Quantico season 2 episode 1 review: Priyanka Chopra starts off her new mission with a BANG!

The second season of Priyanka Chopra's Quantico is definitely an improvement from the first season thanks to a tighter narrative and an intriguing plot.

Priyanka Chopra had a fairly decent start to her Hollywood career with her signing up the international thriller series, Quantico. Though the show wasn’t the great enough compared to the rest of its ilk, like Homeland and How To Get Away With Murder, it had some engaging moments and a good looking cast. Moreover, it gave Priyanka Chopra the right kind of platform for Hollywood exposure. She got her Oscar spotlight, and she was the talking pint with her red gown at the recently concluded Emmys. Moreover she won the People’s Choice Award for the Best New Actress in a show, and also got her huge Hollywood assignment, Baywatch with Dwayne Johnson, thanks to Quantico. She also managed the eighth spot in the Forbes’ list of richest telly actresses around the world. So yeah, Quantico is a milestone in her career, even if the show had let you down several times in the first season. Now the second season is already in air, with Priyanka Chopra’s Alex Parrish taking on another set of challenges and training programs to be the top of her game.
Here’s our review of the premiere episode of the second season.

What’s it about
After an eventful stint with FBI, where she lost a couple of her friends, Alex Parrish (Priyanka Chopra) is recruited by CIA to be a part of their regime. To her shock, she finds out that her boyfriend Ryan (Jake McLaughlin) is also a part of her training regime, though even he was not aware that she was invited as well. This creates more tension between the couple, as they are ready to take of the new challenge.They also get to meet their fellow trainees at ‘The Farm’, which is the CIA training field – a Shelby-like Lydia (Tracy Ifeachor) who becomes Alex’s new friend only to surprise her completely in the end, a mystery novel author Jeremy Miller (David Call), a trainee with jail past (Aaron Diaz), a bisexual thief Harry Doyle (Russell Tovey) and others. While Alex enters as a celeb trainee thanks to her antics in the previous season, she soon realises that the skills what made her shine in the past is not what CIA is looking for, and she soon ends up being the worst member of the batch.
In the future timeline, that is set a year later, Alex Parrish witnesses a huge group of terrorists hijacking a high profile meeting, that involves the President and his First Lady, and she decides to do her part in saving them. Only to realise that this attack has a connection with her CIA training days… like always, like always…
What’s hot
Though the show looks to repeat the same format of the last season by jumping timelines, connecting past with the present, the first episode of the second season is far less cluttered compared to the last season. Moreover, it did not feel like some teen show, as the training portions of last season’s Quantico portions felt like. But we still get to see Priyanka Chopra in a training bra (that looked more like a bikini), and many of the guys shirtless, just for some eye-candy (if there are watching the show purely for this). For once, the training portions in this season, at least for now, don’t feel like they belong in here. They are as captivating as the the terrorist attack scenes in the future timeline, thanks to a couple of twists. Priyanka Chopra continues her top game in the season, though I cannot say the same about her character Alex Parrish, who for once, looks like a rabbit in a bullpen in ‘The Farm’. It’s a great scenario written for her character, as she finds herself to be a poor performer in her group, while her boyfriend Ryan is topping the game. Among the supporting cast, it’s Russell Tovey and Tracy Ifeachor who makes the best impact. Tracy Ifeachor’s character Lydia is, in fact, the best character of the episode, thanks to a couple of twists relating to her character.
What’s not
For those who want something different from the show this season, the repetitive format used may disappoint you. Considering that the CIA also has the same training regime like FBI, we wonder whether Alex Parrish will go through another training regime in the third season and then for which group –  I bet, The Presidential protection group. Also for a show that has links and even share the name with FBI’s training facility, the first episode shows no such connection as such, which hopefully can change in the future episodes. Your fave characters from the first season like Shelby, Raina and Miranda are given far less to do this time, while the season misses the likes of Simon Asher, who was killed in the finale of the last season. Ryan and Alex’s bickering romance is also getting the same boring treatment. The dialogues are as unmemorable as they have been in the past. Also can somebody go easy with the makeup on Priyanka Chopra‘s face? The girl looks more like a beauty pageant contestant than a CIA agent.
What to do
Despite its flaws, the first episode of the second season is definitely an improvement from the first season thanks to a tighter narrative and an intriguing plot. Let’s hope that the makers keep up the momentum in the future episodes as well, something that the show failed to do last season.