Carole and Tuesday, the show I like for reasons I can’t quite determine, returns for a second season and takes on celebrity and politics.
SUMMARY
Carole ( Miyuri Shimabukuro/ Nai Br.XX / Jeannie Tirado) and Tuesday ( Kana Ichinose/ Celeina Ann / Brianna Knickerbocker) have come in “second” in the Mars’ Brightest contest after Tuesday’s stalker injured her too much to play guitar. Their performances have made them fairly prominent celebrities and they are primed to start their full-fledged careers as musicians, but things start to get complicated when Tuesday’s mother, Valerie (Tomoko Miyadera / Rachel Robinson), adopts a strict anti-immigrant stance in her candidacy for President of Mars. While the girls mostly stay out of it and focus on releasing their first studio album, Valerie’s supporters and backers start trying to enforce her policies early, causing a rift among the Martian population.
At the same time, the deuteragonist, Angela (Sumire Uesaka / Alisa / Ryan Bartley), experiences an even more meteoric rise in her career, only for her life to be derailed by mounting tragedies. Though her music surpasses even Carole and Tuesday in terms of popularity, she slowly starts to lose herself. However, along with a number of other musicians, she ends up finding herself by joining Carole and Tuesday in “the Seven-Minute Miracle,” an event that shapes Mars forever.
END SUMMARY
Interestingly, this season worked even better for me than the last one, and for completely different reasons. In the last season, one of the best things about the show was how we saw people rewarded for all of their hard work as individuals or teams. We got to see Carole and Tuesday struggling and risking so much in order to try and achieve their dreams, which made it all the better when they did finally get some kind of victory. Good is rewarded. Effort is rewarded. Dreaming is rewarded. It’s the kind of message that can inspire someone to take risks and try to find their passion. This season gave us a message of hope in a different way. We see people working past personal difficulties, trying to overcome the adversity they find within themselves and their conflicted relationships. We see people trying to deal with heartbreak, with losing faith in a parent, and with losing faith in people in general. However, the series says that there is always hope that people can, and sometimes will, realize that they can do the right thing. The key is that this revelation doesn’t come from arguing or fighting, but from love and empathy, two things music can inspire.
The music in the season is as good as the first, as is the character development. The setting is pretty much the same, but the relationship between Mars and Earth is explored further. We get to meet a number of new characters that are interesting and yet somehow relatable. For the most part, the show wraps up all of the dangling plot lines satisfactorily, but if they decided to continue it there’s plenty of ways to go forward. Still, I enjoyed this series and I am happy with how it stands now.
If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.
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