This season manages to somehow outdo last year in almost every category. It’s one of those beautiful circumstances where you thought what you had before was so damn golden, only to have no idea of what a show might actually be capable of. The stakes have risen and the gauntlet has been dropped. Angie Tribeca actually feels like a full, well-rounded television show this season rather than a collection of gags that are doing an impression of a sitcom.

For instance, the series comfortably feels much more like an ensemble piece this season, rather than Rashida Jones’ titular character receiving the bulk of the jokes. Not only is Hayes MacArthur’s Jay Geils given the opportunity to step up, but Dr. Scholls (Andree Vermeulen) and Tanner (Deon Cole) are gratefully given a lot more to do, too (I daresay we might not be far off from seeing an episode that focuses exclusively on Tanner and Hoffman—something I need immediately—if a third season is to happen).

It’s mind boggling to see the balancing act the show maintains. Its cast are simultaneously caricatures on strings meant to serve up gags while also being seen as emotional, realistically flawed human beings. This is a show where all of a sudden a character might be a vampire because it’s convenient to the scene. Actors are randomly switching roles one minute and the next you’re deeply invested in their pain and cheering for their epiphanies. This season has you significantly giving more of a damn for every single character, as well as their relationships.

Plotting also carries a substantially more impact this season, too. The series weaves an impressive larger serialized crime story throughout the individual episodes where they stand on their own merits but also compliment the larger mystery at hand. A one-off joke featuring James Franco in the first season is even turned into a season-long arc. It’s kind of insane how good a job the show does at having everything connect together where all of these disparate plot points connect to a huge, satisfying conspiracy in the end. If you thought Angie Tribeca was a show that you’d never hear, “Previously On…” this season is going to drastically shatter that illusion for you.

This sort of serialization is really the only thing that I thought was lacking from the first season of Angie Tribeca, so that being remedied is kind of fantastic. One of my biggest questions upon watching Angie Tribeca’s pilot was how do you sustain something like this? How does this work as a series? Now that the show has spent a year easing you into its universe it’s able to evolve the storytelling in such a manner and it completely works.