Idk, death looks pretty dark to me. Even for a secondary character, if it's a developed character it will change the tone completely (just like it happened with AL). In AL that was central to the story, the classic moral dilemma "Do you save your wife or your dog?". He forced the players to choose what is really important to them and some players didn't like that, but that hard choice was the point of it all, the story was written backwards.I agree, removing Sandy improves things significantly. Not sure about the death angle, though. Did he ever say nobody was going to die? I don't recall that. He just said it wasn't going to be as dark and traumatic as AL was, so probably no forced choose-who-dies kind of options. As long as it's not Cammy or Riona I'm cool with it. Jailtime? That's OK. Death? Not so much. Unless Becky gets hit by a car. Then we'll probably see her rolling around campus like Heather did in the flashback.
In BaDik if death happens to a random character with no emotional connections to the player it becomes irrelevant or tangential to the story, why do that. If death happens to a central character it will become dark, so no death this time.
Season 2 is lighter than season 1, and I like that, more balanced from the times of Hell Week where everything was a bit crazy.
You can go a long way with betrayals, infidelities and jealousy, DPC doesn't need deaths and psychos, the SWAT assaulting B&R and other crazy stuff. What he needs is more fights and conflict and he has set them up, everyone can see them coming and every route has some challenges.