Camp Cretaceous
Season Two
The next chapter of Camp Cretaceous came a lot sooner than I expected – just four months after Season One ended. That’s not a complaint, to be clear. I was more than happy to watch more kids running and screaming from dinosaurs, and there’s a fair amount of that in each episode. There were definitely moments this time around where the plausibility of kids being able to outrun some of the larger carnivores was stretched pretty thin, but that doesn’t take too much of the fun away. In any case, we got to see a few dino-on-dino fights, and there was plenty of time spent with everyone’s favourite T-Rex.
The antagonist this season wasn’t the kind of bad guy you’d expect. I figured InGen or the Masrani Corporation was going to get involved in cleanup, or maybe there’d be some other stragglers left behind who viewed the kids as a threat in some way. Instead, we got dinosaur hunters. I would NEVER say that dinosaur hunters are not cool – they just didn’t make a whole lot of sense. The whole island’s just been closed down, and the FIRST people to get to the island are poachers? No government intervention? No corporate visitors? How did these poachers beat everyone else to the punch?
Let’s talk about Ben for a second – the snivelling germaphobe from Season One who turned into Rambo this season. His growth as a character was cool to watch, even if at times I seriously questioned his mental health. I mean, who in their right mind goes to take on a Carnotaurus single-handedly with a freaking spear?! That’s not to say that I didn’t love every second of that. It just seemed that Ben had had one too many coconuts dropped on his head.
There was also a plot device planted early on this season that suggested help was coming to the island, but by the end of the season we haven’t had any follow-up. This show has the same kind of problem that LOST did – sooner or later, you’ve gotta get these kids off the island, and then the show’s kind of run its course. So I get drawing the rescue part out, but we’ve also got to have some kind of idea of where the show’s headed. Maybe we get that in the ominous shots of the cryogenic freezer or whatever that’s been de-activated, but seriously – when are grown-ups going to come looking for these kids?!
So yeah, there are flaws in this show. But there are also great-looking dinosaurs, more people getting eaten, and some really fun action scenes. But most importantly, the spirit of Jurassic Park remains. The feeling of awe and wonder in the face of dinosaurs is still here, just as the terror and fear that they inspire. To that end, the watering hole segment was one of the most ‘Jurassic-Park-y’ moments of the whole season. It was just a lovely moment where we got to bask in the splendour of prehistoric monsters. Keep it coming, Netflix!