'The Other Two': How wacky showbiz satire, with Molly Shannon as daytime host, adapts for Season 2

For Heléne Yorke and Drew Tarver, "The Other Two" is a little too relatable at times.

In the wonderfully absurd showbiz satire, which moves from Comedy Central to HBO Max for Season 2 (first two episodes now streaming; new episodes every Thursday), the actors play Brooke (Yorke) and Cary Dubek (Tarver), fame-hungry adult siblings overshadowed by their teenage pop star brother, Chase Dreams (Case Walker).

During shooting, "people would come up and be like, 'What are you guys filming?'" Tarver recalls. "And we'd be like, 'Oh, it's called "The Other Two."' And they'd be like, 'Where are the stars?' And we'd be like, 'We are them.' They'd just go, 'Ugh,' and walk away."

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"The Other Two," which premiered in 2019, was created by longtime "Saturday Night Live" writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider. They wanted to pivot the dynamic of the Dubek family after the Chase-heavy first season, which focused on his rapid, Justin Bieber-style ascent to stardom. This season centers more heavily on their tireless mom, Pat (Molly Shannon), who gets her own daytime talk show and becomes TV's new reigning queen of nice, with treacly segments and garbled catchphrases inspired by Ellen DeGeneres.

"What was worse than your little brother being famous? Your 52-year-old mother being famous in her own way," Schneider says. "We have Molly Shannon, who's just so funny and charming and believable and relatable as a talk-show host. We just thought it would be a fun way to tell more stories about our two leads, Cary and Brooke, being 'the other two' but in a completely new world, which is the world of daytime."

Following a pitchy MTV Video Music Awards performance where the Dubeks – and the world – realized that Chase can't really sing, he tries his hand at college in the Season 2 premiere. Meanwhile, aspiring manager Brooke scours TikTok and children's birthday parties looking for the next teen singing sensation, and Cary finds minor success hosting web series such as "Age Net Worth Feet," a red-carpet segment surveying celebrities about those three things.

"With Cary doing 'Age Net Worth Feet,' he's trying to ride (Chase's fame) wave," Tarver says. "It's adjacent to what he wants: He wants to be an actor; he's hosting, that's close. Maybe if he looks at the right person's feet, somebody will cast him in a Marvel movie down the road? I don't know. He's trying to figure it out."

New episodes double down on the zany pop-culture parody of the first season. One episode finds Brooke and Chase attending an exclusive unveiling of a new sibling of models Bella and Gigi Hadid. (The so-called "third Hadid sister" stands in the middle of the room, hidden under a sheet, throughout the party.) Cary also lands a gig hosting a "Gay News" series, which primarily covers whatever Laura Dern is doing.

Season 2 is unabashedly queer, with more jokes about Grindr hookups, gay Instagrammers and married couples posing as fathers and sons and sharing fabricated "coming out" stories on Pat's talk show to get monetary gifts. After struggling to come out to his late dad, Cary is now living more comfortably in his skin and has his first boyfriend, Jess (Gideon Glick).

"In Season 1, Cary is very self-hating and a little homophobic himself," Kelly says. "He spends the first half of the season in love with a straight roommate, who will never give him what he needs. So we did like exploring the idea in Season 2 that Cary thinks he's better, and he is in many ways making progress. He's not pining after a straight man. He's in a relationship with a real live gay man, which is not nothing. We see little moments peek through of him still being homophobic, but then catching himself and realizing he has room to grow."

While last season culminated in a poignant yet darkly funny reveal about how the Dubeks' father died (#MyDadFroze), Yorke says new episodes are less about grief and more about Brooke and Cary "prioritizing themselves and the pitfalls that come with that." Brooke reluctantly becomes Pat's manager, and tries booking eligible bachelors on her mom's daytime show for the sole purpose of asking them on dates. But at the end of the day, her wry, close-knit relationship with Cary is the tender heart of "The Other Two."

"No matter what, they're cheerleaders of one another," Yorke says. "They want the other to do well, but they also know each other so well that they know when the other needs a kick in the pants. There's a shorthand, and to know one another that deeply to be both friends and siblings is so great. That's what I love about it most."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'The Other Two' spoofs Ellen DeGeneres, Hadid sisters in zany Season 2