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
Aug 03, 2015 by Alex Castle
Last week, when consoling a young boy whose father had died, Frank Semyon told him, “Sometimes a thing happens that splits your life. There’s a before and an after.” As this sprawling, complicated mess of a season rounds third base, True Detective is finally easing up on the question-asking and getting into some question-answering, as the mystery starts to get a little less mysterious and the characters begin to settle into what the “after” is going to look like.
Unfortunately for Taylor Kitsch’s closeted commando Paul Woodrugh, the after is going to have to be the afterlife, as he’s mercilessly gunned down by Lt. Burris (Velcoro’s former superior) in the tunnels under the city after connecting Chief Holloway to the 1992 diamond heist that set so much of this... Read More
Jul 27, 2015 by Alex Castle
Things are finally clicking into place in this second season of True Detective. The five preceding episodes of character development and table-setting have revealed their purpose: to set up and inform this episode, by far the most engaging of the season. If the last two episodes can stay as focused as this one, season two still has a chance to go down as a worthy complement to season one.
Nearly all the best scenes in this season were packed into this one episode: Ray confronting Frank about the mistaken tip that set him on the path to corruption and self-loathing; Frank bonding with his murdered employee’s son; Ray trying to bond with his son, finally recognizing he’s damaged the relationship irretrievably, and walking away for good; Frank tracking down... Read More
Jul 20, 2015 by Alex Castle
We pick up this week in the aftermath of the giant firefight that ended last week’s episode – “The Vinci Massacre,” the press has apparently dubbed it – and two months after the carnage, our heroes have adjusted to a new status quo: Ani is in uniform and exiled to the evidence locker and attending sexual harassment therapy; Woodrugh, the hero of the gunfight, has been “promoted” to detective; and Velcoro has shaved his moustache, traded his mullet for a slightly less unflattering version, and taken up Frank’s offer to work for him full-time doing collections and security.
Frank’s adjusting to a new status quo, too, though it’s not related to the shootout. He and his wife have moved out of their big Scarface House and into a modest... 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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