Championship or bust. That is the main mentality for Isla Gordon as she takes a crack at her second year as the President of the Los Angeles Waves basketball team. However, a winning franchise is not just the players on the court. A winning team also means a smart and strategic coach and a devoted administrative team behind the scenes to help secure a victory.
Running Point’s second season continues its trend of focusing on the Gordon family and Ali as they take steps forward to help bring home another championship victory for the Waves. For as much as basketball is about teamwork, Running Point is far more interested in what occurs behind the scenes than it is in the sportsmanship between the players, as Isla’s relationships with Ali, Ness, Sandy, Jackie, and Cam are put under the microscope, especially with Cam’s ulterior motives.
A lot of season 2 is about the significance of relationships, and nothing kickstarts that better than how early episodes discuss the fine line between Isla and Ali’s personal friendship and their professional relationship. Ali’s brief dalliance with a new job in Toronto forces Isla to recognize the importance that her best friend had in her life and the benefit of having a strong connection at work. Isla’s other personal relationships focus on the dynamics she has with Lev and Jay.
Isla and Lev’s romance is more of a ticking clock toward their inevitable split than anything. Meanwhile, the build-up to Isla and Jay’s romance does get a payoff, even if by the conclusion of the season, Running Point may be setting Isla and Jay up for the very tired will-they-won’t-they, or on-again-off-again tropes. For as intriguing as Isla and Jay’s dynamic may have been throughout the first two seasons, Running Point risks falling into either of those troubling storylines if it cannot commit to a choice between the two of them in a potential third season.
Whenever Running Point is focused on the Gordon family dynamic, including Ali, who may as well be an honorary member, the series soars. The frantic, dysfunctional nature of the Gordons helps ground the show. Even Cam’s role as the opposition to Isla helps the narrative build, as it forces Isla to grow and stand up on her own, continuing to assert her identity as the President of the Waves rather than allowing Cam to come in and take over. Season 2 questions, in part, how far Cam can push his siblings before they snap. Cam's charisma has always worked in his favor before. But Running Point addresses how Cam's more toxic nature can negatively impact his siblings and how they view him.
Kate Hudson and Brenda Song are Running Point's best core elements. Always on point in comedy or more serious moments, their act individually and together helps anchor season 2's storylines. The continued development of their friendship in the present, as well as comical flashbacks to their initial meeting, helps give a sturdier grasp of just how important the duo are to each other. Running Point flourishes when making sure to utilize each of Kate Hudson and Brenda Song's skills in comedy.
While Running Point thrives when it focuses on the dynamics between its main characters, its shortcomings come in the form of the subplots surrounding the basketball players on the team. Although the players have never been the main characters, their roles in season 2 act more to fill space than to actively push the narrative forward. Characters such as Dyson, Travis, and newcomer Coach Norm Stinson bounce in and out of the show, going from heavily relevant to barely there as the narrative jumps around trying to cover every character in the season's ten-episode run. All of their plot lines come across as important in short bursts but are fairly forgettable in the grand scheme of the season as a whole.
This issue is also shown in the arrival of Tommy White, an incoming point guard meant to take Travis’ starting job. There is never any real interaction between Travis and Tommy, and Tommy’s main arc has absolutely nothing to do with basketball. Instead, his arrival is more of a setup for a brief romantic fling with Sandy, only for his character to disappear as soon as the relationship ends. The Gordon family makes a huge deal about the importance of the trade for Tommy White, but Running Point never actually bothers to show him being an impact player on the court. The other main talent for the Waves, Marcus, also jumps around from relevant to background throughout the season, but the conclusion for his character more than makes up for any sort of inconsistency the rest of the season may have had.
Overall, Running Point’s second season is a solid build on season 1’s foundation. The characters and their relationships develop, but never so much to the point where anything feels forced. This is an easily bingeable season that the audience does not necessarily have to think too hard about while going through each episode. It is an easy distraction from life when someone needs a fun element of escapism, and its easily digestible nature means that it keeps viewers from scrolling on their phones for each episode’s roughly half-hour runtime.
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