^{Credit: Sausage Party: Foodtopia (Amazon Prime Video)}

This past Emmy season, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg helped co-create one of the funniest, smartest satires to hit the small screen in some time. That show was, of course, The Studio. Oh, and they also gave us Sausage Party: Foodtopia. While not quite as funny as the 2016 feature film that inspired it, this TV sequel series did expand upon its predecessor’s lore in clever ways. How would a society of food function? Can sentient food co-exist with humans? If so, how would the humans survive without eating the food? These are all questions I never would’ve pondered, but Foodtopia provided some humorous answers. Plus, you had Sam Richardson as an orange standing in for Donald “Caesar” Trump and Will Forte as the (sort of) last man on Earth. Any show with those elements is doing something right.

The first season also took risks, killing off Kristen Wiig’s Brenda in its penultimate episode. While this raised the steaks (sorry, had to get one food pun in there), Brenda’s absence is felt throughout this second course. There are few characters left in Foodtopia for us to empathize with. Frank (Rogen) is now a dictator running Foodtopia like a communist nation. Barry (Michael Cera) remains a prejudiced jerk whose hatred of humans - or humies - often gets in the way of easy solutions. In a show about food, the most sympathetic character is ironically the human Jack (Forte), Frank’s enforcer and occasional lover. Where the original film made us oddly root for these supermarket products to overthrow mankind, we now find ourselves wishing that Jack would eat them already.

Without Brenda, the show has never felt more like a sausage party. No, Salma Hayek’s Teresa del Taco doesn’t pop up this season either. Season 2 isn’t without a few female cast members, including Jillian Bell as a nut who’s hard to crack, Patti Harrison as a female human, and Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard as a jar of mustard named Dijon. That last casting choice is funnier than the dialogue she’s given. Sausage Party is known for its mix of gross-out gags, food puns, and social satire. Season 2’s commentary isn’t without some timely real-world parallels, exploring genocide, conspiracies, and political corruption as our heroes venture beyond Foodtopia. While I was interested in seeing this story unfold, there aren’t many laughs along the way.

Between the film’s infamous food orgy and Frank hiding the sausage with Jack last season, this franchise has raised the bar for shock humor. While Season 2 earns its TV-MA rating, there isn’t anything especially jaw-dropping. Instead, we get send-ups of movies more than two decades old (The Two Towers, The Shawshank Redemption, Schindler’s List) and pop culture references that already feel dated (The Oscar slap). As for the food puns, they’ve always been a little eye-roll-inducing, which is part of the joke. However, a dad joke can only be repeated so many times before it goes from appealing to annoying.

There are some chuckles, most of which come from Edward Norton’s Sammy Bagel Jr. Like Woody Allen, he makes the transition from stand-up comedian to pretentious filmmaker, although Allen never made a holocaust epic. Martin Starr also voices a male erotic cake with breasts for eyes, which is admittedly a fun design. Even at its funniest, this second season lacks the belly laughs that this team is capable of bringing. Couple this with lead characters who’ve lost much of their charm and less-than-stellar animation, Foodtopia has grown, for lack of a better word, stale. The season finale sets us up for a third course, which could still stick the landing. This second helping feels half-baked, however. 

Nick Spake is the Author of Bright & Shiny: A History of Animation at Award Shows Volumes 1 and 2. Available Now!