I have to say, watching the second season of 30 Coins as it gathers speed on its route toward its finale hasn’t been quite as exciting as season one. For a start, the path director Alex de la Iglesia is taking doesn’t seem to be as confident as before as the crazy meandering that the show often indulges in now feels less by design and more a case of the creators maybe getting far too vast with the show’s scope. The relationship between the main characters are not as pronounced; the villain’s plan seems vague beyond merely destroying the world; the macguffins are legion and all the globe hopping simply doesn’t have the creepy intimacy of everything being located within a single town.
However, with Reset The World, the season seems to be beginning to find its feet again after the odd slump of the previous episode and some of those points I just mentioned are finally and thoroughly addressed.
Over to you, Barbrow…
Yes, while oddly calling off his attempt to wrest the grimoire of spells away from Elena and Paco while using a doppelganger of the priest they were due to meet, megalomaniac wannabe world ender Christian Barbrow has to nip over and deliver an important speech at the conglomerate known as Highclaire. The speech is question is essentially Barbrow laying out his diabolical plan to his investors, but it helps that we’re privy to it too as the actual details of it have been a little sketchy up until now.
Simply put, Barbrow believes the world isn’t just broken with all its war and rampant inhumanity, so he wants to put in effect a factory reset in order to bring about… well, order. He’ll use the power of the 30 Coins to translate the final, incomprehensible, page of the Black Book of the Mad Arab and use the spell in conjunction with all the other supernatural bric-a-brac has accumulated to essentially turn the humanity on and off again with the only survivors being Barbrow’s super rich investors.
Now that that’s all finally cleared up, the good guys are also brought up to speed by the fact that Salcedo has snuck in for some much needed Intel, but when she’s spotted by Merche, instead of turning her in, Barbrow’s new squeeze asks the former inspector to pass a warning on to Paco that he’s in danger (no durr).
Speaking of Paco, and in turn, Elena; after disposing of the Lombardi doppelganger surprisingly easy, the just so happen to run into the actual Father Lombardi who confirms that their other copy of the Black Book is legit, but after a shocking accident takes the old priest out of the picture, the demonic Angelo takes desperate measures to try and thwart Barbow’s efforts.
Looks like Vergara is finally back in the game – but after a year spent in Hell, he’s a little worse for wear.
While Reset The World manages to get 30 Coins back into it’s original mindset after a noticably weaker, previous installment, there’s some niggling issues that are buzzing around the show like a fly around a reanimated corpse. While the show specialises in forging on with multiple outlandish plots, the sheer energy and inventiveness of the writing carries it though with style , however, the way the whole Lombardi plot is dealt with just screams of lazy writing. Why the hell would Barbrow hand over the remote puppeteering of his Lombardi doppelganger to a random underling while in mid converasion with Elena and Paco. The explanation is that he’s late for his Highclaire meeting, but if this guy can’t sort out his daily planner correctly, how the hell are we supposed to believe he’s got what it takes to end the bloody world? Worse than that, Elena and Paco just happen to run into the real Lombardi barely ten minutes later after running into a random coffee shop and then hear his name mentioned purely by chance. I’ve forgiven 30 Coins for a lot of sins due to the fact that I’m cool with it routinely ditching logic in order to keep the madness flowing like wine, but the whole Lombardi/doppelganger thing was an odd waste of time.
However, things perk up noticably everywhere else with Lombardi later being taken out of the picture by a spectacular freak “accident” straight out of The Omen which causes Angelo to halt Vergara’s obliteration and put him back to work to halt the armageddon. If Lombardi can’t translate the Black Book for Elena and Paco, then Vergara will have to do it after being brought back to life. However, a tear is a long time to be dead and upon his resurrection, the padre finds that not only is he partially rotten, but he’s missing a good chunk of his lips. On top of this, his old frenemy, Santoro has also been brought back to life to aid/watch him and their first order of business is to make themselves somewhat more presentable. Along with the spider birth a couple of episodes ago, the reanimation of Vergara and Santoro may be the funniest shit that 30 Coins have ever pulled, with the both the rotting priests trying to rebuild their ruined faces before embarking on their quest. The prosthetics are resplendent – Vergara in particular sports a mouth looking like a ripped out fireplace – and the nonchalant performances make this hilariously absurd moment soar and hopefully the show will get a lot of mileage out of Vergara and Santoro’s double act that plays like a zombie Abbott & Costello.
Another plot that’s finally got some forward motion is Laguna’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest experience, as it’s time for him to fly the coop and he’s planning on taking as many of the imprisoned townsfolk of Pedraza as he can. It’s a chaotic jail break to say the least, made even more surreal when the superpowers displayed by Sole (Remember her? She was abducted by spirits way back in the Ouija episode in season one) help them escape.
Also pushing ahead is Merche, who sneakily swipes her coin back from Barbrow’s sizable collection in order to violently attack Elena while using water like a portal. However, in a bad news, good news scenario (for Merche, anyway), she fails to kill Elena, but she does manage to drag Paco with her and the two end up back on Barbrow’s boat.
While Reset The World doesn’t quite manage to reset the issues that are blighting the last half of this second season, it’s still a large step towards getting 30 Coins back to where it needs to be – the craziest fucking show on the block.
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