Joe Was Never Prepared for This Life
“Oh my God, no!”
On the heels of a tachycardic Season 1 finale of Average Joe comes an even more chaotic Season 2 premiere.
Picking back up on Joe’s doorstep, Leon brings a bloodied Cathy (Cynthia Kaye McWilliams) to his house the same night that Angela (Tammy Townsend) decided to leave with Jennifer (Ashley Olivia Fisher) after surviving Russian kingpin Nicolai (Pasha D. Lychnikoff)—suffering from a gunshot wound from an undercover cop that is blamed on the Russians.
67 days later, Joe finds himself yanked from his two-month drinking binge by Cathy, Leon (Malcolm Barrett), and Touch (Michael Trucco) as new threats on Angela and Jennifer’s lives surface, taking him from his once average life in Pittsburgh and into Cape Town, South Africa.
As the team tries to dodge international assassins while unknowingly getting caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous local crime lord, inner demons and secret vices take root—rotting the foundation of trust and loyalty from the inside out.
That rot follows them down a path that is far more dangerous than Joe could even imagine.
One man looming over this season is Sipho (Hakeem Kae-Kazim), the Cape Town drug lord who is unforgiving, unrelenting, and decidedly calm in his executions and efforts to rule and get exactly what he wants, when he wants.
And as the stakes get higher and every moment more dangerous than the last, one thing that remains is the humor.
The comedy in Average Joe is so deeply simple that it allows the viewer watching to connect with every single character, even in moments of life and death.
The characters’ natural reactions, the fact that they just barely know what they’re doing—using their upbringing, street knowledge, fighting skills learned through Kung-Fu movies and WWF, and knowledge from True Crime shows as their survival toolkit—make them the most unlikely group to survive a horror movie, but you root for them anyway because they are relatable.
The glue that makes this work is the relationship between Joe, Leon, Touch, and Cathy. While their loyalty and trust will be tested beyond any trial they’ve ever faced, the audience depends upon their friendship and love to succeed, creating a shockingly emotionally immersive viewing experience.
But not all glue is cut from the same adhesive properties.
One secret gets exposed, blowing the entirety of Season 1 wide open, creating more questions than answers in Season 2, and sending Joe into a situation that unravels everything he thought he knew about his family.
The Sins of the Father Become Joe’s Inheritance
The premise of Average Joe feels biblical, a literal representation of “the iniquity of the fathers upon the children into the third and fourth generation,” as Joe’s new threats are a direct result of the lies his father told and the secrets he buried.
And Season 2 begins pulling apart those lies almost immediately.
Joe finds an ad in a Cape Town bar that raises alarm and causes him to pause, throwing a wrench into an already high-stakes fool’s mission to find answers about Angela and Jennifer.
But nothing could have prepared him for the truth about his father and his family’s history.
Suddenly, the events that pushed Joe from his average life into one of panicked violence take on a completely different meaning.
And the question that lingers is unsettling.
Did Teddy bury his secrets to protect Joe, or was it all to protect himself?
If Season 1 was about Joe surviving the consequences of the betrayal his father left behind, Season 2 forces him to question whether he ever understood his father in the first place.
And with an unapologetically ruthless drug lord on the loose and old secrets that threaten their friendship, no one in Cape Town is safe.
New episodes of Average Joe air every Wednesday on Paramount+. Episode 1 “67 Days Later” and Episode 2 “The Sea Gave Up the Dead” are available to stream now.
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Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.