Series On Its Own Merits...
The Halo TV series charts its own course through the waters of the game's lore. Since it can't build empathy by letting us spend 30 hours fighting (and dying) in the oversize boots of a Super Soldier wearing Powered Armor, it tries other tactics. Therefore, this review isn't going to ask about What Could Have Been. Instead, its driving question is, "What creative risks does the TV show actually take, and how well do they succeed?"
The answers are, "Be a character drama," and, "...Well..."
The basic lore of Halo — The UNSC as The Empire, kidnapping kids to train them as Child Soldiers; the Covenant as Scary Dogmatic Aliens; a Grimdark Black-and-Grey Morality situation — is fertile ground, and the show rightly spends a lot of time playing here. John-117, the Main Character, gradually awakens to the dystopia he lives in, and spends the rest of the show trying to be what every character in a totalitarian society is trying to be: themselves. Fellow SPARTAN and Canon Immigrant Kai-125 joins him in this journey, adding comedy and warmth as she transitions from The Stoic to One of the Boys. (If only she'd been named Kelly-087...) The acting by Kate Kennedy and Pablo Schreiber is strong; if anything, I feel like Schreiber could've been a bit less stoic. I love the subtext of finally reducing the Master Chief to a Player Character as a Take That, Audience!, really hammering home the fact that an adaptation must take risks. And nothing needs be said of Jen Taylor as Cortana, providing the best performance of the season.
The problem lies with the ancillary characters. Natascha McElhone, as Dr. Catherine Halsey, always plays things close to the vest, but as such we never get a really good sense of what she's after — a problem when she's essentially the Big Bad. Keyes, Parangosky and Miranda aren't given much to work with... and yet they still come out ahead of Kwan Ha, the Plucky Girl turned La Résistance fighter. She has neither personality nor plot relevance, and isn't missed after being written out during the 7th episode. And Makee (Charlie Murphy)... Well, she's a human adopted by the enemy — Reclaimers and all that — and could've potentially given up a compelling look into the Covenant and been an interesting foil to John. Instead, she's rushed through a plot arc as a Flat Character. Overdeveloping a Side Quest at the expense of the deuteragonist can only be called bad writing.
And, while the show has some great Mythology Gags, YouTube has already proven how Episode 5's Big Badass Battle Sequence would've been improved by adding Martin O'Donnell's original theme to it.
I think there are great characters in the Silver Timeline of Halo. I think really cool things could be done with this universe. But if Season 2 is anything like Season 1, they aren't going to do many of those things, and the ones they try aren't going to land very well.
Series On Its Own Merits, Season 2
As you may have seen from my review of the first season, I actually had decent hopes for the second. I liked the show's willingness to forge its own path, even as I acknowledged its missteps in doing so. The second season is an improvement on both sides, solidifying itself as its own continuity whilst simultaneously incorporating more parts of the games... including the reason(s) we're all here.
Here's a blunt fact: people don't play Halo for the story, and its characters are unremarkable. (I say this as a Halo fan.) The show taking its own spin was not only logical, it was necessary. The problem was that the first season was too timid in doing this. The second charges head-long into the world of Reach with confidence and passion, and it's stronger for it; Pablo Schreiber gets to do more acting in one episode than he did the whole first season. The action scenes are better — there's an Epic Tracking Shot during the actual battle for Reach that's several minutes long. And the dichotomy between John, the human being, and the Master Chief, the invincible symbol, is played for all its worth, with John actually losing control of his image at certain points. The final shot of the season — John with shattered faceplate, half man and half Super-Soldier — suggests this duality will remain a major motif, and I'm here for it.
Here's another blunt fact: there are certain things that a Halo adaptation has to have. The first season had fun P.O.V. Cam shots, but that's really all there was. The second replaces the uninteresting main theme with Marty O'Donnell's classic original; it contains the Fall of Reach; the Flood starts to make itself known; we get a fun character arc for Perez as she becomes a SPARTAN-III; and, for the first time, we actually get to see Installation 04, with the third season poised to adapt the first game. This season succeeds not only as its own story but as an adaptation of the source material, accomplishing things the first season practically didn't even attempt.
Are there still problems? Yes. Kwan Ha continues to be Trapped by Mountain Lions; I still have no idea what they're building her towards, except apparently doing a Badass Fingersnap on the Flood. Makee, the Covenant foil to Cortana, isn't that much more compelling. The show's pacing struggles; the quiet episodes are too quiet. Characters flit in and out without explanation — the reunion between John and Soren should've been a much bigger deal than it was; I thought we were focusing on the characters? There was simply too little of Cortana. And some of the changes seem to exist purely for shock value, which I personally find tiresome. The show coming into its own makes these flaws easier to swallow, but it's in no way perfect.
This season is what the Halo show promised us from the beginning. I'm sad it took an entire season to get there, but it got there, and I'm excited to see where it goes next.