‘Will Trent’ star on success, suits and Betty the dog (Video)
Will Trent was one of our favorite new network shows last season because it took the time to give us really well-drawn characters, played by actors who know those characters well and give some depth and subtlety to them. Season 2 carries on that trend, with the season premiere featuring two well-known guest stars that fit right into this show’s quirky tone.
WILL TRENT SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A man on his cell phone walks out of his McMansion on a cul-de-sac, gets into his maroon BMW, and turns the key. The car explodes.
The Gist: Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez), a special agent for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, is in a Spanish class, introducing himself. He explains in halting Spanish that he recently found out about his birth mother, and she’s from Puerto Rico. Even though he doesn’t know her, he wants to learn Spanish “so I can share something with her.” He then gets a call about the car bombing, scoops up his chihuahua Betty and goes to the scene.
There, he meets up with Atlanta Police Department detective Michael Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin), who’s partnered up with Det. Franklin (Kevin Daniels) because his usual partner, Det. Angie Polaski (Erika Christensen) still hasn’t been cleared for duty after the injury that temporarily left her paralyzed. Also there is Trent’s boss, Capt. Amanda Wagner (Sonja Sohn) and Special Agent Cricket Dawson (Susan Kelechi Watson), from GBI’s bomb squad. While she’s working with Trent for the first time, she knows his cases well, to the point where she has more than just a professional admiration for him.
Trent goes into the home where the car exploded and, spying a pool catalog sent to the wrong house, starts to think that the bomb was meant for Lester (Clark Gregg), the accountant who lives on the other side of the cul-de-sac. When Lester starts to run as Trent questions him, that’s confirmed.
Trent and his partner, Special Agent Faith Mitchell (Iantha Richardson) tail Lester to a coffee shop; Trent and Mitchell wonder why he would leave himself so exposed if someone is out to kill him. After another attempt on his life, Lester reveals that his son is in prison on a drug charge, and that if he didn’t pay $5,000 per month, his son would be beaten by people on the inside. Still why he’s being targeted is unknown.
As more bombs are found, Dawson probes Trent for information on the case of serial killer James Ulster (Greg Germann). Ulster keeps sending things like bottles of limoncello to Trent’s office, because he wants Trent to see him in prison. It seems that, according to Trent, Ulster thinks that he’s Trent’s birth father.
In the meantime, Polaski schemes her way back to on duty status, even though she’s still healing; she tells Trent, whom she’s known since they were both in the foster system as kids and have been on-and-off friends with benefits, that the longer she’s sidelined the more tempted she’d be to use again, and that’s the last thing she needs.
We also see Ormewood dealing with his kids reporting to him about his wife possibly having an affair, and Mitchell wondering if a long romantic weekend with a reporter named Luke (Ser’Darius Blain) could be something more.
Our Take: Like we said when Will Trent debuted in 2022, the cases of the week that the show presents aren’t always great. They’re there to demonstrate just how Trent’s unorthodox investigative methods come into play. He notices things others don’t, like the pool catalog sitting in a house that doesn’t have a pool. And because he’s dyslexic, he tends to speak his observations into a mini-cassette recorder rather than write them on a pad. His background also informs his investigations. All of that continues in the second season.
But what showrunners Liz Heldens and Daniel T. Thomsen, who adapted Trent from Karin Slaughter’s novel series, have built are really deep and rich backstories for Trent and the main cast, while keeping the show from sliding into the maudlin. It continues to not take itself seriously, showing that even though Trent is undoubtedly a tortured soul, no one around him is giving him a pass. Polaski knows him best but calls him on his BS the most, and he gets almost as much from Mitchell and Wagner.
It’s why Watson’s guest turn as Cricket Dawson was so refreshing. Yes, Watson is just as smart, sexy and hilarious as she was for all those seasons on This Is Us. But she’s an unabashed Will Trent fan, to the point where she pretty much tells him she wants him to ask her out. Their banter brought an energy to the show that beat even the elevated chemistry between Rodriguez and Christensen.
It showed that the series is ready for that second-season jump, where the now-established characters get deeper and better backstories, and the guest stars being brought in are there to shake up the status quo. As it is, Trent’s continued dealings with Ulster are shaping up as a Holmes-Moriarty-style rivalry, where there seems to be a personal connection that makes the rivalry more complicated than just good guy vs. bad guy.
Sex and Skin: There’s sex, but it’s network sex. So nothing really is shown.
Parting Shot: To find out who in the prison ordered the bombings, Trent does what he vowed he’d never do, and sits down with Ulster.
Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Bluebell, the chihuahua who plays Betty, simply because she has become our favorite part of each episode.
Most Pilot-y Line: Without giving spoilers away, we were not happy with how things played out between Will and Cricket, for a lot of reasons.
