This story contains spoilers for Making a Murderer Part 2.

Making a Murderer’s first installment, from filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, was released on Netflix in December 2015, when it was still a fledgling streaming platform. The timing, so close to the fallow days of the holiday season, contributed to the series’s reception: viewers who had extra time on their hands marathoned the whole thing while experts, journalists, and critics were taking time off. As a result, Making a Murderer became both beloved and loathed. Viewers were drawn into the remarkable story of Steven Avery, the twice-convicted, once-exonerated felon, and his nephew Brendan Dassey, a then-16-year-old apparently manipulated into confessing to rape and murder; critics saw the show as a story with an evident ax to grind. Relevant details went unaddressed on camera; onetime fans realized their emotions had been ungently manipulated by the show; The New Yorker’s Kathryn Schulz, in a sensitive takedown, described the series as "highbrow vigilante justice."

Viewing the second season of Making a Murderer—10 new episodes, filmed from the summer of 2016 to the summer of 2018—throws the range of reactions to the original 10 episodes into stark relief. Avery and Dassey are both currently incarcerated; the former, after serving 18 years for a crime he didn’t commit, was sentenced to prison again for the rape and murder of Teresa Halbach. Dassey, whose confession provided the prosecution with critical information necessary to convict Avery, is serving his own life sentence. In the first episode, Dassey’s mother, Barbara Tadych, shows off heartfelt messages and sympathy gifts from viewers of the series—a scrapbook, a blanket, a flat-screen TV. Avery’s mother, Dolores, has her own collection. The episode juxtaposes those outpourings with media criticism of the show, presented as a flurry of slyly inflected, performatively concerned talking points.

Media exposure changed life in Manitowoc County at large, too. When Making a Murderer became a sensation, the gravity around the Avery and Dassey families shifted. Seemingly everyone they encountered had watched it; some began to call in newly remembered details from a crime committed in 2005. New personalities cropped up in the saga: Kathleen Zellner, an attorney specializing in wrongful convictions, only took on Avery’s case after the series made headlines. Lynn Hartman, who became engaged to Avery for nine days, announced their betrothal on Dr. Phil, and after it was broken off, told Inside Edition she feared for her life.

At first blush, Making a Murderer seems to be offering a glimpse into something potent—the feeding frenzy of true-crime stories, and how quickly they jump from nuts-and-bolts facts to televised theatrics; how easily a story about unjust interrogation can turn into a salacious quest to uncover the remains of another dead woman. But for all of its superficial efforts, Season 2 of Making a Murderer isn’t telling that story. Instead, the show examines its own circus from a seemingly remote angle—unaware, apparently, of the fact that Making a Murderer itself helped create this environment.

It’s curious to see such a lack of self-awareness—particularly in a post–American Vandal world. But that’s typical of this deeply disappointing second season, which is so poorly organized—and so repetitive—that its 10 episodes refuse to cohere into any sort of arc. The information we do learn is sodden with sentiment so obvious, so cloying, that the whole production stinks of manipulation. As the season drags on, it narrows its focus to Zellner’s investigations, which is a narrative and ethical mistake: her efforts don’t travel in a straight line, and the show glaringly elides her methods.