I forgot how royally screwed the Malloys were at the end of the first season of FX’s The Riches. It really only left them with two ways to go for this new batch: jump forward to better days and fill in the convenient resolutions to their many dramas with flashbacks or just have them dig that hole even deeper. Under normal circumstances, I’d be thrilled that they went with the latter on this one, but it complicates the already annoying circumstances… This season of The Riches is only seven episodes long.

The Bad: After the writers’ strike halted production on scripts, FX cut the episode order from 13 down to 7. Their motivations probably fell somewhere between the financial implications of restarting production and a lack of faith in The Riches’ mediocre performance in ratings. So now the show is back, but two episodes in, plot development has yet to really resume. Our characters were scattered, scrambling for an idea of what to do, and only now are they returning home to continue the farce they’ve all grown so attached to. There’s only five episodes left and it’s like the season is just now starting.

(I also still have a pretty big issue with the fact that every character in this series seems well acquainted with the idea of “travelers.” Are white trashy gypsies really that much of an issue in the American South? If so, I’ve been completely oblivious.)

The Good: There probably couldn’t be any greater improvement this season than the 86ing of those mind-boggling cheesy opening titles. (Unless the designer was under the impression that The Riches was about a family of unicorns with a habit of dropping acid, they were just unforgivable.) But that’s a little off topic.

Dahlia/Cherien, still played gloriously by Minnie Driver, is miles away from the bitter ex-con and frequently lapsing junkie we got to know in the first season. She’s taken ownership of her problems and her family. Wayne/Doug, on the other hand, is kind of falling apart. The pressures of maintaining his fake identity are mounting, he’s keeping secrets from everyone, he’s an accessory to a murder and he just buried his third body in less than a year. As for their children, they’re still charming but no more interesting than they were last season. Certainly not as exciting as their adopted grandmother or the wildly complex neighbor, Nina, who’s looks to be taking on a much bigger role this season.

All in all, I’m just happy to have The Riches back. The new season has garnered a lot of positive attention, strong ratings and even a bizarre eBay auction where people put in bids to win a lunch with Minnie Driver and… $100,000. I couldn’t dig up the winner, though I imagine they got it on a bid of less than $100,000. In any case, cheers to them. Five new episodes may not seem like hardly enough, but there will probably be plenty more sooner or later.