet Toothproves that it has something beyond timeliness to add to the conversation. It’s sincere in a world of irony, genuine in a world of satire, and more moving than a lot of social commentary for those virtues.Sweet Toothcomes back strong in the second season, but there’s a lot of ground left to cover.
