Season 2, Episode 1: The Western Book of the Dead
Season 2, Episode 2: Night Finds You
Season 2, Episode 3: Maybe Tomorrow
Season 2, Episode 4: Down Will Come
Season 2, Episode 5: Other Lives
Season 2, Episode 6: Church in Ruins
Season 2, Episode 7: Black Maps and Motel Rooms
Season 2, Episode 8: Omega Station
* * * * *
True Detective's second series marches on, and it isn't waiting for you to catch up. A few critics have been lambasting the decline of a once great show, uses phrases like "off-the-rails" and "lost cause". But their criticism seems to come off as hollow - the series has always been one characterised by dense plotting and weird, self-important philosophical digressions, it's just that there's no hand-holding this time. You're either in, or you're out.
After last week's hour of characterisation, it seems we finally have a mystery on our hands, though we're still moving at a glacial pace. Ben Caspar's eyes have been hollowed out with acid and his groin has been decapitated by a shotgun blast. (Yes, we get a nice close-up of that.) Ray, Ani and Paul have been forced into an unholy alliance, though their strings are being pulled by their respective higher-ups - and as a result, it's a partnership that doesn't quite gel, though in an interesting, layered way. Paul is stuck with a wheezing waste of space in an aircraft bunker, looking at a sparse corkboard, and doesn't seem that keen to, you know, detect - this is left up to Ray and Ani who, in a nice call back to Season One, ride in a car together and have some tense conversations while trawling through the murky waters of Caspar's back catalogue of dodgy connections. Though it's difficult to say if anyone actually wants them to solve the case...
"Murky" might be putting it lightly. Nic Pizzolatto really has a talent for infecting every scene, every location with sleaze and nastiness, something that's heightened by the noirish jazz riffs on the soundtrack and Lera Lynn's dirgeful ballads. It's just as well Vinci is a fictional city, otherwise its tourism board might have something to say; it makes Detroit look like Dubai. Most of this comes through in Frank Semyon's scenes, as he drifts through bars and nightclubs in an attempt to salvage his crumbling life. He's curiously separate from everyone else, and I'm still not entirely convinced Vince Vaughn can pull off the role - though his opening monologue about rats in a cellar was suitably haunting.
It's all quite engaging, if not revelatory. We chip away at the characters a little more, and we see something that surprises us, or muddies our perception of them. Ray reveals he has a sense of humour when he likens using an e-cigarette to "sucking on a robot's dick"; Ani reveals she likes to watch hardcore bondage pornography, and carries knives around in case she gets in fights with men (I'm still not entirely convinced Pizzolatto can write for women, though McAdams is fine in the role); and Paul reveals he has a leery, trailer-trash mother who likes to rub his muscles and call him pretty. And he might be gay. Maybe this explains why Taylor Kitsch always looks like he's about to start crying.
All of this leads up to a shocking ending, which sees Ray get shot in the stomach by a masked shotgun-wielding baddie. I'm not entirely convinced that Farrell's character is really dead - there's a lot of unseen stuff from the teaser trailers - but it's a terrific cliffhanger, and it's confirmed my suspicion that Pizzolatto has some of the biggest, brassiest balls on the planet. It's a big gamble, jettisoning everything people loved about your show, and it could all go to hackneyed shit. But if it doesn't then, oh boy, we might really have something here.
