In writing about Stick’s first season, I gave it a mildly positive review while identifying two big stumbling blocks. The first was the season’s early attempts to crack gender- and pronoun-related jokes that weren’t offensive but weren’t especially funny either. The second was its inability to give Timothy Olyphant, an actor I’m always happy to see, a recognizably human character to play as Pryce Cahill’s (Owen Wilson) slick rival, Clark Ross. The good news about Stick Season 2 is that both issues are squared away. The less-than-good news is that nothing in this new turn approaches the inaugural season’s episode 7, which played out like a seriocomic version of the novel Pet Sematary’s fantasy of the life Gage would never live.

The tradeoff, however, is worth it. Stick Season 2 improves in most ways, performing at a higher level and more consistently throughout. While still not flawless—we’ll get to it—the series feels surer on the greens and stumbles into traps with far less frequency. And that’s enough golf puns.

Pryce and Santi (Peter Dager) have a good thing going. After the tumult of Santi’s first year as an amateur, they’ve developed a healthy relationship. Both seem healthier and happier as a result. Unfortunately, ambition is a force that disrupts comfort—for better and worse—with surprising ease. Santi wants to go pro and skip out on his college scholarship. Pryce thinks it is too soon and for a time that appears to be enough. The arrival of a chummy agent, Jeremy Pierce (John Higgins), tips the balance of power. Like that, Pryce is out and the Stratus agency is in. Higgins, in his first dramatic role, delivers, giving Jeremy an ever-present hint of nastiness without veering into cartoonish agent territory.

With all the new free time and a surprising record-setting round at a Celebrity Pro-Am, Pryce lets Clark Ross talk him into making a go at the US Open. As noted above and in last year’s review, Season 1’s Clark was a mess. The series gave him a monstrous backstory—he mocked Pryce’s dead son during a tourney—but largely played him as a cross between a rogue and an idiot. Here, it settles on roguish idiot, softening his earlier behavior to professional jealousy. Taking a page from the Fast and Furious franchise, they choose to turn him into an ally and never look back. On paper, it doesn’t work. Forgiving the stunt he pulled should be too much. However, Olyphant’s deft and silly performance sells it, making the audience all too happy to welcome him along for the ride.

The real gem of Stick Season 2, however, is a newcomer: Rhea Seehorn as Amanda, a swing coach with a history with Pryce. Her arrival immediately reorients the show. It’s the kind of performance that makes her a central figure within 10 minutes of first appearing on-screen. The part could easily have reduced her to a “woman concerned for the lead” role, but neither the writing nor the actor will let it wallow in that gear. Wounded, funny, and smart, Amanda touches on all Seehorn’s skills in a way that feels wholly different from anything she’s done in the past five years.

Olyphant and Seehorn are also part of Stick Season 2’s biggest problem. Once Pryce is out as Santi’s coach, the show bisects, covering each’s journey in effectively separate storylines. Unfortunately, Pryce’s side of the course (sorry, just one more as a treat!) is so much more compelling. Even with Higgins and the one, the only Billy Zane populating the Santi storyline, it quickly proves repetitive without escalation. The young star is repeating the pattern he showed last season with his father, turning to people who see him as a path to dollars or glory over those who love him. It makes psychological sense, but after one episode, it shows viewers all its cards. Every revisiting of Santi is just dropping the same hand over and over. Moreover, these are familiar beats to any “person getting famous” story. Without escalation or something new to say about it, it feels perfunctory.

It isn’t a total disaster by any means. I’ve already sung Higgins’ praises. Dager finds nuance in it. Even as he repeats a pattern, he shows growth. Mariana Treviño, back as Santi’s mom Elena, captures how easy it is to swallow one’s own wisdom when facing the force of a crowd. Lilli Kay, so excellent last season as love interest and anarchocommunist Zero, feels stranded with too little to do. She can play hurt well, but she deserves more than that. And so half the season feels like marking time until the show puts viewers back in the story they care about.

When the show knits itself back together in its final episodes, though, everything is rapidly forgiven. As a non-golf enthusiast, I’ve never quite bought into the pseudo-mysticism the show assigns to the game. Still, there’s a little magic in the air as it proves big-hearted and humanistic. By the time Wilson and Dager are paired, it’s impossible not to buy in. While there’s still plenty of story that could be told, if Stick Season 2 proves the show’s last, it finds the right set of notes to go out on. In a TV landscape marked by season finales that are forced cliffhangers or big-time fumbles, Stick’s smart finish feels almost revelatory.

Stick Season 2 tees off on AppleTV starting November 4.

Stick Season 2 Trailer: