THE ALMIGHTY JOHNSONS |
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Axl Johnson- Emmett Skilton Mike Johnson - Tim Balm Anders Johnson - Dean O'Gorman Ty Johnson - Jared Turner Gaia - Keisha Castle-Hughes Olaf Johnson - Ben Barrington Valerie Johnson - Roz Turnbull Zeb - Hayden Frost 
OTHER SEASONS Season 1 Season 3 EMPOWERED FAMILY SAGAS Heroes No Ordinary Family
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And Then She Will Come To YouTy is moving in with his new wife, Anders is off on a trip to Norway, Mike's playing games he can't lose and Axl just wants to get on with the quest. Then they find out who their mother is. The second season of this kiwi fantasy family comedy drama returns with all the kiwi charm, all the family angst, all the interpersonal drama and none of the comedy. It's like someone forgot to bring the jokes. As a result it's all a bit dull. Not a lot actually happens and new storylines are seemingly set up. Axl must become a man and ... well that's it really. The characters are all in a pretty dark place and there's nothing to offset that and the pointless rounds of sex are just, well, pointless. The Johnsons are back, but far from almighty. TopFrigg MagnetAxl decides to work on 'becoming a man' so that he can become a god. Loki offers to help in this, but ends up accusing Axl of rape. Loki is a fun character, completely untrustworthy and full of cutting quips. His plotting here is quite nice and you never quite know how far he is willing to go. Sadly, the rest of the episode doesn't live up to this and proves to be really quite dull. TopCharlie TrumanGaia returns to the flat with both her father and her ex-boyfriend close behind. Her time away has turned her into something of a raver. Axl's relationship with Gaia has been too obvious to be truly involving, but her return here is unexpected in terms of her new personality and it does give Axl some character development, but there is very little else in the shape of a plot here and not a lot in terms of comedy either. The show really feels like it's treading water, waiting for something. TopDeath's Cleansing EmbraceTy's wife is dead and his mother openly admits to killing her, offering him a choice between helping her to cover it up or hand her into the police. Loki doesn't take kindly to the death of his daughter. Agnetha is a wonderful character in this episode, blithely admitting her guilt and dealing with the realities of getting rid of a dead body with a great deal of wit and black humour. After that, the episode descends into a darker place of drama, though not without its flashes of humour. It is confusing how Gaia is completely cut out of the story to focus on Ty's story, but it's the best episode in this season and one of the best the show has produced. TopA Damn Fine WomanAxl goes to sleep dressed as a woman and wakes up as a woman. His gender change is put down to his needing to learn something to make him a better man. Gender swapping is an old tried and trusted plot device, but THE ALMIGHTY JOHNSONS manages to put its own unique stamp on it to create one of the funniest and best episodes of the show to date. Siobhan Marshall does a fine job of being Axl in a woman's body and the reactions of all around to her are very funny. Her performance almost makes you wish she could have stuck around for a few more episodes. The soap opera of Ty's dealing with the ongoing fallout from the murder and Gaia's continued reaction to being hurt by Axl are less great, but they are just a sideshow here. The show has hit a rich vein of form with the last two episodes. Let's hope it continues. TopFolkmootLoki tries to kill Ty over the death of his daughter, causing Axl to call a folkmoot, a gathering of gods to mete out justice. Apart from the disturbing subplot of Axl's roomate and the handmaiden of the gods being turned into rapacious sex bunnies, this is a good episode that has a smart plot, some good (though not great) dialogue exchanges and a nice twist at the end. The plot machinations allow for actual character development and the quality threshold remains pleasingly high. TopEffortless Manly CoolnessWhen the goddess' oracle takes up with a crook, Axl takes it upon himself to save her. Ty, meanwhile, looks for a way to die and lose his godhood. Ty has always been the tragic member of the family and one of the most interesting characters as a result. Here, his story plays second fiddle to the more obvious (and much less interesting) stuff about hopeless love and being needed. Sadly, none of it is particularly good and Loki's burning of Agnetha seems to have been universally accepted. TopMan-FluAxl gets a fever that threatens to destroy the world. The cure appears to lie within a branch of the original tree of life. Unfortunately, it's about to be burned by customs. An interesting standalone episode that doesn't advance any of the running plotlines, this once again showcases Ty's predicament even though the story is really about Axl and how close he is to death. All the time that Ty is on screen the story works. When he's not, it's a lot less effective. TopEverything Begins With GaiaA giant comes to town, tearing Axl's apartment apart looking for Gaia. Gaia's father is apparently a dwarf who stole her as a child because she is really a goddess. Gaia's true identity is revealed and it comes as a shock to precisely nobody since it has been hinted at since the show's beginnings. This episode is a set up episode and contains a lot of exposition. A lot of exposition. It's also pretty meandering as it takes the gods ages to come to the obvious conclusions and Anders and Ty wander around drinking a lot until they unearth a completely forgotten subplot. The story will continue, but it is unlikely to make it worth having to sit through this. TopMagical Fluffy Bunny WorldGaia struggles to come to terms with the fact that she is about to become a goddess. Axl has to prevent thunder gods and short giants from killing each other until he can figure out how to rescue his kidnapped flatmate. Considering that the main plot revolves around a giant who has Axl's mate as a hostage and wants to kill Gaia, this episode spends an awful lot of time in the company of Ty and Anders as they get acquainted with a goddess who will presumably become significant at some point or else this strand is completely irrelevant as well as being rather tedious. The story of the healing tree branch is equally going nowhere fast and the god Thor has shown up to do almost precisely nothing. At least the saviour of the hour manages to be a fun twist because everything else is looking very much like filler. TopThe House Of JeromeGaia is kidnapped by a group of Maori gods who believe that she is to turn into their sacred goddess, leading to a stand off in which painful truths will be revealed. THE ALMIGHTY JOHNSONS has lost its way of late. Having determined that Gaia is to be Frigg, throwing in a rival bunch of gods who claim her to be their own might have been a stroke of genius, but it leads to a lot of dull, unfunny and uninteresting conversation with new characters who are irritatingly stupid. Admittedly, they are meant to be this, but they manage to be both stupid and irritating without ever being funny or having anything to add to the story. The resolution of the storyline involving Gaia's adoptive father is throwaway and the increasingly irrelevant storyline of Anders and his new client should be thrown away. Poor Jared Turner is barely given a line of dialogue as Ty. Oh and there's some stuff about the goddesses and the tree of life. The focus has been lost and it's becoming increasingly difficult to care about any of this, which is a shame. TopYou Call This The Real World?Axl and Gaia run away, finding themselves a haven in a very surreal bed and breakfast called Brigadoon. There, they learn more about their feelings whilst the Maoris camp out in Mike's Bar and Ty finds a way to become mortal. This penultimate episode is very strange. The storyline with Axl and Gaia going off on their own to decide what they really feel about each other takes a very wierd turn with the B&B and the decidedly nuts couple that run it. The length of time that we spend there navel-gazing is a good deal more than it needs. Anders' relationship with someone who is clearly up to no good is pretty predictable, leading to sacking of Dawn, but what we really care about is Ty's discovery of a way of becoming mortal and finding the happiness that he seeks. TopDoes This Look Like Asgard?Gaia is about to turn 21 and become a goddess, either Maori or Norse. Ty's mortality doesn't go quite as he planned and Anders becomes the target for a god-killer. The final episode of season two brings the ongoing storylines to a closing point that pretty much is where it started. None of the major concerns are any further along and there is no great sense of advancement in anything, really. The plot zips along and Ty's situation is certainly the most exciting, bringing about the twist at the end, but the real kicker is all humans who knew Ty as a god losing their memories of him as a man, scuppering his chances with Dawn. Top |
