Percy Jackson – Season 2
So, everyone’s favourite demigods are back from a second season. As I very much enjoyed the first season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, I was keen to catch up.
Book 2 in the Percy Jackson series is called The Sea of Monsters, and the story riffs primarily off The Odyssey. Grover the satyr has been captured and his being held prisoner by Polythemus the cylops, so Percy and Annabeth have to go on a quest to rescue him. For reasons that are not properly explained, Polythemus is now the guardian of the Golden Fleece, which has miraculous healing properties. And the whole thing is a set-up because Luke and his gang of rebels want to use Percy to get the fleece so that they can then steal it and use it to resurrect Kronos.
That’s all very straightforward, but the joy of the series lies in the charisma of the teenage stars, and also in the way that Rick Riordan has bent Greek mythology to his will. In this season we get to meet Polythemus, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens and Circe. Annabeth, who is a daughter of Athena, knows the story of The Odyssey inside out so knows how to foil the various dangers their will meet. Percy, who is canonically dyslexic, looks that the name Charybdis and says, “I’m not even going to try to pronounce that.”
Season two also introduces a fourth teenage character to the team. Tyson is a young cyclops whom Percy’s mom has adopted. The CGI on his single eye is a bit dodgy, which I found very distracting, but he’s a great character. The main point is that, despite being a giant, and ugly by human standards, he’s very competent at a whole range of things, and just as much a hero as Percy.
Adaptations from books can sometimes be a disaster because the TV people don’t understand or respect the original content, but Rick Riordan is very much involved in this series and it is very much the better for his presence. Some of the plotting is excellent, and doesn’t feel at all like plot-by-numbers meets diversity-by-numbers the way some of Starfleet Academy appears to be turning out.
Talking of Starfleet Academy, it is interesting to compare the way that pupil-teacher relationships are handled in various stories. In The Incandescent the sympathy is largely with the teachers, for whom the kids are both sacred charges and a dangerous enemy. The Percy Jackson stories are much closer to Pink Floyd’s The Wall, particularly in this season as Chiron the centaur has been fired and replaced by Tantalus who, quite frankly, looks like the sort of person who deserved to be condemned to eternal torture. Starfleet Academy will, I think, try to find some middle ground, aided by the fact that the kids are that much older, but that remains to be seen.
The Circe episode was a particular favourite for me. Riordan manages to make her both sympathetic and deeply duplicitous at the same time. The way that she keeps prisoners on her island without them realising that they are prisoners is delightfully devious. The Sirens are also in this episode. As it is a kids’ show, they can’t use sexual allure on Percy and Annabeth. Instead they exploit psychological weaknesses. The way that they trap Annabeth is brilliantly done.
I happened to see the book on sale while I was watching the series. I haven’t read it through, but dipping into it I can see that a lot has been changed. A whole lot of characters have been dropped, which is generally the case with movie/TV adaptations. I’m a bit sad that Hermes no longer carries a caduceus with two snakes who have comedy speaking parts, but I can understand why they had to go. The location of the action in the book is supposedly the Bermuda Triangle, which makes sense, but it doesn’t add a lot so the TV series drops it. The TV series also ends on a much better cliffhanger.
Which, yes, it does. Thankfully the production team have been working hard and season 3 is not that far away. I’m looking forward to it.