Hugh Dancy’s work this season is unparalleled and he channels the beyond strong performance that he brought to the table for three years of Hannibal. As Cal, Dancy employs such glorious micro gestures as his gears tick away. He does this great gesticulation where his eyes roll back a little bit, almost like he’s having some sort of stroke. It happens when he’s making serious decisions and it’s obviously a tick that his character has developed, but it’s these subtle gestures that are why I love this show. It illustrates just how layered and volatile all of these characters are.

So much of this season comes down to people just reacting to what Cal’s done with the look of “What the fuck was that?” on their faces. It’s great though. You want to see this guy crash and burn so badly as he gets all of this rubbed in his face. This season certainly isn’t afraid to have fun with the audience’s growing hatred of Cal. That being said, the season isn’t without its moments where it attempts to create pathos for the monster. In one pained reveal, Cal describes his mental state as the following. “It’s hell. It’s a living, waking hell. I am never without regret…It’s never not within me.” So some sympathy for the devil is certainly being played with here, too.

While watching this season of the show, I couldn’t help but think of how a similar series like Bloodline could so thoroughly bungle the character dynamics, duplicity, and triple agent work that was taking over its characters. The Path is definitely a show that could have fallen into these same pitfalls, but manages to find fresh, rejuvenating angles for all of its characters and becomes the strong, dualistic, emotional series that I wished for Bloodline’s second season. It’s not easy to drastically push everyone over the edge while still managing to stick the landing and make it all seem credible, but this season of The Path pulls off this balancing act.

It’s also worth mentioning that The Path’s second season sees an expansion to thirteen episodes from last year’s ten. This sort of padding can sometimes be a death knell for the series with the extra episodes railroading momentum rather than actually aiding the storytelling. For the most part this extension seems to be a promotion that The Path makes the most of, finding plenty to fill the extra episodes with and figuring out a reasonable rhythm to move through everything. There’s admittedly a bit of a slog during the midway point when episode seven hits, but this could be a much messier affair. The show is actually capable of organizing and sharing its stories in a helpful way rather than an explosive first few episodes that then lead to a lot of wheel-spinning. This is a story that has a clear trajectory in sight that is prepared to deal with the consequences that it introduces. None of this feels like gratuitous, manipulative storytelling that’s done just to stir a reaction.