Season 2 of One of Us Is Lying is never bad but not great, falling into this middle-tier of mediocrity that’s attached with a lot of modern teen television. The characters are given more room to explore their authentic selves, for the most part falling away from the shells of their Season 1 stereotypes and shields, though the balance between emotional arcs and the overarching suspense never truly reaches an equilibrium.
The show is a catalog of soap-opera conceits that borrow not just from “Melrose Place” or “Dawson’s Creek” but ’30s radio. ... We know exactly what it’s doing and where it’s going. The conclusion will be a surprise, one assumes. But the getting there is, as they might say in French class, déjà vu.
What eludes One of Us Is Lying is some special spark to set it apart from all the other murder mysteries and teen dramas out there — some subversion or deepening of the formulas it’s trafficking in, some jagged edges to break up all its slick competence.