Full Circle

It’s a half hour you won’t regret spending.

What was true about the first season holds for the second: Regardless of the links between characters and their stories, Full Circle never feels claustrophobic or insular. Instead, the experience of watching the series becomes counterintuitively universal, the more we get to know these flawed and complicated characters.

It is nice for actors to play long scenes full of words for them to say--a serious conversation in a television show might last all of six lines--and though the story feels improbable at some times and obvious at others, it can be fun just to watch them work out, flexing their Chicago Irish accents.

There’s an airlessness to Full Circle that vacuum-packs these performances but leaves little real life.

It’s an interesting construction; “La Ronde”-style storytelling is not something seen regularly in prime-time so for the uniqueness of the form viewers can be grateful. But the same setting and two-character focus in every episode makes for a somewhat stifling viewing experience compared to the typical prime-time drama.

The turn and turn again structure is definitely appealing, albeit a bit self-conscious. The cast is terrific and LaBute knows his way around dialogue.... But watching guys hand-feed their inner cavemen from the table is not nearly as much fun as LaBute seems to think it is.

Too many of the other characters’ crises seem boilerplate, giving the whole enterprise the feel of a condensed soap opera or an exercise from a playwriting class.