(This post contains spoilers. You can read my thoughts on previous episodes of True Detective, season two, here.)
“Pain is inexhaustible,” Ray Velcoro speaks into he and his son’s digital recorder. “It’s only people who get exhausted.”
People — or, more specifically, some individuals with far-reaching digital platforms — have grown weary of True Detective this summer. In line with how Internet criticism reliably functions in 2015, the majority (or at least the perceived majority) opinion stands, “True Detective is a collisional waste of our time,” while all minority stances and subsequent deductions are skewed as obsolete.
New HP pod! MR. ROBOT gets the top spot over a flagging TRUE DETECTIVE. We saw ANT-MAN. And @ChrisRyan77 love magic. http://t.co/cCIsoBDPiN
— Andy Greenwald (@andygreenwald) July 21, 2015
Cancelled DVR season pass for True Detective. They wasted 5 hours of my life, they aren't getting 3 more.
— Eric Raskin + (@EricRaskin) July 21, 2015
https://twitter.com/sepinwall/status/623162371695992832
Grantland’s Chris Ryan, who typically rides and dies with True Detective, was unusually resigned Monday while comparing the indiscernible mystery of True Detective’s second season to the great unknowns of the ocean — and how the New York Times‘ Ian Urbina’s tale of the lawless state of the modern sea is the more fulfilling crime drama. However, judging True Detective against the seduction of a NYT-quality oceanic murder-mystery — a work of nonfiction, of course — is stacking the odds against Nic Pizzolatto: How could True Detective ever compete with the dramatics of real life?
My frustration with the general bad-mouthing of this season stems from this oversight: That True Detective can either be perfect or unnecessary, and not anything in between. To find faults within a show as ambitious, stylized and unmistakable as Pizzolatto’s is part of the territory. In the immediate aftermath of Breaking Bad and other giants of the medium, we forget not every album is Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; most films fall short of The Godfather; and seldom does a book match the timeless allure of The Great Gatsby. If anything, True Detective should be celebrated for its reckless abandon, when I’m sure HBO could win over more TV critics by fixating less on the bizarre.
This is not me excusing the “Every Kid Gets a Trophy” culture of the times, by the way. Mediocrity is poisoning our wells and aggregating selfishness. But that’s also real life, and our obligation to protecting our children from the passivity of modern technology, for example, or pursuing a deeper understanding of our world doesn’t begin and end with the IMDB score on a True Detective episode. We should be mindful of everything we experience — “Life imitates art” — but perhaps measuring a TV show against the theatre of the real world is misguided.
In other words, LET TRUE DETECTIVE LIVE, FAM.
This season of True Detective has a quartet of leads running from the truth, but their attempts to outrun their troubles have proved inauspicious. Last week’s “Down Will Come” ended in a hail of gunfire which, independent from the formulaic crutch of the “raid gone wrong,” was emblematic of our character’s condition: There’s nowhere else to run.
Paul Woodrugh and Ani Bezzerides have made enough enemies and were facing departmental penalties long before the destruction of the shootout. Ray Velcoro, meanwhile, opted to leave the force in the aftermath before the heat got to him. “It isn’t right what happened there,” Velcoro says to Lieutenant Kevin Burris. As I summated last week, all three are officially off the Ben Caspere case — a case closed once Vinci government pinned the murder on the freshly slain Mexican gangbangers.
Meanwhile, no character in the universe of True Detective has run out of navigable real estate more than Frank Semyon. Unpacked boxes still stacked around the house, the Semyons have literally been pushed out of the heart of the city, leaving Frank to reclaim every dime from the outskirts of Glendale. Through five hours, all we really know is somebody has it out for Frank, and everyone else — the detectives, their families, missing persons, impoverished Latino tenants — are all pawns in the game.
What makes Frank Semyon such an easy target — and a fine central character for a True Detective season set in Los Angeles — is his back-stiffening, blind pursuit of wealth. Frank and Jordan spent much of Sunday’s “Other Lives” squaring each other up — “Well now I’m me,” Jordan says after admitting to Frank she’s infertile. “And now you’re you.”
Lying in their much smaller bedroom, Frank looks up at the ceiling and notices, unlike before, there are no water stains. During the papier-mâché monologue from “Night Finds You,” Franks suggests the mysterious water stains symbolize the falseness of the world he inhabits. All the money, the size of the house, the beautiful, loving wife — could it all just be a lie? In conjunction with Eliot Bezzerides’ (David Morse) words from “The Western Book of the Dead,” True Detective has placed its troubled characters at the edge of civilization and forced them to wrestle with the meaningless of the world.
For Frank, the water stains function as a sort-of Totem — his way of keeping perspective and seeing the reality of his situation. But by “Other Lives,” Frank is fully immersed in his prideful pursuit of his stolen money. He has lost touch with reality; he’s ignoring the signs of papier-mâché all around him. Jordan suggests selling the clubs and moving out of L.A.: starting over. He laughs off the idea before making an ill-timed joke about her infertility. The idea of home and starting a family, of inheriting wealth and land and passing it down for generations — it’s all an illusion. Frank is acting solely on his own greed.
He can’t ignore the truth for much longer, and his reality check is coming in the form of a pissed-off Ray Velcoro. With three episodes remaining, it’s hard to imagine either Ray or Frank pulling the trigger on each other. Frank will likely find a way to wiggle past Ray next week, but there are others on his tail, and something tells me Frank’s hard drive-for-parcels agreement with Jacob McCandless will go terribly, terribly wrong.
Some Parcels
- Ani Bezzerides double-bird-flip confessional. Girth. All smiles. God, watching Ani at the party next week is going to be insane.
- Vince Vaughn saying “Cisco Kid.”
- If Frank’s Totem is the water stains, then Ray’s is his Chad, Ani’s is her knives (and her need to control her relationships with men), and Paul’s is his motorcycle.
- How is this missing girl case going to congeal with Ben Caspere’s murder? Like, how? I’m all ears.
- Most Pizzolatto line ever? “I was drafted on the wrong side of a class war, so fuck that gangster shit.” Amen, Piz.
- Calling my shot: Cynthia Woodrugh (Lolita Davidovich) is going to kill Emily and Paul’s child. Pray to God I’m wrong.
- Shout out to Yara Martinez who crushes her 15 seconds of screen time each episode as Felicia when she isn’t managing her hole-in-the-wall bar to a B-level health code. Ray Velcoro doesn’t deserve you, honey.
