TV Talk: ‘The Other Two’ remains one of TV’s best comedies as it relocates to HBO Max – TribLIVE

Sometimes when a series has been MIA as long as “The Other Two” – its last new episode premiered in March 2019 – it can be difficult to remember exactly why you loved it. There’s also this concern: Will the show be as good as I vaguely remember it was?

The good news for fans of “The Other Two” is that the series, which moves from Comedy Central to HBO Max for its second season streaming Thursday, returns as funny, clever and heartfelt as ever. That combination, a real tightrope walk, is what made “The Other Two” so great in the first place.

Writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider continue to balance the show’s snarky comedy with emotional resonance.

“The Other Two” title refers to siblings Brooke (Helene York) and Cary (Drew Tarver), who are afterthoughts once their teenage brother, Chase (Case Walker), becomes a pop music star even though he can’t sing.

As season two begins, some time has passed and their mother, Pat (Molly Shannon), is now a popular daytime talk show host, adding another celebrity to the family. Now she’s talking about Brooke and Cary and their personal lives on her show – Cary has his first boyfriend, Jess (Gideon Glick).

It’s a bit of a disorienting start to the new season, because Pat wasn’t a talk show host when viewers last saw her — at first I thought maybe it was a dream sequence – but once the show really gets into gear, “The Other Two” starts to feel much as it did in season one with zingers and quick asides deployed at lightning speed.

In addition to a more successful dating life, Cary’s acting prospects have slightly improved, with him humorously hosting lame web series for HuffPost Live, Buzzfeed TV, Thrillist and E! News digital’s “Age, Net Worth, Feet.”

Screamingly funny

“The Other Two” skewers shallow pop culture and gay culture coverage even more specifically through Cary’s job hosting “The Gay Minute” (“In more gay news, Laura Dern was spotted kayaking!”).

Meanwhile Brooke’s entertainment management career hits a speed bump as Chase bails on pop stardom to attend college, leaving her to troll children’s birthday parties trying to find a new prepubescent singing/social media star.

Future episodes include Cary and Jess trying to help a newly out gay teen who’s actually part of a gay grifter couple, and Brooke discovering no good deed goes unpunished when it comes to Pat’s fans.

“The Other Two” remains frequently screamingly funny, but it’s the rare TV comedy that also allows itself to show some heart, particularly when it comes to the relationships among the core family.

Episode two juxtaposes Pat’s fans with the time in 2016 when Pat excitedly attended a taping of “The Rachael Ray Show.” It helps that Pat is a genuinely caring, good person — a nice juxtaposition with her scheming-for-themselves children.

But even Brooke and Cary usually make the right choice when push comes to shove: It just takes a few comic gyrations to get them there, particularly in an episode where they inadvertently join an anti-gay, anti-woman celebrity church that offers potentially helpful career and vacation connections.

While Brooke and Cary are often their own worst enemies, “The Other Two” allows them to get an occasional win, a sign that the writers ultimately love these characters even as they highlight their flaws to hilarious effect.