Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Lake’ Season 2 On Prime Video, Where Justin And Billie Have More Summer Adventures On A Canadian Lake

Season 1 of The Lake was one of our favorite shows of 2022 because it took the traditional summer coming-of-age comedy and zhuzzhed it up with some adult shenanigans and edginess. Season 2 promises more of the same, but does it actually deliver?

THE LAKE SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Justin Lovejoy (Jordan Gavaris) runs through the woods with a stuffed ferret in his hand, breathing heavily as if he’s panicking. He turns around when he gets to a clearing and sees fireworks go off.

The Gist: Three days earlier, we see Justin and Riley (Travis Nelson) in full dating bliss on the lake. The summer is about to start, and the two of them have been dating since the end of the previous summer. Justin is excited because his daughter Billie (Madison Shamoun), whom he made available for adoption when he was a teenager but bonded with the previous summer, is coming up for a week before she starts a summer internship with the National Climate Institute.

Reily decides to be a little crazy and propose to Justin, saying they should get married before Billie leaves. Justin thinks it’s crazy, of course, but says yes.

Billie shows up on a bus with a group of teens who are planting trees over the summer, and she immediately hits it off with a guy ironically named Forrest (Jhaleil Swaby). The first thing Billie and Justin do, after she sees Riley’s latest roadkill project at the “murder cabin” is accept a dinner invite from Justin’s stepmother Mimsy (Lauren Holly).

Oh, yes, Mimsy: After Justin took his name off the trust that would give his father’s cottage to Billie, Mimsy wrested control of the cottage from her daughter Maisy-Mae (Julia Styles). She and her husband Victor (Terry Chen) have been dealing with Mimsy’s narcissistic whims ever since. They were looking forward to their son Killian (Jared Scott) coming back after living with Victor’s sister in China, but Mimsy ended up getting her grandson a modeling job. Mimsy takes the opportunity of the dinner party to tell everyone she’s dying — right after Justin and Riley announce they’re getting married.

No matter; the wedding is the next day at the boathouse, with Urika (Carolyn Scott) officiating, and Maisy’s son Opal (Declan Whaley) is already deep into planning mode.

Meanwhile, Wayne (Jon Dore) is suffering after Jayne (Natalie Lisinska) decided that they needed to separate; they split the cabin and he lives in a seaplane he bought. They split days with the quads, Jeri (Emily Roman), Teri (Brielle Robillard), Keri (Kaitlyn Bernard) and Olive (Julia Lalonde).

Of course, Opal pulls things together fast, and Justin brings a box full of fireworks. Riley fills the audience with some of his stuffed roadkill. But at the altar, Justin panics and runs, effectively setting fire to his relationship. But that’s not the only thing that’s caught on fire.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? For Season 1, we compared The Lake to other Canadian comedies like Schitt’s Creek, Jann and Workin’ Moms, plus the Freeform series Everything’s Gonna Be Okay. That comparison still holds.

Our Take: Season 1 of The Lake very much felt like an easygoing summer camp comedy, that combined a teen coming-of-age story with family rivalries and the dynamics of Canadian cabin culture. But it was also smart and unafraid to explore some relationships and tear apart others. Season 2 feels like it’s going to be a bit more of a standard dramedy that just happens to take place at a lake in the summer. But the characters and the actors that play them still look like they’re having a ball, which is why we like this show so much.

Season 1 wasn’t perfect; it seemed like creator Julian Doucet and his writing staff made Stiles’ character Maisy too much of a schemer without showing much of what’s driving that scheming. Also, the romance between Billie and Killian never really took off mainly because there was little chemistry between the vivacious Shamoun and Scott, whose performance was as stiff as a titlting pole.

By removing Killian and replacing him with Forrest and his tree-planting sister Ivy (Max Amani), the writers give Billie a new storyline that may involve romance but is more about doing what she wants instead of what makes her parents happy. And by throwing Mimsy into the picture, played by the always-delightful Holly, Justin and Maisy can now team up and be step-siblings against a common enemy, and Maisy can scheme against the OG schemer instead of Justin, who spent the first season constantly whining that Maisy always wins.

But there’s also a fear that the dynamic that brought everyone together in the first season will scatter everyone apart in the second. Even the boathouse, which as much as any character brought the people at the lake together, is gone, with Justin spending the season not only trying to rebuild it but figuring out just who brought the fireworks inside and set them off, triggering the fire that burned it down.

He’ll also be fighting to get Riley back, which can go either way, story-wise. Either it’ll be funny and romantic or it’ll just be pathetic as Justin keeps trying over and over and Riley keeps saying no.

But even if the show doesn’t give off the same Meatballs-esque vibes that the first season did, we still love seeing Gavaris and Shamoun play off each other, and everyone else looks like they’re having a blast. Chemistry can overcome a lot of story problems, especially in comedies, and that’s what we’re hoping to see here.

Sex and Skin: None. Well, Riley takes down Justin’s swim trunks in the lake and Justin can’t really get out because Little Justin is standing at attention, but all of that is going on underwater where we can’t see it.

Parting Shot: Justin crashes in Maisy’s porch after the wedding disaster. He says to her, “I’m not going to leave the lake until I give Justin the happy ending he deserves. The other one. Well.. dealer’s choice.” Then he says to his stepsister, “Do we hug? We don’t hug.”

Sleeper Star: Throughout Season 1 we thought Declan Whaley’s Opal was the most mature and often hilarious character in the entire cast, and that hasn’t changed now that he’s a year older.

Most Pilot-y Line: “I was going to wait to tell you, but then Justin and Riley’s desperate cry for attention inspired my own,” says Mimsy when she announced she was dying.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Season 2 of The Lake may not be quite as much fun as Season 1 was, but the cast is still great and there are still lots of laugh-out-loud character moments to carry the season.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.