(This post contains spoilers. You can read my thoughts on previous episodes of True Detective, season two, here.)
When True Detective is firing on all cylinders, it can be one of the most immersive television experiences we’ve ever had. Movie stars playing screwed-up characters; limitless photography exploring the depths of an unique American frontier — first the American Bayou, then Los Angeles; the best and worst of mankind slapped up against each other.
This second season has been kicked in every direction. As an unapologetic crusader for the show, however, I have taken the good with the bad, and each week, my goal has been to locate the bigger picture of the show: What makes True Detective so polarizing? What makes it different from anything we’ve watched before? What makes it special?
“Church in Ruins,” the sixth episode of season two, toggled between the best and worst the show has to offer. It’s bad enough we never met Stan, but Nic Pizzolatto places us against our will in that stuffy living room with his widow, and then makes us peer over Frank Semyon’s shoulder as he tell Stan’s boy that his father was a good man. I felt like Stan’s son: “Frank, ENOUGH with the good man, crap. Nobody is good here — it’s L.A.!”
Sidebar: Frank’s “pure, solid gold” line was a beat away from telling the kid he’s money, baby. I’m not sure which would have been worse.
But — and this is where I throw my crusader cap back on — that scene also revealed the most important line of dialogue in the episode. Frank touches on life’s before-and-after moments, that life is what we do in response to the tragedies we face. Earlier in the episode, during Frank and Ray Velcoro’s surrogate bar conversation — in Frank’s kitchen… at gunpoint — Ray was sniveling with rage over killing the wrong man. “You fucked me, Frank,” Ray shouts. “I could have been different.”
That’s simply not true, and Frank tells him as much. Saying “I could have been different” is the most common lie people tell themselves, Frank retorts. As The Avett Brothers wrote, “lies don’t need an airplane to chase you anywhere.” No, they most certainly do not.
The commonality between the first two seasons of True Detective is Pizzolatto’s fascination with (mostly) men and women facing reality after years — or in some cases, a lifetime — of deluding themselves. With its star-studded cast, the series doubled its workload from a season ago, and however impatient the top layer of criticism has been, these P.T.P.-ers have been given an atypical platform to work their asses off. The dallying tempo and often indiscernible plot lines aside, Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch have given us alluring performances.
As Andy Greenwald penned last week, nothing has been better this season than watching Farrell knock Ray Velcoro out of the park. And “Church in Ruins” epitomized his work: harassing the chaperone scribbling notes during his final father-son playdate, the exuberance of throwing the Rolling Stones on his CD player (CD PLAYER!!!) and getting wet as a waterslide.
But as important as his rise was his fall. His ultimate decision to smash the model airplanes — the final tangible evidence of his fatherhood — before calling his ex-wife was gripping. Left in the ruins of his fantasy, he admits defeat, and Farrell delivers a heartbreaking forfeit.
The shootout concluding “Down Will Come” was disappointing because of its congruency with the ebb-and-flow of season one — at the halfway mark of True Detective, something is bound to go epically wrong. If Pizzolatto had shed the guns and captured our attention in a brand new way, perhaps the impact wouldn’t have felt so formulaic.
Last Sunday’s “Other Lives” introduced Ani Bezzerides to an opportunity to break into one of the secret sex parties everybody has been yappin’ about. It was a chance to kill two birds with one stone: force Bezzerides to face her suppressed traumas and watch True Detective go for a signature moment. In every way that “Down Will Come” fell flat, the final sequence of “Church in Ruins” was hit on the screws: a spectacle only True Detective could lay claim to.
Molly on her breath, Ani walks into the party’s foyer and immediately feels every man’s eyes on her — everybody is wearing their proper hat. The party sequence begins like a bizarre school prom: men on the left, women on the right, only instead of stale punch and contemporary music, date rape drugs and cold hard cash lubricate the festivities. Birthed from T Bone Burnett’s hard symph prodding, the tempo picks up considerably, and right as Ani begins feeling woozy, the clothes begin coming off all around her.
The real accomplishment of this sequence is its escape from reality. It reminded me so much of The Shining, as Shelly Duvall zombie-walked around the psycho-sexual chaos of the haunted hotel. And because of Ani’s state of delirium, as well as the resurfacing of her attack as a young girl, we’re as skeptical to what we’re seeing as we are clueless.
Earlier in the episode, Ani assesses a crime scene and asks for a “grid search and cadaver dogs” — about the most dry thing an adult human can say out loud. When her sister was trying to explain the extent to which these parties get out of hand, Ani was too busy playing with knives. But once she is stuck in the shuffling madness, Ani has become something far worse than in danger: she’s been exposed. Ani has suddenly morphed from straight shooter into an unreliable narrator, and surrounded by naked bodies and fellatio, Ani is baring it all.
Pizzolatto outdid himself with this section of the story, and after a season defined by Cary Fukunaga’s directorial vision, “Church in Ruins” finally provided another director (this week, Miguel Sapochnik) to have a rival moment. With two weeks left, I’m still not quite sure how the Gonzalezs connect with Jacob McCandless and Mayor Chessani. But Ray and Ani have been sent emotionally reeling, Paul’s day is due, and somebody, sooner or later, is going to make Frank Semyon feel the piston’s scrapping. It’s only a matter of time.
