Not a lot of shadow to give us any modeling cues in the second one. The first one would be my preference. That, and the on axis key light is creating specular highlights off the forehead/nose in both. Angling/relocating off axis may help with that. This is part of what a beauty dish is designed to prevent when used in an on axis manner.
they do seem flat, the position of the subject is part of the problem. They are standing square shouldered to the camera. A slight angle of the shoulders with the head turned is much more dynamic. The light is also a bit too bright to me, there is no depth created when you get some shadows.
Both are well executed centered key light / butterfly lighting pattern portraits.
You also did a good job of keeping the facial angle symmetrical by aiming the camera at the nose, but if the camera was higher relative to the face by about 5-6" the view of the face would be more flattering and less like an eye level mug shot. A trick I use with older subjects to tighten the neck is to have them look up. Then I adjust the lighting as needed to the adjusted orientation of the tilted-up face, and then stand on a step stool to get above the eye line with the camera.
Not all faces are ideally suited for full face poses with centered lighting. A "telltale" I use for determining if a face symmetrical or not is to point the camera straight at the nose and then look to see if the ears appear the same size. Here the ears and other things tell me the faces aren't perfectly symmetrical. That's not a showstopper, but there are better lighting strategies which make asymmetry less obvious.
The full face / centered key light combination only works ideally for slim, naturally symmetrical faces. If the face is asymmetrical its better to put the key light to the side, but on the narrower side of the face for a full face pose. When a full face pose is lit from the side the highlighted side will seem bigger; it's an optical illusion. So when the face is asymmetrical and a full face pose is required highlighting the narrower side will make the face look more balanced in the photo.
A "short" lit oblique view creates a similar illusion because only the front "mask" of the face gets highlights in a way that makes even a very lopsided face look more balanced. See this tutorial of mine that illustrates that using my lopsided mug: http://photo.nova.org/Mirror/
