When I was a kid I was very good at video games. I remember one time I was trying to teach someone how to play Aladdin on Sega Genesis. They were awful and they were ignoring my advice. But I was patient. I tried as best as I could to keep an even keeled tone despite them routinely wasting apples, jumping into bad guys repeatedly and dying within the first two seconds of every level. After about an hour, my patience wore thin. They asked me how to do something that I had explained to them a million times, and I finally snapped and yelled. Every time I had bit my tongue came flowing out in that one moment. My hidden rage was no longer suppressed. It wasn’t pretty.
This episode of True Detective was that moment for me.
Despite building a tremendous amount of momentum in the previous episode, True Detective went back to it’s old “wait, what is happening again?” shenanigans. I finally snapped. This was the worst episode of True Detective that I have ever seen. And maybe that isn’t fair, because in all honesty there were only a few glaring missteps (see: 80% of what Frank Semyon said, 100% of what his wife said and the random John Woo slow motion effects). What makes this episode SO terrible is that for the past six episodes, I was holding out for clarity in a tangled plot like a wanderer in the desert looking for an oasis. Pizzolatto, like a bully at the beach, delighted in kicking more sand into my eyes instead. Unfortunately with one episode left, this episode needs to pay for the sins of its predecessors. Looking for answers in the penultimate episode only to be given new (and confusing) threads? No thank you. I just can't justify giving it the benefit of the doubt anymore. I finally understand why people stay in abusive relationships, this entire blog is essentially one big "I fell" (I can do melodrama too guys!).
I honestly laughed when they teased a “90 minute finale”. The final episode essentially amounts to the duration of a movie, and if it were a standalone movie I guarantee it would make as much sense to me as someone who had skipped the first seven episodes of this season. Seven hours of back story have done nothing to untangle this season’s plot. Do people really need to know the elaborate super-hero history of The Avengers before seeing those movies? No, but if they’re so inclined they can at least read a clear and concise wiki entry explaining who “Vision” or “Quicksilver” are. As viewers of True Detective, we have no such luxury (more on that in a second).
Frankly, it’s hard not to feel deceived. I watch this show more closely than most people and I’m still at a loss for what’s happening and why it’s happening. Is the chief of Vinci PD in cahoots with Black Mountain somehow? The guy who shot Riggins (RIP, Texas Forever, etc.)...How did he know to be in that exact spot and who is he working for? Did Semyon’s girlfriend have to be so nasty to Velcoro? Had they even met before? If those documents don’t mean anything then why the hell are they so important to the chief of Vinci PD? Are we supposed to HONESTLY believe that killing the state attorney will have NO repercussions, yet an APB is put out for Bezzerides because she killed a bodyguard at a 100% confidential “talk about this and you get killed” sex party? I could go on. Want to know the worst part? That’s not even the most egregious deception of this season.
When first announced, this season of True Detective was advertised as (and I’m paraphrasing) “The secret occult history of the California transportation system”. “Cool”, I remember thinking, in between sips of Lone Star. There was a lot of potential in that idea. With one episode left, the key phrases in that description “occult” and “transportation system” have been BARELY touched on. In fact, there has been nothing “occult” about this season. “Transportation system”? I guess the light rail falls into that category...and maybe Woodrugh takes the subway a lot off screen? Someone did steal his bike, after all.
I tried to summarize what this season has actually been about, and I couldn’t. By the time this season’s sacrificial lamb was killed during a montage that included Frank Semyon pulling a Walter White and Velcoro and Bezzerides finally consummating their romance (which I wasn’t totally opposed to, for the record), I had given up trying to understand the plot for this season. The good news is I don’t have to summarize the plot! It’s been so confusing and so poorly written -- and by that I mean: reasons for things I was able to let slide have been “justified” through convenient logic that make no sense. It's been so downright frustrating as a fan who follows the show closely, that someone on the internet wrote an article dubbed “What Exactly is Going on in True Detective Season 2? An Excruciatingly Clear Plot Breakdown". I cannot recommend this enough. Here are some quick hits of “did you knows”, that I “didn’t know”:
- “...Burris and Holloway, very high-ranking Vinci police officers, are desperately trying to keep the Caspere case closed, because any further investigation into it will reveal not only their hand in the 1992 robbery-murder but also how they are profiting from the soon-to-be built rail line.”
- “Velcoro assumes [Katherine Davis] was murdered by Burris and Holloway, and that they used one of the guns in his house to do it, in order to frame Velcoro.”
- “Remember, Holloway was at the sex party and is in cahoots with Catalyst too. (There are basically two parts of this conspiracy—the Holloway-Burris-Dixon-Caspere arm and the Tony Chessani-Osip-Blake-Caspere arm. They are both making money off of the rail line, which means they are both connected via Catalyst.)”
- “Lieutenant Burris gave the watch to Irina to bring to a pawn-shop. Burris and Dixon had past experience with Amarilla—they had questioned him but taken no notes some years previous—and so even had his assistance while they were setting him up. Vinci PD orchestrated the whole [massacre].”
- “Burris and Holloway blackmailed Woodrugh into meeting with Holloway and a number of Black Mountain employees in some underground tunnels to get him to turn over Bezzerides and Velcoro’s location. (Again, note how cozy the two parts of the conspiracy are here: Holloway, Burris have such a close relationship with Catalyst they are using its security force.)”
- “One gruesome detail from the robbery is that the thieves executed the owners of the store, and so their two very young children, Laura and Leonard Osterman,...It seems, at this point, like they are the people who revenge-killed Caspere….Velcoro recognized her as Caspere’s assistant Erica, whom we met fleetingly, way back in episode three, on the movie set. Since then Erica/Laura has quit her job and left her apartment. We don’t know who Leonard is yet.”
I’m shocked that Pizzolatto assumed we would catch these details. Worse still, these aren’t minor facts. These are critical to understanding what is going on in the show. Trusting the internet to add meta-flavor to your show (see: King, Yellow) is one thing. When the internet literally needs to write an explicit breakdown that still contains phrases like “I’m sorry, can you show me pictures of these people?”, it means that you screwed up.
Looking back on this season, I feel duped. I was expecting a supernatural mystery in the form of an exciting puzzle to solve. Instead I was given a an indecipherable hieroglyph carved into the back of a gas station paperback. How the hell did the trailer for season two of The Leftovers nail the tone for True Detective better than True Detective?
I won’t speculate on a third season - according to HBO that decision is totally up to Pizzolatto - but if there is one I’ll be fascinated to see what approach Pizzolatto takes. If season one is an A+ and season two is an F, you need to C if season three is any better (somewhere my Dad is chuckling).
But on to the episode, “Black Turtlenecks and Motel Rooms”. Err sorry, “Black Maps and Motel Rooms”. I’ll summarize: Bezzerides’ damsel in distress won’t testify, the state attorney gets murdered, Woodrugh goes to his motorcycle in the sky, Frank puts together a wish list that was every Counter-Strike players’ dream (and is sloppily duplicative), everyone’s family (except for Velcoro’s?) flees to safety, Frank blows up everything he used to own, gets some fake passports and books some tickets, Blake gets killed with a glass cup and a gun (finally revenge for fan favorite Stan!...but Frank you’re gonna run out of cups!), and a small character from episode 2 (Caspere’s assistant) is likely behind his murder. Maybe her brother is the movie set photographer, which would lend some credibility to my “Velocoro was shot by a movie prop theory”! Come on, let me get excited about something here guys.
So here we are, with 90 minutes left in the city of Vinci. My frustrations have finally boiled over. The cynics have won. But in a way, the realization that nothing will make sense to me as a viewer has been a cathartic experience. I’m free to take a deep breath, take a pull on my e-cig and sit through the final 90 minutes of a show I don’t totally understand. At one point in this episode, Semyon gets asked “Who’s sailing this ship?”. He doesn’t respond. I feel you, Frank. If someone asked me why I was still watching, we’d have the same answer.