Aug 10, 2015 by Alex Castle
Well, that happened. The season finale of True Detective did not manage to make sense of the seven episodes that preceded it. The story wrapped up rather tidily, but somehow didn’t manage to connect to any deeper meaning for either the main characters, the audience, or anything else.
Burris and Caspere and the the police chief stole some diamonds a long time ago, and they would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids! The two young children who were orphaned when Burris et al looted those blue diamonds back during the 1992 riots somehow grew up, coincidentally met Caspere, somehow figured out who he was, got a job working for him, and killed him. What does this have to do with Frank Semyon’s... Read More
Jun 22, 2015 by Alex Castle
It’s hard to imagine higher expectations for what is essentially a new show, but after the first season of HBO’s True Detective seemingly captured the imagination of the entire country last year, it feels like season two will be judged as a failure if it’s anything less than mindblowing right out of the gate.
Since it’s an anthology series, this season begins anew with different characters, a different setting, a different crime to investigate. No more Rust Cohle and his fascinating existential monologues; no more Marty Hart and his improbably gorgeous young girlfriends.
By the looks of the premiere, season two is also stepping away from the supernatural and occult elements that set season one apart from most crime procedurals, as well as the time-jumping flashback narrative... Read More
Jun 17, 2015 by Alex Castle
After a very promising early career, with well-recieved appearances in Dazed and Confused and A Time To Kill and Contact, poor Matthew McConaughey somehow gradually turned into a shirtless, bongo-playing punchline, best known for bad rom-coms (most likely with Kate Hudson).
But when the first season of True Detective aired on HBO, only a few weeks after his cameo in The Wolf of Wall Street and his Oscar-winning performance in Dallas Buyers Club, and people got a look at McConaughey’s haunted, driven performance as Rust Cohle, everyone remembered, Oh yeah, this guy is super-talented! Pretty soon people were going back to his most recent run of movies – The Lincoln Lawyer, Bernie, Killer Joe, Mud, Magic Mike – and his career was reborn, complete with a cute name: The... Read More
Jun 10, 2015 by Alex Castle
Few television shows are able to come out and capture the national imagination as thoroughly as the first season of HBO’s True Detective. Captivating lead performances by Woody Harrelson and (particularly) Matthew McConaughey, a clever time-jumping narrative structure, and a menacing, vaguely supernatural murder combined to totally dominate the pop culture conversation.
That first season had one other unique feature: it was a self-contained story, and when Harrelson and McConaughey gave in to their decades-simmering bromance and the credits rolled, it was clear that they would not be returning – but the monster ratings they had posted guaranteed that there would be a second season. So what is that second season going to be?
Initially, series creator and writer Nic Pizzolatto said the season would be about “the... Read More
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