'A Man On The Inside' Proves Mike Schur Is the Master of the Found-Family

Mike Schur knows that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it - and the absolute best thing I can say about the return of Netflix’s A Man on the Inside is that not a single thing was tinkered with in between seasons. The second season remains a cozy mystery that’s more cozy than mysterious, a weighted blanket and a cup of cocoa stretched out across eight episodes. A retired widower finds purpose as an amateur private detective, only to discover that the community he’s infiltrated is a special place that feels like home - only this time he’s investigating a troubled liberal arts college instead of a retirement home. If “more of the same” means “more Ted Danson in a sharp suit making friends,” sign me up.

When a college president (played by New Girl’s Max Greenfield) is blackmailed using information from his stolen laptop, he and his provost, Holly (Jill Talley) turn to Charles (Danson) and Julie (Lilah Richcreek Estrada) for help. To track down the laptop, Charles goes undercover at Wheeler College as a visiting professor and infiltrates the faculty, which is full of the sort of kooky characters you’d expect. David Strathairn plays a literature professor who takes an immediate dislike to Charles, while Danson’s real-life wife Mary Steenburgen plays a music professor named Mona Margadoff, whose quick and easy chemistry with Charles threatens to compromise the whole investigation. Unfortunately, Charles discovers that nearly everyone has a motive to blackmail the president, since he’s courting a desperately needed donor (Gary Cole) who expects more for his money than a building with his name on it.

Of course, Charles hasn’t forgotten his friends from Pacific View Retirement Community, and several familiar faces return, including Didi (Stephanie Beatriz) and Calbert (Stephen McKinley Henderson). Mary Elizabeth Ellis is back as Charles’s daughter, Emily, who met her husband (Eugene Cordero) at Wheeler, and Schur favorite Jason Mantzoukas also makes his obligatory special guest star turn as a gonzo himbo named Apollo. I need this show to get a third season pick-up just to see how and if they manage to shoehorn Apollo back into the story.

A stacked cast is a Mike Schur trademark at this point, because all of his shows are ultimately about found families - groups of oddballs who somehow fit harmoniously together, but A Man on the Inside takes that to the next level. The second season, with a new case and a new setting, offers an opportunity to broaden the bench, but Schur doesn’t let the relationships forged the last go-round fall by the wayside. Julie is still bickering with Didi, until it takes a delightful turn into something more, and Charles relies on his bestie Calbert to help him navigate his first foray into dating since the 1970s. But Schur outdid himself by pulling Jill Talley out of voice-acting purgatory and giving her an overdue place in the spotlight. Talley is a phenomenal comedic talent, as anyone who remembers her holding her own against Bob Odenkirk and David Cross on Mr. Show can attest, but she’s rarely been given such a rich opportunity since then… until now. Her Holly, an over-caffeinated administrator prone to accidentally wearing three blazers at once, earns some of the biggest laughs of the season, and I hope Hollywood takes notice. At the very least, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this means she’s on Schur’s list of usual suspects in the future.

Considering Schur is the mastermind behind one of the greatest television twists of all-time (“Holy Mother Forking Shirtballs!”), it’s fascinating that he’s rolled out a bona fide mystery where the twists are intentionally anticlimactic - but it works. The tension in the show doesn’t come from the crime itself, which is always low-stakes, but from Charles lying to people he’s beginning to care about. In any given episode, Charles investigates a suspect, only to find himself forming a genuine relationship with them and ultimately ruling them out. And as season two demonstrates, it’s not the kind of show to suddenly reveal that one of these likable misfits is a dastardly criminal anyway. What makes this whodunnit tick is the way Schur and his writers manage to wrap up the case without turning any single character into the bad guy. Charles solves the case not by catching someone red-handed, but by using his connection to the suspects to piece together the way in which nobody, or everybody, is to blame.