Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Snabba Cash’ Season 2 On Netflix, Where The Easy Money Leya And Others Got Carry Really Tough Consequences

Snabba Cash Season 1 was a crazy pastiche of drug gang turf wars, people using dirty money to invest in tech startups, and family strife that involves the aforementioned gang wars. Season 2 continues that pace, but focuses it around its two most compelling characters.

SNABBA CASH SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A far view of a shed from what seems like someone who has collapsed on the ground. Slowly, a man walks up and starts shooting. A woman suddenly wakes up, having had that nightmarish vision in her sleep.

The Gist: A year after getting funding, Leya (Evin Ahmad) is riding high on the success of her company TargetCoach. The app is doing so well that she announces that the company will have an IPO soon. However, right after she announces that, Tomas (Olle Sarri), her primary investor, tells her that it’s canceled, and that he’s going to turn control of the company completely over to her.

The machinations that got her the money to fund TargetCoach, but ended up with her brother-in-law Ravy (Dada Fungula Bozela) killing Salim (Alexander Abdallah) still haunts her. She still keeps her son Sami (Lennox Söderström) away from his uncle because of his ties to the drug trade.

Ravy is having his own problems: The police have tapped into a secret online chat site that helps facilitate massive drug deals, and he has had to offload his stash in anticipation of being arrested. It doesn’t help that a rival named Zaki (Adam Kais) is being released from prison with plans to take over his territory. His mother berates him for only being after money at the sacrifice of his family, and he tells Nala, one of his right-hand people, that he needs to find a way out.

When speaking to her old elementary school, Leya runs into Jamal (Ardalan Esmaili), an old friend who is a new job as an administrator. He has big plans for the school, but not the budget to implement those plans.

As Zaki tries to recruit some young distributors, he also gets some intel about a stash of merchandise he can steal to get his plans off the ground. It just happens to be the stash that Ravy hid when he knew the cops were coming.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Snabba Cash season 1, of course, but a lot more focused.

Our Take: Our Season 1 review of Snabba Cash pointed out that we were more interested in Leya’s story than any of the seemingly-generic gang-related stories, and as the season went along, writers Jens Lapidus and Oskar Söderlund concentrated the wild happenings around Leya’s quest for funds for TargetCoach. She seems to have been the only one who got out of the craziness scot-free, but the second season shows that she isn’t immune to both suffering the consequences and being sucked back into that world.

For one, she’s recruited by Marko (Johan Jonason), the supplier of Ravy’s merchandise, to be a middleman for a delivery that anchored offshore once Marko’s chat site was compromised by law enforcement. For two, there’s a reason why Tomas is handing the company over to her, and it all has to do with the government looking into his financial affairs. He’s squarely putting the heat on Leya, who has a lot to hide but also is adamant that her company stays in business.

That’s why the second season sets up to be more satisfying than the first; it’s not just about generic gang stuff anymore. It’s about Leya’s continual hustle to avoid both law enforcement and being caught up in a turf war, despite her success. And it’s about Ravy’s decision to leave just as Zaki emerges to try to get him out of the way. That focus, and the idea that Leya’s actions in Season 1 will come back to bite her in Season 2, is what’s going to drive what we expect to be another eventful and crazy season.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: As she storms out of her meeting with Tomas, she calls his number two an “Uncle Tom motherfucker.”

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Lennox Söderström as Sami, who has to be a strong kid in the face of all of this tragedy and the fact that Leya is keeping him away from his uncle.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Zaki tries to recruit some kids to help his operation, one kid says, “I know who you are. You smoked that guy in the garage.” How does this stuff get back to Sweden’s youth so fast?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Snabba Cash continues its breakneck pace, but this time with more of a concentration on Leya and Ravy and how being part of the drug trade carries heavy emotional and physical consequences.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.