‘Sweet Tooth’ Season 2: Netflix’s Gentler ‘The Last of Us’ Is Back

The last of Us struck a nerve with its story of a grizzled cynic shepherding a youngster across a treacherous post-apocalyptic America. But Sweet Tooth got there first, even if it didn’t create as much of a fuss. The dark Netflix YA drama premiered in June 2021, when the Covid pandemic was still very much top of mind. In telling the story of a little boy with deer antlers and his massive, taciturn protector, the show achieved an off-kilter, dystopian sweetness that made for a winning combination. Then it went away.

But now it’s back for a second season, with much of its charm intact. The uninitiated might want to hit a recap before jumping in, but otherwise Sweet Tooth remains quite welcoming, the kind of thing you might watch with your adolescent (provided you’re up for talking a little global pandemic and eugenics). The series has a big heart, but it only occasionally veers into mawkish terrain. It’s a worthy contribution to to the Hero’s Journey myth, with artfully crisscrossing storylines and moral ambivalence that deepen the longer you watch.

A brief primer. Gus (Christian Convery) is the aforementioned deer boy, one of a small number of animal-hybrid children who showed up around the same time as “the sick,” a widespread illness that manifests as a lethal sort of flu; the telltale symptom is a twitching pinky finger. The hybrids and the pandemic seem to be connected, and most of what’s left of the population believes that the kids, whose numbers also include a pig girl, a turtle boy, and others, are responsible for the apocalypse in progress. A militia group that calls itself Last Men, led by an evil general (Neil Sandilands), has rounded up the hybrids in a zoo, where a gentle doctor (Adeel Akhtar), whose wife (Aliza Vellani) has caught the sick, conducts experiments in hopes of finding a cure.

Meanwhile, Gus’ reluctant cross-country protector and escort from Season One, a former Last Man and ex-football star who goes by Big Man (Nonso Anozie), has teamed up with Aimee (Dania Ramirez), a longtime hybrid ally, to plan a jailbreak at the zoo. And Bear (Stefania LaVie Owen), a teen militant hybrid defender, has infiltrated the Last Men and plans her own attack.

Sweet Tooth began its life as a graphic novel by Jeff Lemire, far more sinister and, well, graphic than the TV version. The book’s identity exploration carries a touch of Kafka, and it leans into the horrors of its dystopian premise without hesitation. In emphasizing hope, the Netflix offering can feel a bit compromised, mostly in its treatment of the extremely cute hybrids. This Sweet Tooth comes dangerously close to Ewok Syndrome with Bobby, a cuddly groundhog who speaks in a squeaky whisper and seems well on his way to becoming a popular plush kids’ toy. In short, it’s hard to take Sweet Tooth seriously when it’s trying to be adorable.

But it would have also been a mistake to make the series all fangs, and the creators, Jim Mickle and Beth Schwartz, have largely succeeded in conjuring a fable-like tone, complete with once-upon-a-time narration (ladies and gentlemen, James Brolin). Sweet Tooth walks a tricky line between optimism and doom; the balance is even addressed in one of the season’s early episodes, when Gus lies to his fellow hybrids about the fate of one of their friends, a chameleon boy who has become a science experiment. Gus figures they need a little hope, and even when his fib comes back to bite him it’s hard not to see his point.

The show’s biggest strength continues to be its mastery of practical effects, particularly the puppetry and makeup. The hybrids have to come off convincingly as both child and animal. Gus’ deer ears have to move just so. Bobby, for all of his cloying tendencies, feels like a fully realized creature, as do the rest of his fellow prisoners. The craft of Sweet Tooth is laden with loving detail, and the storytelling is nuanced enough, and adult enough, to carry the rest of the weight. This is a scary world rendered with a dollop of buoyancy. Perhaps Gus and the gang have a little something to teach those of us stuck in the real world.     

From Rolling Stone US.