True Detective? More like POO detective. More like True DEFECTIVE. More like BOO detective. More like CLUE INEFFECTIVE. More like SKEWED PERSPECTIVE. More like YOU UNRECEPTIVE. More like DUDE DEJECTED. More like USED CONTRACEPTIVE. More like...More like….
Ok sorry - I had to get that out of my system. It’s been a rough several hours following the aftermath of the finale for Season 2 of True Detective. Ask my roommate, I was totally despondent. All of my pre-season hopes were dashed like so many hard drives on a train station floor. I feel like a Jacksonville Jaguars fan.
I won’t waste anyone’s time detailing the finer points of this bloated, 90 minute finale - which was billed as a “special” but in reality was probably a necessity because they needed all 90 minutes to make even a modicum of sense out of this tangled tapestry of tragedy (Someone make sure Nic Pizzolatto never gets anywhere near a loom. It could get ugly). Nothing made sense. There were no moments of excitement. They ruined Velcoro’s death (why the hell did he drive into the woods? Because his death was preordained that way? Ok….moving on) and most importantly NOTHING MADE SENSE. They even managed to ruin the most one sided 2v20 cabin heist I’ve ever seen (hey bad guys, stop running single file when you hear machine gun fire!). Somewhere between the mexican bar owner tossing out some unnecessary backstory (too little too late, Pizz) and Velcoro dying, I started actively checking to see how long was left in the episode.
The only thing I liked from this episode? Frank Semyon’s death (and Vaughn’s acting, take that haters!). Why he was somehow able to be captured by Mexican gang members despite finishing the heist in the middle of the night and getting stuck in LA traffic around 2pm? Let’s leave that for another day. Oh! I also liked Velcoro’s cowboy “disguise”. Two things. Sorry I was being pessimistic. Well actually, three things if you count that I was relieved when it was over.
But let’s not focus on the episode. I think it’s only fair to dissect the source of this vitriol, especially since I started off as a white knight defending the honor of this season. As recently as episode six I was cautiously optimistic! How did I turn from True Detective kool aid drinker to Bezzerides forcing herself to throw up pure MDMA? Where did this season go wrong?
Stripped of the Supernatural
I’ve made it clear that the thing that made season one so unique (and enjoyable) for me, was the underlying supernatural element. The only thing supernatural about this season were Frank Semyon’s girlfriend’s boobs. Without deeper meaning, without the cosmic puzzle, this season became a dark story about a bunch of people who were caught up in a horrible situation. There was never going to be any salvation. They were doomed. Although that’s not necessarily a bad thing on it’s own, and I would argue that for most of season one, our characters seemed equally doomed to fail (at least in a traditional sense). By that I mean the cogs of the status quo would beat them, the powerful men behind the atrocities they fought valiantly to stop would get away, and the system of police justice would let them down. But it didn’t matter! They were stopping a cycle of supernatural evil, tied to ritual murders. If you were into the supernatural theories as much as I was, you could argue that they were killing a source of pure evil, maybe even a demon-god manifested into our plane of existence, in the form of the Yellow King. Winning a fight for the light, against the darkness! This season shunned this type of relief, and instead showed us people who were doomed in the same way to fail, but offered no retribution on any plane of existence. Their stories may be told by a journalist eventually, but the Chessani’s are still in power. Evil won the fight, and it was never even really a contest. It was as one sided as Velcoro beating up a twelve year old.
A Void of Villainy
I promise not to harp too much on the Yellow King here...but WOW did season one have some good villains. I’m not even talking about the backwoods incident in Carcosa. I don’t think I’ve ever been more terrified watching a TV show in my entire life, then when Rust went undercover in the biker bar. When Marty banged on the door, I’m pretty sure I yelled “STOP!” and covered my eyes. The fact that those bikers led us to the next level of villainy in Reggie LeDoux is amazing. Somehow the rabbit hole went deeper and deeper. Whether you bought into the bogeyman element or not, the abyss produced some monsters, both real and imagined. I never once felt that sense of dread this season. The only time my hairs even stood on end was the near death dream sequence Velcoro had (don’t even get me started on the let down of his actual demise). The bird masked wearing killer never paid off, instead we just saw the mask on a shelf briefly. It felt like an after thought, like “oh, remember this thing?”. Even the reason for Caspere’s murderer’s Weekend at Bernie’s joy ride was “I’m not sure, he was driving him around”. The corrupt Vinci police combined (for reasons that are STILL beyond me) with Blackwater mercenaries to play the bad guys. I never bought it. We needed a real villain. Instead we got arguments about dying avocado trees.
Loose ends and Loose friends
Pizzolatto has taken a beating this season, and much of it is deserved. I’ve defended elements of this show before, and I think if another creative voice had been involved something really interesting would’ve come of this season. Velcoro’s rapist-murder-paternity plot-line was sincerely interesting. Bezzerides relationship with her hippy commune father would’ve been a detour worth taking. Aside from that? It felt like someone trying to cook an elaborate meal without a measuring cup (so in other words, me from ages 24-27). Some of the parts were there, in the wrong proportions. This led to moments that were supposed to make the audience feel, instead leaving us feeling let down. The tacked on emotion Bezzerides and Velcoro felt when Woodrugh was killed was brutal to watch. I cared that he died because I had been watching all season and I love Tim Riggins (Texas Forever!). They cared he died because… he was a good kid?
The weak writing also led to loose ends and characters that didn’t need to exist. Think back: why did Bezzerides’ father need to exist? Why did her sexual harassment case need to happen? Why wasn’t Velcoro worried about his family getting killed, while Woodrugh and Bezzerides sent their families into hiding? Saddest of all, did Woodrugh’s character even really need to exist? I could say the same of Bezzerides but my gut is telling me that she was added as a reaction to season one’s criticism that the show contained no strong female characters. I still stand by that Pizz should’ve killed one of them off early on. Instead he got the memo a little late and killed 3 out of four in the last two hours of the season. I tried to text him, but Velcoro and I have the same mobile phone provider. Needless to say it didn’t get to him in time.
Complexity vs. Creativity
There’s an old saying in magic tricks that as soon as the audience can tell that they’re being fooled, even by the tiniest part of the trick, the rest of the act is doomed. I would argue that the same thing holds true when writing a complex show. As soon as the audience is confused to the point where they don’t know what they’re watching, the jig is up. All of the exposition in the world (and WOW was there a lot of exposition in the finale) won’t save you once you’ve lost the audience. I mentioned last week that a 4,000 word article was necessary to explain plot details to me (and I watched the show very closely). If I’m Pizzolatto, I’m having a hard look in the mirror. No one knew what was happening, why it was happening, or why we should care. It was like your girlfriend getting in a fight with you without explaining why, then collecting herself before you could figure out what the fight was about. In the end, you were just glad that it only lasted eight hours and that you didn’t have to worry about the “why” of the situation. Move on and hope it doesn’t happen again. I think HBO is taking a similar approach for season three.
Lasting Legacy
“We get the world we deserve”, as Ray Velcoro pointed out early on in season two. For what it’s worth, I think he’s right. Fans of season one (myself included) may have given Pizzolatto the mantle of “best writer ever” a little too soon in his career. I admit that I was able to look past a lot of early warning signs in the earlier episodes because I wanted this season to be good, very badly. It almost reminds me of what happened with M. Night Shyamalan after The Sixth Sense. I remember watching The Village and waiting for something cool to happen. Ultimately, nothing ever did. Let’s hope, for Pizzolatto’s sake, their career trajectories aren’t the same.
So yes, in a way, we deserved this. But let’s take this a step further. I happened to glimpse an article saying that people will remember season two as a “cult classic” in later years. I laughed, and then realized there’s a distinct possibility that people may look back on season two a couple of years from now and remember it fondly. Time heals all wounds after all, and in our contrarian, internet-fueled society it’s inevitable that a show with such a negative public image will conjure up some defenders, despite all of its problems. By bashing season two, are we creating reverse momentum that it was actually good? As a former kool aid drinker, I can’t wait to hear their arguments.
Finally, what’s most amazing about this season of True Detective is the complete lack of conspiracy theories that accompanied it. Last season there was an entire meta universe that existed on Reddit (hell people are probably still theorizing on what Rust saw in Carcosa). This season? Nada. Except for the conspiracy theory that the whole Caspere murder was the plot of an evil phone corporation that was able to block Velcoro’s last message to his son, buy up all the land for Catalyst in order to build high speed fiber optic cables and monopolize the internet. If you ignore the fact that I just made all of that up, you’d think it came from Reddit. Sadly, no one seems to care about “what was really happening below the surface” this season, because very few people could follow “what was happening at all” this season. In other words, you know it’s bad when Reddit doesn’t even give a shit.
I’ll close by saying that if season three DOES happen, my guess is that they’ll fix most of these problems. Pizz will get his mojo back, he’ll get a single director to direct every episode, and HBO will be smart enough to give him a showrunner capable of telling him when his ideas don’t make any sense. I’m optimistic, how could I not be? Nothing can be as bad as this season. After all, you know the saying: Veni, Vidi, Vinci. I came, I saw, I wasted eight hours of my life.