only saw 1 black person too (the chief (?) of police in Vinci)

Decent start but I'm keeping my expectations low

what a piece of work, haha. Gonna be hard for me to give a shit about McAdams or Kitsch's characters...we'll see how much development they get as this goes on...

are going to come into play in regards to McAdams' character sooner rather than later. Should be interesting to see how well choreographed her knife fighting scene(s) will be.

>what a piece of work, haha

Perfect role for him

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

Interesting to see both Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey are both credited as Exec. Producers for this season. Looks like it's too soon to draw conclusions for this season though.

Took me out of a few scenes completely

so i guess i can't agree lol

The rest blended well.

Okay premiere, but didn't pull me in like the S1 premiere did. I got faith in the showrunners, but it will be damn near impossible to top S1 and the comparisons will be unavoidable.

It's almost as if the show runners don't trust what's going on in the scenes to tell the story; the music felt as if they didn't trust the intellect of the audience.

but the choices themselves definitely set a tone


@rob_starrk

>


----------------------------
Same as it ever was!

...

so im not expecting much from the early episodes
outside of character development and story building.

I'm only four episodes into S1, but holy shit my wife and I were hooked from the first episode.

I purposely waited until the day of the final episode to binge all seven episodes before it so I know it can seem like the momentum is unrelenting but when I went back to watch it with a girlfriend over a few weeks it took her a while to get fully invested.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

You know how it goes round here.

because it was annoying to me as I watching, but I do agree more patience is necessary for the show. The first season was so great and both Harrelson and McConaughey are still involved with the show as executive producers for this season, so the comparisons are going to be inevitable.

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

While this season premiere was very different than season 1, I found it to be equally good.

One quick question, was the waitress at the bar with the cut up face the missing sister that we learned about earlier when Elvis and Antigone were serving the eviction notice?

first season didn't really grab me until three or four episodes in.

brass knuckles are always a plus

Due to every review I read calling this season a sophomore slump.

But yeah, it worked well enough. I'm intrigued by Farrell and sort of McAdams. Not really caring about Kitsch yet.

However, I'm going to disagree with people who are saying that this was more intriguing than last year's season premiere, or that last season didn't get good until episode 4. But that's something else all together.

was overacting. Too much left to get clarity after one episode but thought some things were just over-dramatized, like the scene with Woodrush hitting 100 in the dark on his motorcycle.

normally with these things, even if i disagree, i can kind of understand people's complaints, but everything people on here, and reviewers are complaining about with this episode.. i'm not seeing any of it

Gotta be more to it than that...they wouldn't off one of the leads just for shock value in episode 2.

If McAdams and Kitsch have to carry this season, it's going downhill in a hurry.

this episode was worst than the first one, and I don't think it's the actors' faults either. Some of the dialog in this episode was god awful. The two scenes that stand out are the ones with Colin Farrell's character and his ex-wife and Taylor Kitch's character and his girlfriend.

I'll finish out this season, but this isn't looking good so far. It appears this season is going to be more story driven compared to the first season.

if he's dead, you just killed of the best character on the show

if he's not dead, how the fuck is he not dead?

enjoyed the episode though

I'm not getting why folks aren't entertained by this season, it's only been two episodes and two interesting ones at that. I think people are too caught up in the acting of Woody and Matty, to see how this season is playing out.

Lol...I have no damn clue. All I know is that if he is dead, he won't be off the show permanently. We may be getting a lot of flashbacks with clean shaven Farrell Dogg if that's the case.

I don't remember the body moving when the masked guy/gal shot Farrell the second time. Also, say the hooded guy/gal shot Farrell's character with rock salt ala Kill Bill or with beanbags or rubber bullets; why would the masked guy/gal take the up close shot if the shots weren't meant to be lethal?

Now with that factored in, I'll be very upset if he survived those shots and alive for the third episode.

i didnt realize he was this bad a dramatic actor.

So clearly I'm lost as to why so many people are gleefully panning it week in and week out.

.

I can't see her being a gritty bitch.

actually play into the character. in the first ep it seemed like she was trying too hard to act tough and gritty, but then in the second ep i thought maybe it actually fit that the character would act that way, esp with the convo with colin about how she carries all those knives because of her fear of being physically overpowered. also the shit with her father/background fits as well, she always had to act tough because he wasn't going to stick up for her and protect her like a normal father would. but she still grew up in a hippie commune, not some trailer park or skid row flophouse where you gotta scrape and scrap to get by and survive. so she's not a gritty bitch by nature but she's always projected that image as a defense mechanism.

actually i might be putting too much into that and it's probably just that Mc Adams isn't cut out to play a gritty bitch, but i prefer to look at it the way i see it so i'm gonna stick with that.

... but with Farrell seemingly gone, I'm wondering where that will leave her.

Briefing all three leads separately was a good look.


----------------------------
Same as it ever was!

That's the writing though, he did fine with the material.

little too unemotional before that, showed some swagger in that scene then was good from there on, including that scene with him and CF in the bar... i've liked him but think his best in this yet to come

otherwise he's been a bit stiff.

Mr. Alright Alright being there to add his uniqueness to the monologues, which in a way gave people permission to enjoy the show through an ironic lens.

They've also possibly read the profiles on Nic Pizzolatto and concluded that he's a self-absorbed blowhard or whatever.

A more fair reason could be that for as good as he is a director, Justin Lin is no Cary Fukunaga. Visually, that first season had Fukunaga's imprint all over it, which added to why it was so good and memorable.


>So clearly I'm lost as to why so many people are gleefully
>panning it week in and week out.

________________________________________________________________________________
It takes two.

The premiere didn't do a lot for me but last night's episode was much better. We're getting into some weird, cult shit like Bohemian Grove and the Jonestown massacre, which should be even more mysterious and engaging than the first season's cult references.

Just want to make sure I've understood everything right:

Paul, the state policeman, is supposed to find out info on the corruption in Vinci, which will get him out of the blowjob accusation and them looking at his past.

Ani, the county sheriff, is supposed to do the same and keep an eye on/try to flip Ray. She's in charge of the investigation.

Ray, the crooked Vinci detective, is supposed to steer those two away from Vinci corruption. His alcoholic partner is presumably there as another body, who naturally holds back the investigation.

Frank is trying to go straight and paid $5 mil to Caspere, contingent on $5 mil from the Russian, to invest with Catalyst and be part of this huge development deal. Frank thinks Caspere's murderer is making a move on the deal and has his money. Not sure who he had beat up, was that just some small time guy Frank was trying to shake down?

Don't think Ray is dead. It's too early and risky in the season to kill off a major character. People want to compare it to GoT but Ned Stark didn't get it until 3/4 of the season was finished. Probably bean bag bullets or something that's not fatal. I bet he wakes up the next day in the empty house, which was scrubbed of evidence. He struggles to understand why he's still alive, but dedicates himself to the case and finds redemption in the end.

Paul might be the most messed up of the 4. It was pretty clear that he was molested by his mother and has some repressed(?) gay stuff going on too. Not to mention all that Black Mountain Security talk that he's still traumatized by. He's going to ride like thunder & crash like lightning.

Wonder if Ani's mother died in the Jonestown Massacre. I liked the Ani & Velcoro scenes where they're feeling each other out, they have good chemistry. Excited to see Ani use her knives.

I would say Farrell has had the best performance so far, he's the most believable. McAdams is 2nd best, and sadly I have to give Kitsch #3. I like Vince Vaughn a lot and was excited to see him play a dramatic character, but after two episodes I just can't see him as the big bad organized crime boss who is finally trying to go straight. Maybe when his character gets more fleshed out I'll see it more.

Good episode though, it was more in line with what made Season 1 unique. Justin Lin's work is finished now, right? Despite my worries he did a decent job, let's see what others can do with the material.

>The premiere didn't do a lot for me but last night's episode
>was much better. We're getting into some weird, cult shit like
>Bohemian Grove and the Jonestown massacre, which should be
>even more mysterious and engaging than the first season's cult
>references.
Yea but where last season the cult stuff seemed to be tied to the case, this season it just looks likes this mysterious piece of Ani's story and why she is who she is.

>Just want to make sure I've understood everything right:
>
>Paul, the state policeman, is supposed to find out info on the
>corruption in Vinci, which will get him out of the blowjob
>accusation and them looking at his past.
Yeaup, besides his other issues (extreme homophobia, possible molestation, and) His past is obviously some Blackwater type shit. I'm tired of him being cast as current or ex-millitary

>Ani, the county sheriff, is supposed to do the same and keep
>an eye on/try to flip Ray. She's in charge of the
>investigation.

>Ray, the crooked Vinci detective, is supposed to steer those
>two away from Vinci corruption. His alcoholic partner is
>presumably there as another body, who naturally holds back the
>investigation.


>Frank is trying to go straight and paid $5 mil to Caspere,
>contingent on $5 mil from the Russian, to invest with Catalyst
>and be part of this huge development deal. Frank thinks
>Caspere's murderer is making a move on the deal and has his
>money. Not sure who he had beat up, was that just some small
>time guy Frank was trying to shake down?
>
>Don't think Ray is dead. It's too early and risky in the
>season to kill off a major character. People want to compare
>it to GoT but Ned Stark didn't get it until 3/4 of the season
>was finished. Probably bean bag bullets or something that's
>not fatal. I bet he wakes up the next day in the empty house,
>which was scrubbed of evidence. He struggles to understand why
>he's still alive, but dedicates himself to the case and finds
>redemption in the end.
Naw Ray is dead, they even hinted at it in the preview for next week and the crow put two shotty rounds in him, one at close range. He's not coming back from that

>Paul might be the most messed up of the 4. It was pretty clear
>that he was molested by his mother and has some repressed(?)
>gay stuff going on too. Not to mention all that Black Mountain
>Security talk that he's still traumatized by. He's going to
>ride like thunder & crash like lightning.
Mentioned up above (I feel like him and Ani have more in common than the other detectives on the case)

>Wonder if Ani's mother died in the Jonestown Massacre. I liked
>the Ani & Velcoro scenes where they're feeling each other out,
>they have good chemistry. Excited to see Ani use her knives.
I was hoping that it would be the two of them working the case, the chemistry seemed the best when they were together.

>I would say Farrell has had the best performance so far, he's
>the most believable. McAdams is 2nd best, and sadly I have to
>give Kitsch #3. I like Vince Vaughn a lot and was excited to
>see him play a dramatic character, but after two episodes I
>just can't see him as the big bad organized crime boss who is
>finally trying to go straight. Maybe when his character gets
>more fleshed out I'll see it more.

I gotta go Farrell, Vaughn, McAdams and Kitsch last, he's acting is just too stiff.

My guess is he's wearing a vest.

Neither will this season if they really did what I hope they didn't

If you go back and watch the trailers for this season, there's plenty footage of Farrel in scenes we haven't hey seen yet.

........

spoilery: http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--oPSvjP-X--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_320/1318087947975668883.jpg

No one the blame but myself.

SPOLIER RESPONSE







I guess there's still the matter of the show explaining how in the world that is possible or why the masked man or woman would need to take that second close up shot if it wasn't lethal. Can a bullet proof vest truly stop a close range shotgun shot?

All the Nor-Cal references. The Owl. A bunch of very wealthy & corrupt white guys. Shit has Bohemian Grove written all over it

And Kitsch's "secrets" in the desert with the Blackwater-type mercenary firm. I forget the name.

Pizzolatto can have a field day with these themes.

THIS has me hyped.

And I keep seeing Bohemian Grove references in reference to the show since E2 - but isn't Grove kind of a "once a year" meeting place?

Whereas the place Antigone described seemed more like a permanent compound. And there's not really an indicated her Dad is connected to President-level powerful people like the Grove.

at the very end of the 1st episode, when Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch) was riding his motorcyle, seemingly on a bit of a suicidal bender, there was a quick edit (or two?) of an extremely black sky with teeny, tiny pricks of starlight breaking it up. My mind immediately connected it to the imagery and speech at the end of season 1, when Rust Cohle talke about all their efforts being tiny pinpricks in the blanketing darkness. This, of course, was after the main point of s1 seemingly being Rust Cohle finally gaining a vision and comprehension of the darkness that was Carcosa. He went as far as he could into understanding the universal madness, but somehow was still able to pull himself back.

So here we have Taylor Woodrugh seemingly staring at the same thing as Rust Cohle -- the darkness enveloping the night sky -- but to Woodrugh it's extremely dark. There's barely any light in it whatsoever.

Then in e2 we start learning some more things about Woodrugh. Woodrugh has some skeletons in his closet that he won't talk about, not too different from Rust Cohle's multiyear undercover stint where he essentially left the grid, mucking around in the worst of humanity while he was there. In the "break-up" scene, Woodrugh is amazingly detached and emotionally unmoved by his girlfriend's complaints, very Cohle-esque. And then somewhere in e2 we see another black night sky, I think as Woodrugh is leaving his girlfriend's house?

Which left me with the sense that perhaps Woodrugh is supposed to be some sort of amalgamation of a young Rust Cohle. He's an intelligent, sensitive person who is beginning to understand the darkness around him. He's in law enforcement, but he might not be the most rules-oriented law enforcement officer out there. Here he's being tapped for an investigative role, it's not clear why, but perhaps this season will show the sort of transformation that occurs as Woodrugh becomes motivated by the chase against the darkness, the search for the pinpricks of light. Woodrugh is lost, detached, a man without a clear purpose, perhaps just like Rust Cohle was prior to realizing his obsession was trying to understand and conquer the darkness in the world around him.

That might be a bit of a simplistic reading, obviously, but I was struck by the call-back of the pin-pricked night sky in e1, thought it might have just been a visual tick to tie things together. But then it DEFINITELY flashes across the screen somewhere in e2, and it's definitely related to the Woodrugh character (who went from being a boring beefcake in e1 to an intriguing young man in e2). So I don't think it's an accident and I definitely think it's a motif tying to Rust Cohle's s1 ending speech.

Anyway, was lukewarm after e1, but e2 made up for any lack of momentum through the first 60 minutes.

in the first episode. there's a shot of her riding passenger in a car and the way it's angled, the way the driver reacts to her and the way she reacts to the driver brought a lot of flashbacks to episode 1/2 M&M.
~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

sometimes I think they're being weird on this show for the sake of being weird but I don't really mind.

everything just felt smoother and more organic last season...but it's good enough to keep watching for sure.

opening credits are still on point.

like how last season Reverend Tuttle was implicated, although never proven guilty of anything -- there was a whole vast conspiracy, but in the end only one person went to jail, even though Rust had video of heinous crimes involving way more than just one guy. That was kind of the moment it all kicked off for me, with the shrink being weird as shit for no reason, then dropping in the questions about McAdams' fucked up childhood (which obviously has a deeper story) right at the end. That was when I nodded and said hell yeah, we're gonna get to some weird cult shit eventually, all this mundane cop shit right now is just foreplay.

.

http://i.imgur.com/inuzIKs.png

I'm sure we'll be seeing more of the doctor. That's Rick Springfield by the way, most notably the singer of "Jessie's Girl".

But keep in mind there was a ton of symbolic artwork through the first season that almost trolled folks in the sense that it didn't lead to anything concrete in terms of identifying who the Yellow King was. Seems as if the show runners are going that route again with the art direction.

We're already doing the analyzing shit on the walls? like you said, didn't we learn out lesson with that last year?

I mean shit, at one point people thought Woody's daughter was the Yellow King and shit because of her crayon drawings

Learned from last season with all the clues he was dropping about the daughter. Some clues are stretches but I think every detail counts in this show, whether they're meant to be misleading or not.

Part of the fun experience of watching True Detective for me is following along with all the crazy fan theories. The reddit thread goes in depth with that if you're interested.

The bird head artwork is more of a direct connection than a lot of the stuff with Marty's daughter last season though.

I have a feeling looking at all those red herrings/possible clues will be more fun after the season is over, but that's just my perspective.

But getting back to that picture, the main reason I think that's a red herring is because I doubt dude would want to advertise he's part of a secret society by putting a picture up in his office than any and all could see. I do have to admire the level of detail the show runners have to drop those easter eggs.

Reddit's number of posters provides that better, though I participate more here because I'm used to it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/truedetective

I see what you're saying. The doctor's sketchiness and conversation with Ani raised my suspicions more than the artwork did. Yet the occult is known to openly display their affiliation and beliefs through symbology. It's a language that only the initiated or researchers know and if the wrong person asked the doctor about the artwork he could just feign ignorance.

and on board for season 2.

baseless, wild, confused, and outside of the themes/tone of the show.

it clutters the board, imo.

but there is some really good stuff in there.

all that shit in season 1 wasn't misleading. By the end of it, it was revealed that there was a widespread, lurking darkness, aided and abetted by a vast conspiracy to support Evil (with a capital "E") rituals throughout the region. Woody's little girl likely DID have some contact with the evilness. Reverend Tuttle likely WAS a widespread purveyor of evil.

And in this instance, the psychiatrist likely IS connected to whatever lurking darkness hides behind this season.

I watched the episode again with the g/f last night and he has a pretty clear creep to him. When discussing "the Good People" with Ani, he rather ominously seemingly defends her hippie parents by saying, "there are all kinds of truths in this world, all kinds of ways to seek it." So he's a man not "confined" by societal expectations of good and evil, he's willing to explore whatever he wishes. Which is exactly the cultish attitude to have.

Whether or not the shrink is a grandmaster or just a participant, it seems clear he has some connection. Which would explain why he had connection to the murder victim (name escapes me), because the victim was dabbling in this dark world as well (somewhat interestingly, this dark world seems to center around childhood sexual predation again).

My current guess is that it will be revealed that Ani's hippie commune, and their "social theory", was one of these communities that believed it's never too early to expose children to sexuality. So she grew up in a sexualized community, essentially enduring child molestation at the hands of adults, but done under the guise of "free love" and "consciousness expansion." The scene in e2 of Ani watching porn with a glass of whiskey is definitely a strange one...

>The scene in e2 of Ani watching
>porn with a glass of whiskey is definitely a strange one...

All the other stuff you mentioned I don't fully agree with, but I'm not going to argue or debate the points because it is a matter of perception and not something that can be tied to objective empirical facts. I do however agree with you in regards to that scene with Ani you referenced. The fact the camera zoomed in on her eye while that scene went down and the musical cue was playing in the background as well was very weird to me. On the surface, it looked like she was following up on the prostitute angle for the case and she didn't appear out of the ordinary while looking at the labtop.

I thought that was what the point of the scene was.

>On the surface, it looked like she was following
>up on the prostitute angle for the case

but it was definitely more about her personal enjoyment.

she's into some deviant shit...if u remember the first scene with her bf when he walks out of the bedroom and was bugging out about what she was into.

I think I need to watch episode 1 again, because I missed that angle. I thought it was research, but I dunno...

It goes back to that duality theme being pushing this season, Ani obviously takes interests into cases that involve women that could be tied to vice, abuse of sexual nature or human trafficking. Which is obviously out of some sense of justice, she's making up for what happened with "The Good People" by stoping these types of crimes.

At the same time we get her in the first episode freaking out the "boyfriend" in the bedroom, he's taken back by the fact that she wanted to have anal intercourse when they were in bed on the morning of the raid. Episode two sees Ani in the hotel room starting off by searching for possible fronts for prostitution/human trafficking/Child Abuse and then it turns to her seeking out extreme instances of porn (anal intercourse, DPs) and deriving pleasure from watching.

So that's her duality, she's a crusader against abuse of that nature, but still derives some form of pleasure from what could be considered sexual deviancy.

I think you're right about the molestation under the guise of free love and what not. She was victim like the other 5 children that were there, with two in jail, one committing suicide, and her becoming a police officer. I'm curious about her mother though, when she went to see her father he mentioned her "flair for the dramatic" which lead to her death (probably by suicide).

The cult angle I'm not seeing, but I think it was more of a Source Family, New Age kinda deal that went south for a period and then turned into some kind of profit based healing center or retreat.

Rick Springfield probably hung with them for a time while doing his early psych work and was kinda into it. He's doing some other shit, with the plastic surgery and what not. I think he's just another weird LA character and not some kind of connection to a cult. I would hope that Pizzo doesn't go with that angle in back to back seasons, this one has too many connections to shit that actually went on with Vernon (Vinci) being a corrupt city.

would the guy be that caught off guard by it? he seemed shocked/alarmed/confused.

When Vince is talking to him about the 10 g's
framed photo in the background is the mayor and Dubya
*shots fired*

which they made a point of switching to

the rock on the psych's desk?

I was asking, "why that cutaway?" she says, "it's a vagina."

lol

every episode I imagine.

like that crazy ass industrial city may as well be on another planet

Vinci (Vernon) is just one of many cities around LA.

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

As far as summer TV watching goes...It is stellar TV. Season One must be separated from this. I believe people who don't will have a harder time enjoying this for what it is.
First 2 episodes got my full attention. The whole cast is at its best. The last time I enjoyed Collin Farrel was in Dead Man Down with Noomi Rapace.It's good to see him channel his in De Niro swag here.

Vince Vaughn works with what he's given. Both McAdams and Kitsch haven't had much to do just yet... Her interraction with Farrell's character was pretty good though. Kitsch is one of those actors that have a hard time making me forget they're acting ( Channing Tatum,Josh Hartnett,...). He has a chance to show what he's made of here, I guess.

i had some noise in the apartment, 2 mins into vince vaughn's monologue about being locked in the basement as a kid i had NO idea what he was talking about, started the episode over with captions

she's missing so obvious something happened to her, maybe she knew about Casper's scamming the deal and some how ended up dead or telling the wrong people. Could be connected to some bdsm people, would explain the rubber bullets and torture of Casper.

i think that's enough connection especially after the reference to "Good People" this week. there is likely a connection with the people Antigone's Dad works with and what is happening somehow.

I'm not sure there's any reason to believe she's a prostitute too. She wouldn't need to be a cleaning lady if she was.

Remember when they're interviewing the cleaning ladies and the younger one said she quit to go work "The Club Scene".

of having "Mulholland Drive" in focus on a road sign as Farrell gets onto the interstate.

that's my one little nugget of "oooh what does THAT mean" for now, haha.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

Since this season seems to be borrowing a bit of Lynch's surreal swag. First ep in particular.

can't believe the tidal wave of neg shit i read about s2 after only the first ep. which did NOT suck. and by ep2 it already has us hooked and at the precipice of entering into yet another deep dark corner of inhumanity. just hope Farrell SOMEHOW makes it to the nxt ep. otherwise, that shit was cold.

Vaughn is doing great work, btw.

V.

i'm on episode 7...never before a show left me feeling so uncomfortable...and as a son of divorced parents some of the topics in this show are hard to digest...never happened to me before...damn, this is top notch acting/direction whatever..

Not much crackin in episode 3

as a menacing figure though.

It's only episode 3, but they'll have to give us something more substantial to chew on pretty soon.

detective ray sure has an impressive vocabulary

It reminded me of that "These pretzels are making me thirsty!" bit from Seinfeld.

vaughn's usage of 'stridency' wasn't that much better

turned that whole scene into a joke. so unnecessary.

This season is making a habit out of laughing at their own bad jokes

in the prior episode, so I didn't have a problem with the portrayal either way.

I was surprised how overt the mayor was with showing his opulence. That house is too much given he's the mayor of such a small city. Dude just doesn't care that he's flaunting how rich he's gotten from being dirty.

Is that actual mayor someone that was rich before he became a public official like Bloomberg or Schwarzenegger or is he actually dirty? Interesting that Pizzolatto did his research into a small town Cali mayor like that since I'm fairly certain dude comes from the South.

>Is that actual mayor someone that was rich before he became a
>public official like Bloomberg or Schwarzenegger or is he
>actually dirty? Interesting that Pizzolatto did his research
>into a small town Cali mayor like that since I'm fairly
>certain dude comes from the South.

Vernon is this small ass area about 5 miles out from downtown LA and it's all industrialized. Just like in True Detective the mayor is the great grandson of one of the town's founders. They basically did like in the show when the railroads came it the Furlong's along with Leonis moved to make the town industrial and got the railroads to move lines closer to them in order to bank off of the income.Then in the 20's they moved folks out again for big industry that keep going well in to WWII and after, funny enough their used to be a studebaker factory in Vernon. They kept raking in the dough through corruption and back end deals. The last two mayors were the relatives of the towns founders and it just keeps the cycle going

PIzzolatto took the whole back drop of this season from some real shit that happened. Vernon, Bell, and SouthGate (to a lesser extent) are all connected cities and feed off of each other. Just read these articles about Vernon from back in 2010, you'll see the salaries these city officials were making in a town of 91 residents.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/us/24vernon.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/aug/30/local/la-me-ln-vernon-malkenhorst-20130830
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/california-payroll-corruption-scandal-spreads-city-vernon/story?id=11597835

Here's a wiki article on Leonis C. Malburg the former mayor, I'm sure this season is mirroring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonis_C._Malburg
Here's a wiki on Vernon itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon,_California#History

The city Manager in Bell was making $800,000.00 taking his notes from the way Vernon was running.

Vernon is a husk of a city and is scary as shit at night to drive through, the neighboring city of Bell used to have a high rate of prostitution and drug related crime that was driven from the workers and truck drivers in Vernon.

People rarely hear about the seedy underbelly of the Eastside of L.A.

and throwing up those links as well. I'll give those links a read when I get home tonight. Interesting to see corruption that transparent in modern times. Then again, campaign financing occurs in 2015 on the federal level, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.

The funny thing though is the chain reaction that happens when one group falls. Soon after Vernon got their asses handed to them the City of Bell went down hard. City Manager is doing time, his secretary might do time, the guy that took over for the City Manager got killed by his girlfriend/wife (he was supposed to be an upstanding guy).

Just look up Robert Rizzo or as they call em out here Ratso Rizzo, son was banking $800K and his secretary made like 100K.

Compelling as shit, especially considering the intersection of freeways Vernon sits on. Countless times driving past without a clue that shit was going on

.

that's what i was referring to.

i had a problem with the dialogue and the terrible attempt at a wannabe gangsta accent

of Who is fucking with Frank: as in intentional comedy about his toughness, leadership in comparison to viewers commentary about Vince's acting, believability; like, who the fuck was that Stan anyway, all stiff and wooden? as Frank said, ''he deserves better than this''.

this just specalutive flatus, nevermind, nervermind(lol).
====================================
ah: I found her gift of gab..odd
im: ..and from where did she get it?
sa: Some said Geb and now say God

yep. i see now Stan was one of Frank's crew.

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

I'm fucking loving this season actually.

because this season is Cali based and you somewhat identify with what's on the screen?

Fred Ward talking about the "glory days" of Daryl Gates was a nice touch, but really, it's pretty much a fantasyish depiction of Cali/LA, so it's not really a deciding factor for me. plus, the flip, it would only add to my disappointment if i wasn't feeling it.

it's just hitting on all levels to me. there are small moments that don't quite work (Vaughn's rat story, a few to many freeway shots) but overall, i'm really enjoying it.

I wanted to see what your take of them doing the lesser known sides of LA.

just listened to this stream called Welcome to Vinci
http://www.scpr.org/programs/welcome-to-vinci/2015/07/05/11721/

talks a bit about their decision to use different parts of LA county, to a trauma surgeon about Farrell's injury, and to an ex LAPD author about the gates era, and some police corruption/LA crime history. not super detailed, but worth a listen if you got 18 minutes

Check my post up top, I dropped some links about Vernon, back in the early 00's when I used to work late shifts at the Airport I'd drive down to Bell since it had the closet Tommy's in the area and would go through Vernon every now and then to get back to my house. I used to think wtf is this area on the other side of Watts, all these train cards and giant ass factories. Out of curiosity I started reading up and getting info from my grandparents. The whole side of LA is really interesting and it's a shame no one cares about the area to turn it around.

>Check my post up top, I dropped some links about Vernon, back
>in the early 00's when I used to work late shifts at the
>Airport I'd drive down to Bell since it had the closet Tommy's
>in the area and would go through Vernon every now and then to
>get back to my house. I used to think wtf is this area on the
>other side of Watts, all these train cards and giant ass
>factories. Out of curiosity I started reading up and getting
>info from my grandparents. The whole side of LA is really
>interesting and it's a shame no one cares about the area to
>turn it around.
>

and it not being him is kinda cheesy right?

'my phone died'

makes me think the pay off from know what's going on might not be that great because so far, I don't truly care about any of the characters so for this season, Blake included. I suppose it's too early since only three episodes have aired so far, but the crappy writing is taking me out of the show too often so far.

but the show has way too much going on right now. i'm curious about the potential cult aspect of this, the masks, who's involved. but there's way too much else taking up time - mostly characters just looking at each other for long periods of time.

He creeps me the fuck out. His responses seem insanely measured.

I'd bet on the Blake "my phone died" thing as a red herring, and, if any of the henchmen are involved, it's that creepy motherfucker.

went back and watched all 3 episodes again.

velcoro has dark hair. his ex wife has dark hair. the man that frank said raped velcoros wife has dark hair.

velcoros son is a ginger (may just be a case of genetic odds and a redhead being somewhere in the rapists lineage...but im pretty sure it was meant to be overt)

did frank manipulate velcoro into handling some of his dirty work? the police launched an investigation and it seems like they had that same guy pinned as the rapist too. but frank has the typa reach to have evidence planted and frame someone.

or was velocoros ex wife sleeping with somebody else?

edit: frank has that one tall henchman that is a ginger too.

but he is a key part of this - almost too obviously. "where's blake?" "my phone died" cmon.

but the ex-wife seems to KNOW that Ray roughed-up or killed someone to 'protect her' so she would probably know if it wasn't the right guy.

I remember people having a similar reaction to his role in The Break-Up (which I just re-watched on HBO) because they were expecting Old School Vince. The only scenes people really responded to at the time were the ones that were basically references to Swingers.


Like I think I said elsewhere, I'm expecting a somewhat slow descent into madness for his character, and I think Vince is generally pulling it off well.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I think he's doing fine.

I might even give him first.

People keep making fun of what he's doing for reasons I simply can't wrap my head around. He's a natural with the pulpy dialogue he's given, and he's acting his ass off.

Those who think he's doing poorly must think he's "trying too hard to not be funny" or something dumb like this, and they must forget that Vince did a fuckload of indie dramas in his day, and he's a more-than-capable serious actor when given the material.

If people wanted to gripe about the writing, because the pulpy shit isn't their bag, that I would understand, and Vaughn is easily given the most stylishly pulpy lines on the show by a landslide (McAdams comes in second). Not digging his character based on the writing? Sure, I get it. I really like it, but I'd understand. Not digging his character because "he can't act"/"he's a funny man trying too hard to be serious"/etc? Baffling to me.

Is it as good as the first season? Nope.

Is it as bad as you'd believe reading things like OKP online? Nope.

N/M

... with a focused narrative centered on really just the two detectives.

Here there's a lot of different threads, the corruption angles aren't as overt as the religious cult thing and a ton of names can make things hard to follow.

After finishing S1 over about two weeks, I still like it better after 3 eps but after watching S2E3 last night, the current season is growing on me a lot (especially after reading Jiggys links on Vernon).

Woody and Wooderson are a tough act to follow though.

To me, they have not set anything up that I care or am even curious about. The closest thing they did that I thought was going to kick in in gear, they did an "or nah..." on (Colin getting shot). Last year, the case was intriguing. This year could be but instead I gotta watch John Carter look stupid.

On the above topic though, Vaughn is great. I just wish the overall story would kick into gear.

it isn't good or bad. It's just on.

it's been background TV so far.

but people aren't letting this season breathe at all...not just on here either. People were calling it trash after 1 episode. It's still dope and i'm still all in...don't think it'll live up to the first season but it's still promising.

Most of it doesn't have anything to do with the case. And most of it I don't care it.

Frank and Ray are the only real characters so far. They're STARTING to make Bezerides a real character, so I'll be patient there. But Riggins playing the "damaged by the war, repressed homo-sexual vet" isn't doing much for me. Which is a shame, because Riggins deserves better.

I don't think Vince is as bad as others are saying, but he's not knocking it out of the park either. That "rats in the dark" sequence was bad, but he's had other good moments.

I think they just need to focus. Season 1 did a good job at balancing the case and the main character's psychoses. I'm hoping this one finds its way soon.

S1 (I just watched)

seemed like a couple of different shows, but they were all beautifully shot, and typically well written.

S2, so far, is not that.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

>Is it as good as the first season? Nope.


As in, I like episodes 1-3 this season better than episodes 1-3 last year.

Outside Tim RIggins, I like these characters about the same as least year, and the actors are all doing excellent work. The chemistry was better last year, I'll admit. Seems like McAdams is having the best luck with that department this season. Her with Farrell is good, as is her with Tim Riggins.

I'm digging this case a lot more. Seems tighter to me, and less reliant on the mysterious powers-that-be angle. I also like this atmosphere better - as well as music, cinematography, etc.

This David Lynch meets Raymond Chandler thing works for me.

I'd say that 70% of the people I know did not watch season One when it started they only got interested after the iconic 6 minutes single take episode aired, when it was all over the news and the internet...Most of them are the one out here gum-smacking how bad this season are. Go watch procedural then I'm sure Criminal Minds and 24 is more your speed. GTFOH!

To give a sh!t finally.

The f#ck I care about a dead city mgr???

Was wondering when the stakes were going
to be raised.

the mayor's comment about getting back safe and the vinci police brass with their ominous/weighty facial expressions (which seems to be a permanent affliction for them)...

I guess the assumption was that it would just be Ani/Velcoro and riggins and it wouldn't spill out into the street like that.

Ain and Velcoro's reactions at the end standing amongst the bodies (and based on ani's uniform change in the upcoming preview) seems like they may take the fall for all the carnage.

- guy was like y'all don't reaaaaaally need all those cops to go with y'all
- they are told to enter and take the suspect instead of waiting for him to come out
- dude starts shooting before they get to the building

Seems like maybe Frank might give them a hand? He told his wife to go back inside, and it's likely he knew what that building was.

I'd like to think we've now moved out of developing these characters anymore and that moving forward the focus will instead shift towards arriving at a conclusion.

McAdams is a Samurai. She prefers knives to guns and wants to control her physical interactions as close as possible (like S&M). She's a warrior like the other two but violence is a last resort. Keep in mind why she carries the knives in the first place- to defend herself.

Farrel is a cowboy. All he's certain of is that. He even rides a horse - he drives a Mustang. His outlook varies from McAdams in that he understands that sometimes there will be lives lost, but he doesn't enjoy violence. It's a means to an end, but not a cure all.

Kitsch is a soldier. Most comfortable in conflict. Obviously he was most composed during and after the gunfight. He's quickest to pull the trigger, but also most accurate with the gun as well; it's the only solution he understands so he'd better be good at it. Efficiency is everything to this guy - why drive a car when you can dodge traffic on a motorcycle? That's basically his outlook on everything.

The joke being told here is that the more advanced the warrior gets, the less intelligent he/she gets as well. Kitsch says he did everything he was asked to do by both his leaders in military and police- the only father figures he's ever had. He killed women and children in Afghanistan. Farrel's the middle ground - he knows he SHOULD be a dad at least, he just sucks at it. And McAdams was smart enough to realize if your dad is a nutbar you can just leave.

Still, for as tedious as this has been at times, I'll give the show the benefit of the doubt on the notion that fleshing out four characters (including Vaughn) just feels like it takes more time. This was ths first episode that satisfied, and I finally came away with a clear cut idea of who everyone is. Here's hoping they can ride this momentum down the second half.

That might've been my favorite scene

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

.

i was getting ready to throw a shoe at the TV during Riggins' backstory scenes. just not interested AT ALL.

And I see a large faction of people coming out with the "you must be an idiot if you aren't liking this season" mentality... on the other side, you have the the usual haters... but ultimately, I just don't find myself giving a flying fuck about any of the characters at all, or where they end up, or if they solve the case...

Last year, not only was I invested in Rust and Marty, I badly wanted to see the real bad guys get caught. Last year the villain was kidnapping and torturing little girls. This year the villain is killing corrupt assholes. I don't even really care if the case gets solved from that standpoint. I wanted Rust and Marty to catch the true bad guy and win on a personal level, get some sort of happy ending. I really don't care about any of the cops in this one, or Frank Semien having a kid or not.

Last night when they went to catch the fall guy, I was hoping they'd catch him alive for an interrogation. Last season, some of the best scenes were the interrogations where the criminals would give us these little crazy clues, was really hoping for that last night. Instead, we get the Ledo guy taken out, KNOWING he was 100% made to take the fall, they didn't give us any real intrigue at all.

Last year, we got to see Marty and Rust interviewing the weirdest people, this year those kind of weird clues are given with Ani and her Father, and I just don't really care about how they all connect.

I'll still watch, and I think the actors are doing a fine job, but it just has not connected with me at all unfortunately. And I did not enter this season wanting to compare the two seasons, but it's hard not to. My fear going in was a lot of the intrigue of last season was almost just dumb luck in a sense that we got so caught up in some of the clue's that didnt even end up meaning anything (the little girls drawing, the convo with Marty and his father in law, the picture with the 5 guys with the hats, etc etc etc) That stuff just kind of organically took over the internet even though NP said all along it was coincidental and not overly important

with all that being said... enough groundwork has been laid to really turn up the final 4 episodes, but I'm not sure it's going to feel like a strong enough pay off

>And I see a large faction of people coming out with the "you
>must be an idiot if you aren't liking this season"
>mentality.

where people are getting butt hurt if you aren't lauding the show

thing is, everyone loved the first season...did all of those who are critical of this season become stupid overnight?

I'm holding out hope that they pull something out of their tails down the stretch.

you want to see season 1...watch season 1. at this point if you haven't come to grips with the fact that this will not be another season 1 then you might as well shut it off.

in a bad way. like I cannot remember what JUST happened, or why a certain scenario is occurring. like the shootout - I literally just glazed over what they were talking about in the Vinci PD and when the shots started popping off I was left extremely curious. and then throughout the shootout it felt bizarrely uncoordinated in a way they never did last year, or in most shootouts really. it seemed like they often had clear shots on the bad guys they weren't taking, and EVERYONE was a bad shot. plus the drug dealers seemed way too overtly "evil", just unloading entire mac-11 clips into a public bus and what not.

again, I'm actually enjoying this season a lot, but moment to moment I often feel like I have no idea what's happening.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

Like, sometimes it has added to the surreal tone, but more often than not scenes feel abrupt and shift between sub-plots arbitrarily. The autopsy in episode two is a good example of using non-linear structure at the least appropriate time.

In this episode you have the police characters investigating separate threads (the pawn shop, the mining lands) that were minimally or never addressed previously (let alone in the episode), leading to little viewer investment in the events presented.

One scene will be going, then abruptly end with a dissolve, as if the the previous scene had obviously ended.

I'm still engaged in 95% of what's going on (the newest episode helped with that a *lot* by giving Kitsch and McAdams more to do), but I understand why some don't like it. I'm not one of these "IT WAS ALL FUKUNAGA DOWN WITH THAT ASSHOLE PIZZOLATTO" guys, but you can definitely feel the relative lack of refinement in the visuals compared to last year.

> relative lack of refinement in the visuals

That's what's bothered me about this season... I just couldn't put my finger on it. Thanks for pointing it out.

There's been a lack of cohesion in how scenes have been edited, leading me to have the same sorta lingering confusion that Nodima had. Something's off to me... maybe it's lack of the singular vision from having multiple directors or the multitangled plot lines, but I constantly feel just a bit lost. And I watch with captions too.

Still really intrigued by the show, though I'm somewhat put off by Vince Vaughn's stiffness. Like rjc27 said, I really don't care if Frank Semyon has a kid or not.

and i am definitely confused. they haven't done a great job tying all of these things together...i'm having a hard time following it all.

Like, I didn't think that was important but I just wanted to make sure.

I don't expect the same thing as last season, but their banter was more important than the case, to me. Now, I'm more concerned with this case. I don't really care about any of their drama they all seems to ask for whatever situation their in.. I cared when Colin (I don't even care about their names) got blasted in the chest and crazy shoot out.

And I don't mind the cast that much, but I'm starting to groan when Vaughn is on the screen. His lady is cool tho.

Has the dialogue been this shitty all season long?

Frank telling his wife he's in "warp drive and trying to navigate through the blur"? This is how crime bosses talk in Vinci?

Ani telling Velcoro "you're a mood ring" after her dad told him about his green and black aura? Just feeling so cheesy.

I'm rooting for Vaughn and I dig him in dramatic roles but I'm just not buying him in this one. Is he supposed to appear menacing when he delivers that "never had a cavity" line immediately after nearly begging for them to make that deal? Or is that the point?

Let's not even get into how terrible that fight scene looked last episode that ended with him taking dude's grill.

I just don't get how last season could have been so riveting and this one is overwhelmingly meh. Like others have said, this dead city manager--who gives a shit? I'll keep watching and see this through but it's not going great. Hope Pizzolatto knows what he's doing.






http://twitter.com/collazo

From the "who give's a sh!t?" story about a dead corrupt city mgr, to the lack of real depth to the characters, to the dialogue, etc.

I'm starting to think it wasn't ready to take out of the oven.

Homeboy probably worked on season 1 for years, season 2 maybe 6 months?

It's like someone thought all they had to do was get some big names in the cast and fall back.

And unfortunately some of the actors are taking the heat for it. I think each actor is doing fine to great...but what are you supposed to do with a "I never had a cavity" line??

Also, maybe the director for season 1 (forget his name, my bad) didn't get enough credit for that year's awesomeness. Hopefully they still have dude's number if there is a season 3....

This show misses Woody's character type a lot more then MM's... It misses the fun, Woody's character made me laugh, often, also allowed me to see some legendary titties... everyone on this season hates fucking life, so it's hard for me not to hate life during


@rob_starrk

>Is he supposed to appear
>menacing when he delivers that "never had a cavity" line
>immediately after nearly begging for them to make that deal?

>Has the dialogue been this shitty all season long?
>
>Frank telling his wife he's in "warp drive and trying to
>navigate through the blur"? This is how crime bosses talk in
>Vinci?
>
>Ani telling Velcoro "you're a mood ring" after her dad told
>him about his green and black aura? Just feeling so cheesy.
>
>I'm rooting for Vaughn and I dig him in dramatic roles but I'm
>just not buying him in this one. Is he supposed to appear
>menacing when he delivers that "never had a cavity" line
>immediately after nearly begging for them to make that deal?
>Or is that the point?
>
>Let's not even get into how terrible that fight scene looked
>last episode that ended with him taking dude's grill.
>
>I just don't get how last season could have been so riveting
>and this one is overwhelmingly meh. Like others have said,
>this dead city manager--who gives a shit? I'll keep watching
>and see this through but it's not going great. Hope
>Pizzolatto knows what he's doing.


Dialogue has always been bad
Writing was alway mediocre
What you had last season was a new show w great actors and a fantastic director
The actors are good but the writer and the genre is so played
You are seeing the result
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

Vaughn wants a kid.
Kitsch having a kid.
Farrell's trying to keep his kid in his life.

This can't all be coincidence, so where you guys think they're going with this? They gonna skip ahead 30 years for the finale and show how these kids turned out? Lol.

There's all the stuff about Bezerides' father and how she and her sister are as screwed as they are because of his new age commune. They're hinting at all this stuff about the mayor's father, plus showing how his son is a complete fuck-up and his daughter is severely damaged. I think it's all a set up for the basic "sins of the father being visited upon the children" plotline.

It's just a matter of which person is Caspere's kid.

The father/son stuff is very obviously the focus. You didn't even mention Vaughn's big speech about how his father fucked him up, the obvious ways in which Farrell's dad fucked him up, etc., so I'd be stunned if it's not Caspere's illegitimate kid who did it. I mean, they spelled it CasPERE, for fuck's sake. That can't be coincidence.

It looks like the show *will* be moving forward into the future, so I wouldn't be surprised if we continue to see how fathers fuck up their sons.

I did read an interesting theory that the killer could be Frank, that he had a split from reality during the traumas of his childhood, and that he could be unaware of what his other self is doing. That may be a little cliche for my taste (the old "the detective is the murderer!" thing), but I trust Pizzolatto, frankly.

damn i didn't even realize how much of the show revolved around that...good call

keeping up with the plot. It's the time in between episodes when you can actually think about some other shit. Another reason why watching shows while they're airing is so different than binge watching them once the season's over and trying to digest everything at once.

>I did read an interesting theory that the killer could be
>Frank, that he had a split from reality during the traumas of
>his childhood, and that he could be unaware of what his other
>self is doing. That may be a little cliche for my taste (the
>old "the detective is the murderer!" thing), but I trust
>Pizzolatto, frankly.

I had thought they might be setting it up so that Paul did it: 1) why the guy in the mask doesn't kill Velcoro, a fellow cop, 2) the guy sets the car on fire then escapes, and then Paul wakes up the next morning not remembering anything, 3) Paul's motorcycle is "stolen", but maybe he rode it somewhere during his blackout and left it near a crime scene. It might also explain why they show Dixon following him, taking pictures. The mayor probably knows what's going on and what's to keep tabs on him/have blackmail material.

I agree that it would be cliche, but I could see it shaking out that way.

...part of the equation. In that he's doing all of this shit, but isn't remembering that he's doing it because it's his other personality or whatever. So one personality kills him and leaves the body there, and the other personality "discovers" it.

I don't think Kitsch owns one.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/07/13/true-detective-theory-could-this-main-character-be-the-killer/

So far in “True Detective” season two, we have gotten to know four protagonists, and they are all damaged in their own ways.

Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn), the crime boss trying to turn legitimate, is unique among them because despite his nightmarish back story and crooked ways, he seems to have it all together at first. Then things fall apart. He’s the main character with the most at stake in the central mystery of the show, since he and the main murder victim, a local politician and businessman named Ben Caspere, were going in on a huge land deal together. Caspere’s death really gets to him. It haunts him, really.

Here’s how everything lines up.

We have learned that Caspere was involved with some unsavory folks, from the weird psychiatrist Dr. Pitlor (Rick Springfield) to the corrupt Vinci Mayor Austin Chessani, who has some twisted family issues himself. In fact, episode four revealed that Pitlor, Caspere and Chessani, not to mention sheriff’s officer Ani Bezzerides’s (Rachel McAdams) father Eliot, might have had stronger and deeper connections than were apparent at first. There is also a big, mysterious corporation named Catalyst Group, and a potential sex cult with shades of Bohemian Grove that may be at work in the shadows. Still, a few details in Frank’s story arc have stood out through four knotty episodes of the eight-episode season.

A telling hint, although this may be too literal a reading of what he was saying, is that showrunner and creator Nic Pizzolatto, in an interview with Vanity Fair, described season two as an “Oedipus Rex”-style detective story in which “the detective is searching and searching and searching, and the culprit is him.” It’s a theme common in noir, and in many ways “Oedipus Rex” is the first noir detective story.

In the play, which is part of a trilogy by Sophocles, Oedipus finds out that he, because he unwittingly killed his own father and married his mother, is the reason for a plague. Oedipus also blinds himself, an image that resonates with Caspere’s dead body in “True Detective.” (It’s also worth noting that “Antigone,” about Oedipus’s daughter, is the title of another play in the Sophocles trilogy. Ani’s full name is Antigone.)

Frank, even though he’s on the other side of the law, has done his fair share of detective work so far this season. Caspere had millions of Frank’s dollars, and the money is gone now. Understandably, Frank wants to know where his money is.

The key to everything, though, might be the opening scene of episode two. Frank and his wife, Jordan, are talking in bed before the dawn. Two water stains on the ceiling catch Frank’s eye and clearly disturb him to the point of revealing a horrifying secret about his past. Frank tells a story about a time when his drunken father left him locked in a pitch-black basement, leaving the young Frank to fend for himself against hungry rats.

Meditating on the stains, he says: “Something’s trying to tell me it’s all papier mache. Something’s telling me to wake up. Like I’m not real. Like I’m only dreaming.” Could he mean that another side of him, perhaps unleashed by that horrific time in the basement, is gnawing at him like one of the rats did? Have Frank’s demons manifested themselves in an even worse version of himself?


Vince Vaughn and Kelly Reilly in ‘True Detective.’ HBO
There’s precedent for this kind of thing in TV murder mysteries. In “Twin Peaks,” the killer of Laura Palmer turned out to be her own father, Leland. Only, Leland wasn’t in control of himself. He was under the possession of the evil spirit Bob. Could Frank Semyon be under the influence of some malignant aspect of his psyche that was brought on by his childhood trauma? This season of “True Detective” has echoed “Twin Peaks” co-creator David Lynch’s work in many ways already this season, as Vulture critic Bilge Ebiri points out. Lynch’s “Mulholland Dr.” also focused on a “dreamer,” played by Naomi Watts, who seemed to be repressing murderous guilt.

Another telling detail: At the end of Frank’s grim anecdote, the camera cuts to the twin stains on the ceiling, and then the scene fades into a shot of Caspere’s face. The murder victim’s two acid-burned eyes line up directly with the stains on Frank’s ceiling. Later, in episode four, Frank is so disturbed by two stains on a tablecloth that look a lot like the ones in his bedroom that he covers them with his coffee cup.

Then there’s the question of why the killer shot Caspere in the genitals. Why would Frank, in a fugue state, do such a thing? Perhaps it would have to do with his subconscious feeling of impotence as he and his wife fail repeatedly to have a child. He clearly has well-established father issues, and his need to become a father himself might be too much for him to handle.

How does this all tie into killing Ben Caspere, though? The deal the two were working on — funded by deep troughs of federal money — would have represented a turning point for Frank. He would have been “legitimate,” and he wouldn’t need to rely so heavily on a criminal career to make his living.

This idea might have been too much for his disturbed, guilt-ridden dark side to handle. Indeed, the Caspere murder leaves Frank broke and in need of some quick cash, so he goes back into his previous criminal enterprises. He has to hustle, to get tough. He looks like he’s back in his element. Frank even offers a somewhat-sober Ray, who also seems to be getting his mojo back, an opportunity to quit the force and join his newly rejuvenated crime organization. A coherent, more competent Ray, working a murder case with a clear head, would be a liability for Frank. Being a good(ish) guy isn’t a good look for Frank. He needs to be that guy who can rip out a rival’s teeth with pliers.

As he tells Ray, deep down inside Frank operates under the idea that maybe your worst self is your best self.

What subconscious thing about Frank killing Stan do we not know?

I still think its Chessani trying to make a few bucks and keep the wheels in Vinci turning as usual.

It's essentially that he subconsciously doesn't want to go straight and wants to get back in the game, so he forces himself into a situation where he has to.

I'm of the opinion that it's Chessani's son. Or a son of Caspere who hasn't appeared yet or just hasn't been revealed yet.

Currently no one has any motive to kill Stan, other than a vague all-encompassing "make Frank squirm" thing, which seems... well, vague, especially considering we hardly knew who the fuck Stan was and there are plenty of more direct ways to make the already-squirming Frank squirm further.

Why would the Mayor dump a body far enough away that it would further fan the flames of a state investigation when found? He benefits way more if Caspere simply disappears, or gets paid off to go away, or anything else.

Plus, they've been setting up him as the primary suspect for a while now, which means I really doubt they'd go straight down that path.

was introduced as a deadbeat and apparently will be getting more screentime based on the next preview.

They're really beating us over the head with this, aren't they.

But who would be Caspere's kid? I think this is just some straight forward evil shit being done by the Mayor. Velcoro seems to know the score and it makes sense because he knows all of the dealings that happen in Vinci, it's his town and almost nothing happens without his fingers dipping in.

I think he saw that Frank was going to go big with the land deal and either out of jealousy, greed, or both, e set up Frank, killed Caspere and took the $7 mil. He had that other dick watching Riggins, I'm sure he knew that Velcoro was on Frank's payroll, Ani is the one anomaly that's getting in his way.

My thoughts are this.

Mayor finds out (more like is told) about Franks deal and Caspere's involvement with the $7 mil.

Mayor talks to Rick Springfield whom he has a family connection with about Caspere's, shall we say proclivities (hookers, fetish/BDSM) and figures thats the play

Mayor gets his d-bag son to use his party connections to track Caspere's movements and have Caspere killed. Killer moves the body away from Vinici, and they ramsack the house to make it look like a normal B&E.

All of this then leads the detectives on this wild chase for Caspere's killers with the end result to be the detectives die while trying to capture the perp. Of course they take everyone and a crazy shootout happens.

Didn't the info on the perp come from the drunky cop that was tailing Riggins? They put him with Velcoro on the case and even Velcoro was like "Him?"

Since they mentioned the land is so poisoned that they are being forced to move. Which would connect it to Vinci with all the waste they dump.

that scene in the beginning of last episode where Kitsch
is mobbed at the hotel by the media / tmz / paparazzi crews?

that scene felt like it came OUTTA NOWHERE!

a few others as well.

But it's not riveting to watch so I figure
I'm missing things

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

granted the thing with the actress is constantly talked about but how it somehow became major news to the point of him being mobbed...hell i didn't even remember that he was staying at a hotel lol

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson


"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're

but Polygon (a video game site) actually has some really great in-depth analysis on the episodes. First article is a scene by scene recap of S2E1 written after S2E2 aired. The writer pointed out something I missed the first time I watched: Mayor Chessani being pissed to Frank about the LA Times news story of Vinci's corruption.

Something else interesting the writer noted was that the title sequence's lyrics change each episode, like:

**Episode one**

My woman's here
My children, too
Their graves are safe
From ghosts like you

In places deep
With roots entwined
I live the life I left behind

The war was lost
The treaty signed
I was not caught
I crossed the line
I was not caught
Though many tried
I live among you
Well-disguised

**Episode two**

I could not kill
The way you kill
I could not hate
I tried, I failed

You turned me in
At least you tried
You side with them
Whom you despise

But nevermind
Nevermind
I live the life I left behind
There's truth that lives
And truth that dies
I don't know which
So nevermind

If you're interested in digging deeper, I would recommend checking these links out; definitely increased my appreciation for the show.

Episode 1:
http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/30/8869875/true-detective-season-2-explain-details-characters-plot-help

Episodes 2 & 3:
http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/7/8901145/true-detective-season-2-explain-details-characters-plot-help-episode-2-3-recap-overview-walkthrough

Episode 4:
http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/15/8962955/true-detective-season-2-episode-4-explain-details-characters-plot-help-shot-shootout-mexican-drugs

V.

But if you don't got time for alla dat, I would suggest reading just the link for S2E4. Writer does a great job recapping prior episodes (what we're expected to know) and the state of the characters.

Really compelling stuff, and so much of the show has been made clear for me.

I have no idea what's happening. Am I just dumb?

http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/15/8962955/true-detective-season-2-episode-4-explain-details-characters-plot-help-shot-shootout-mexican-drugs

The whole article is spot on. He called Frank's waste management dilemma before episode 5 aired.

I think he's also spot on in predicting that Chessani/Osip/Blake?/Catalast? are all in cahoots in slowly muscling Frank out of Vinci.

>I think he's also spot on in predicting that
>Chessani/Osip/Blake?/Catalast? are all in cahoots in slowly
>muscling Frank out of Vinci.

They aren't necessarily in "cahoots", but each is directly or indirectly responsible for Caspere's death and Frank's decline. Velcoro's tailing of Blake and subsequent beatdown of Rick Springfield highlights the different groups at play:

1. Osyp (the Russian) + Blake (Frank's #2)
2. Mayor Chesani + A.G. Geldorf + Vinci P.D.
3. The Catalyst Group

Additionally, Tony Chesani (the son) and Ben Caspere (the dead guy) are/were apparently liasons between the groups, and were stockpiling blackmail materials against Catalyst/politicians to leverage in their own political ambitions. And it would seem that a Mexican criminal organization was brought in to manage many of Vinci's illicit economies.

Prior to the start of the show, Catalyst and the Mayor's group (along with Frank) were colluding in the creation of devalued land through waste dumping in order to produce the rail-corridor. Osyp was brought in by Frank as an investor in development of said land.

At this point, it seems like each group is fighting to maintain dominance over the others, with Geldorf + P.D. likely in possession of the blackmail materials (as per episode 2). Osyp seems to have moved into the territory and is taking advantage of the sex trade operation and possibly expanded that into human trafficking.

>>I think he's also spot on in predicting that
>>Chessani/Osip/Blake?/Catalast? are all in cahoots in slowly
>>muscling Frank out of Vinci.
>
>They aren't necessarily in "cahoots", but each is directly or
>indirectly responsible for Caspere's death and Frank's
>decline. Velcoro's tailing of Blake and subsequent beatdown of
>Rick Springfield highlights the different groups at play:
>
>1. Osyp (the Russian) + Blake (Frank's #2)
>2. Mayor Chesani + A.G. Geldorf + Vinci P.D.
>3. The Catalyst Group
>
>Additionally, Tony Chesani (the son) and Ben Caspere (the dead
>guy) are/were apparently liasons between the groups, and were
>stockpiling blackmail materials against Catalyst/politicians
>to leverage in their own political ambitions. And it would
>seem that a Mexican criminal organization was brought in to
>manage many of Vinci's illicit economies.
>
>Prior to the start of the show, Catalyst and the Mayor's group
>(along with Frank) were colluding in the creation of devalued
>land through waste dumping in order to produce the
>rail-corridor. Osyp was brought in by Frank as an investor in
>development of said land.
>
>At this point, it seems like each group is fighting to
>maintain dominance over the others, with Geldorf + P.D. likely
>in possession of the blackmail materials (as per episode 2).
>Osyp seems to have moved into the territory and is taking
>advantage of the sex trade operation and possibly expanded
>that into human trafficking.

Predictable? Sure, but it doesn't ruin it for me.

Depressing bar singer got paid again.

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

marginally better

man the dialogue is awful


I'm trying to care

i just don't

tailors face and what the hell is he going to do when he comes out of that closet is what i'm here for


~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

I've never in my life had to rewind a show so many times just to understand the words that are coming out of their mouth's. I feel like I'm going deaf.

More Velcoro and Springfield. I actually care about what's going on w/Velcoro. The backstories of Riggins and Vaughn are comically bad.

reading reddit breakdowns to understand wtf is going on, lol

isn't nearly as complicated or hard as reading the more involved theories and such online. I started doing it while watching the British version of The Office years back and I'm currently doing it with the British show Humans. At times, seeing the dialog written on the screen makes the bad writing stand out worse, but it does help clear up confusion so I'm not left with the nagging feeling of not having full understanding of what's going down.

closed captioning goes up automatically for me. Saves loads of headache when I don't have time to rewind to figure out mumble mouth.

Especially useful when there's a multitude of names and places being referenced.

it's not good...i probably wouldn't be watching it if it wasn't called True Detective. AMC had that one cop show with Mark Strong that I didn't give anywhere near as much of a shot as this. It was probably just as good...maybe even better.

with all that said i still gotta see it thru

It was better. People didnt give it a chance because it was brought on to replace Breaking Bad, but it was a good show. Better than True Detective 2 and i actually like this season somewhat.

if it wasn't for season 1 of True Detective I would have done the same to this show.

>
>with all that said i still gotta see it thru

We can do it!
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

3 left... you wanna cliff hang me like that a few weeks ago, okay, but after all the fucking work I've done staying awake through this you finally get somewhere and cut it off completely? Cmon, these last 3 week's better pick up the pace a lot

2nd to last episode had the freeze frame fade out.
last episode went out with the knots landing level corny staredown.

We're five episodes deep now, gang. If you're still not remotely feeling it, I got news for you: you could save yourself three hours, cuz it's not magically gonna turn into whatever you want it to be. It's going to stay exactly like this.

The first real dialogue clunker this season in the last episode ("blue balls in your heart" can't have looked any better on paper), but other than that, lots of continued intrigue. The detective action really cranking up, and Farrell is absolutely acting his ASS off. Excited for the next three episodes. Which is why I'll spend the three hours watching.

cmon

Why waste precious time committed to something you don't like? I'll simply never understand this.

it's not a huge time commitment to finish this show off.

and coming off GOT sunday night at 9pm is tv time for me.

Like I've said before, I'm sure I'll be disappointed at whatever the resolution will be since I'm not emotionally invested in any of the characters, but I simply want to know what is going on mainly out of closure.

Regarding the acting done this season, the majority of the actors/actresses are knocking it out the part, given the substandard material they have been given, Vince Vaughn included. The sad thing is that since this season has been so dismal compared to the prior one, it's almost in vain since they will be associated with the crappy reception this season has garnered. For the most part, it isn't their fault this season has been in the toilet; the writing has truly been lacking in bits and pieces this season.

**edit**

And I'm also holding out hope Rachel McAdams will get busy with her knives before the season ends. I'm hoping the choreography for that scene will be top notch. Would be wild if she ends up getting killed while trying to use them though since she's so small.

>
>And I'm also holding out hope Rachel McAdams will get busy
>with her knives before the season ends.

and there's a scene where she's practicing like crazy with the knives, so I do hope that leads to her putting in work on 1 of these scumbags before the season ends

This is a show a lot people liked last season, so they tune in for this season. You give it a few episodes to find it's rhythm, because hey, the creative force behind it obviously did something right his last time out. You give it a few chances, decide it's not that good, but by now you've invested five hours of an eight hour show, might as well stick around to see how it ends.

It's fine that you and others like it, but others don't (I'm personally in the middle). And people shouldn't act SHOCKED, yes SHOCKED, that the ones that don't are in here expressing their displeasure.

I still don't hate it like I said above, and I'm a little less bored than I was a week or so ago now that they're starting to put some wheels in motion, but to be confused as to why people don't like it seems silly to me.

> but by now you've invested
>five hours of an eight hour show, might as well stick around
>to see how it ends.

No, you don't need to do this, lol. You've only invested five episodes of TV! It's absolutely easy to bail and spend your remaining three hours of your life doing something you know you won't despise.

like HBO has their shit figured out.

Didn't someone try to reign this guy in?

"Hey man, there's, like, WAY too many irrelevant bit players in this thing."

"So listen, some of this dialogue...I mean no one talks this way..."

Did no one say this?

regarding Frank's questionable choice of words:

He's a former gangster (whether he admits it or not) trying to go straight and play with the big boys. So he tries to find ways to fit in "sophisticated" words and phrases taken from his word-of-the-day calendar and it comes off contrived and nonsensical.

It actually fits, and his character makes more sense when viewed from that prism.

And the reason why I personally ascribe to this is we know how stellar Pizzolatto's writing is/can be, based on season 1. We already know he knows how to write for a character's specific voice, and Frank treading the line between legit and gangster is a major focus of his character.

Maybe more than other people, but I'm willing to give NP the benefit of the doubt when it comes to Frank's dialogue.

Of course, this is assuming Frank is the bulk of your complaint. If it's the whole of the show though... then we might just agree to disagree.

It's not like Frank is philosophizing about the vagaries of life... he's clumsily using $20 words. Which fits right in line with his character.

I have no problems with people criticizing the season, but using lazy reasoning like this is being just plain cynical.

People still have S1 one's dick in their mouths and I get it, season 1 was great it had a compelling story interesting characters, and top notch acting. But this season is a great story too. Sorry they don't use the commune angle to introduce a cult or whatever, but this is a great police story about corruption in one of the biggest cities in the world and how it affects everyone involved. Yea we don't have Fukunaga directing but the show is still done very very well.

I swear people just want this and more than likely every subsequent season to be the same as Season1 when they clearly told us its an anthology with different characters in different cities with different cases.

Vaughn is killing it, Collin is damn good, McAdams is doing ok and Kitsch is doing the best he can and staying in his lane, but to say that the acting is bad is ludicrous.

Either stop the hate and just watch or turn the fucking show off and leave it, but man to continue to come in and lambaste the show... Ugh.

calm down. it's a tv show. we don't need your permission to be critical.

just to shit on the show on a weekly basis. It's not like ti's SOA which everyone could embrace shitting on it cause of how bad it was. My point is this season isn't that bad that it deserves the constant dislike posting.

>just to shit on the show on a weekly basis.

for the same reason one might come here to applaud it on a weekly basis or give indifferent opinions.

I actually feel that the potential ceiling is higher than in Season 1 just because of the multitude of ways this whole thing can end.

S1's focused narrative is basically about buddy cops that go after the serial killer. We knew this 4 or 5 episodes in, and that's what we got.

S2 has so many more potential threads with the sex trafficking, the paternal issues, the corruption, Panticapaeum, etc. It's a personal theory, but I feel that NP is guiding this season to be almost the complete opposite of S1 and I think the ending is going to reflect that.

Part of the reason I think so many people have issues with S2 is because it's difficult to root for any of the main characters. Rust and Marty had flaws but both were eminently relatable in their own ways. Rust was harsh but unfailingly logical and Marty was the everyman with "a big ass dick".

Whereas all four of S2's main voices have despicable character flaws: Ani's holier-than-thou attitude, Velcoro's corruption and rage, Woodrugh's repressed sexuality and Frank's contrived facade. We're not SUPPOSED to relate with these characters (part of my theory on NP's thrust for this season). I suspect that will start to change in the second half of the season as we explore potential redemption arcs for them... although I suspect, not for all of them.

Remains to be seen if I'm correct, but if you're trying to apply the prism you created from Season 1 to this season, then you're doing it wrong.

I am starting to feel for Farrell's character a lot though, and VV's a little... I am hoping they join forces even more so now and that VV did not set-up Farrell, just that he was fed wrong info or set-up himself... Last year the main thing I was watching for was to see Rust get redemption/validation/vindication

>Part of the reason I think so many people have issues with S2
>is because it's difficult to root for any of the main
>characters. Rust and Marty had flaws but both were eminently
>relatable in their own ways. Rust was harsh but unfailingly
>logical and Marty was the everyman with "a big ass dick".
>

nm

http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/22/9011429/true-detective-season-2-episode-5-explain-details-characters-plot-help-recap

Again, if you're interested at all in the show, it behooves you to check this (long ass) column out. It's worth it, I swear. The devil's in the details and this guy is great at picking them out.

Completely agree with him here:

"This season is difficult, probably by design. Put differently, it lacks a lot of the simple enjoyment and wonder of season one. It's not as good in many ways, but I am enjoying it — immensely, in fact. Here's the thing, though: I'm enjoying it because of all the work it demands of me. This is not a sit-back-and-watch show. It's a lean-forward-and-take-notes-or-you'll-be-lost show. Those notes and that hard work are paying off. I stood up and cheered when I saw the chandelier this week. It's genuinely exciting to figure things out."

those reviews are almost too good and are pretty out of place on a video game website. I skimmed it last night when I got home and those photographs pointing out the chandelier was insane. I wonder how many other viewers noticed that at first glance. I don't even know if either of the detectives noticed it. I might give those reviews a glance once the show is over, but my lack of enthusiasm for this season doesn't make me want to give that effort.

Cool to have another video game website other than Kotaku to occasionally browse. I'll keep Polygon in mind when the Mad Max game drops so I know if it's worthy of my time and dollars to want to cop a new PS4 for it or not.

Their coverage on other non-videogame media is pretty average.

I mainly go to Polygon for quick and dirty videogame news because I like the layout. Used to go to Kotaku for that but Gawker sites tend to veer off into left field for random shit. Polygon does have pretty good reviewers with the occasional standout longform too.

I was just talking with my buddy, too, and I was saying how the real theme of the first season was this lurking evil in the Louisiana swamps, and I thought the larger theme tucked into s2 was this idea that there's lurking evil in California, too, even in this supposedly "pristine" locales.

And look, I'm on board with that! I think a huge percentage of those people hiding up in the redwoods are broken, lonely, confused people. I think those remote places CALL them there, then they build up this wall of hippie dippie this or that which is all just a facade for a bunch of weirdos living in the woods together -- some semi-survivalists, some people who just reject society as a concept. I lived there. I know. Like I've driven by the church that Jim Jones set up shop in up there. I've gone by the Wavy Gravy camp more times than I can count. I've gone to the weird bars and been in the areas where locals might attack you for driving down the wrong road. So I was excited when the show would finally reach Guerneville and I had a sense that the darkest evil would always be lurking there.

But maaaaan -- what they gave us? Like two "weird" establishing shots to bring us to that cabin up there? I wasn't trying to throw stones, but it's hard to look at that and say the director didn't MISS big time on that. It's rather non-jokingly called "living behind the Redwood Curtain" for a reason (and okay, Guerneville isn't THAT far out there, but it's in the ballpark). To me, that was the clearest example of the gap between this season and last season -- and okay, I've never lived in Louisiana, but still -- the sense of place was just soooo much stronger in Fukunaga's True Detective. It's something that's just lacking this year.

I still like it. I still think it's interesting, think it has an interesting story to tell and has actors challenging themselves to create interesting characters, but men -- I do understand the people who just feel a general "lack" this season. It's just some of the smaller stuff, it isn't clicking quite the same way as the fucked biker bar, or the country bars, or truck stops, or church revivals, or trailer park brothels, as last year...

... I'm not convinced Season 1 established setting that much better from a story perspective. They're all still just "types" that you'd expect to find in rural Louisiana-- nothing you wouldn't find in a pulp novel about any rural American setting.

It was also an easier task in Season 1, because it was pretty much *all* rural, whereas now he's trying to hop around to a bunch of different, and very specific, California settings. I think he's nailing the settings that I personally know, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear people express disappointment that certain areas they know specifically were reduced to a visual type.

The biggest reason Fukunaga's settings probably felt richer was his eye for visuals, which, even as a big fan of this season to date, was just better. No way around it. He's just an intensely gifted visual director, and his replacements aren't-- not to his level. Fukunaga's colors, his framing-- his pictures just have more *soul.*

> Fukunaga's colors, his framing--
>his pictures just have more *soul.*

Adam Arkapaw, Fukunaga's (and Pizzolatto's) Cinematographer for Season 1, is overlooked in the Fukunaga/True Detective Season 1 love fest. His previous work in Top of the Lake helped set the tone for that True Detective look.

For some reason I thought it was the same guy who worked with Fukunaga on Sin Nombre and Jane Eyre, so I was just tying the two together (though that shorts the credit the DP deserves as well).

Like just inside the space of the episode, I felt it was lacking the proper sense of space around the characters. I think we got a very quick lonely Jesus guy and a rundown storefront? Then we were on the cabin. I just wanted more visual setting, driving in the car shots showing the exit from the city, the sort of space and gems in that region that underscore it's outside normal city limits.

I've felt satisfied with Vinci. I recognize that industrial California, the construction zones next to the warehouses full of migrant labor. But I had real high hopes for Northern California and I feel like I definitely missed an opportunity to make another great setting. It was just too rushed and didn't have the imagination I wanted in it.

And I'm with you, I've been enjoying this season -- not as great as the Las one, but still a good TV show well above normal TV standards. But that whiff on NorCal was where I finally said, damn, kinda need Fukunaga for the same magic...

Wonder how different this season would be with a single director.

He's still listed as an executive producer at the end of each episode, so what exactly is his role for the second season? Did him and Nic Pizzolatto truly have a falling out? I thought I read that Fukunaga left the show for the possibility for filming an updated version of It.

every fucking scene was framed like it was the only scene in the show

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

And I say that as someone who drove through a couple of times a few weeks ago.

I mean, I'm sure they actually shot it in Guernville (otherwise, why specifically name-check such a relatively obscure small NorCal city?), but yeah, it didn't feel at all like a place. And there's a lot of "there" in that area on Highway 1 stretching from Bodega Bay to the Russian River to Point Arena and beyond. Even in episode 5, we get what seems like dozens of establishing shots of endless freeways and vast urban sprawl that creates the Vinci setting; this was a pretty easy lay-up they missed.

whereas in reality they would have just completed a nearly full day's drive spanning a bunch of different regions in California (with ridiculous scenery any iPhone owner could look majestic) to finally reach a presumably remote cabin. I mean, I've visited plenty of people's homes where you have to drive 10-15 minutes on a tiny access road off the freeway just to reach their house, like a middle class house. I've been other places where you have to drive 30-45 minutes on a road where you pass NO other cars in order to find weird cabins tucked away, but here it felt like this exclusive sex dungeon and murder lodge was just a quick right turn after the gas station in the middle of town.

And I know part of the problem is that I was REALLY looking forward to what they did with NorCal, so I had big expectations, but damn if they didn't go out of their way to under-deliver anyway.

I'm still looking forward to the rest of the season, but Guerneville was the place where I was definitely, tangibly disappointed in this season.

Vinca Vaugn is bad and the story is just blah. not enough action no real twists in the story.

But click for the pictures:

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/true-detective-vinci-vernon-california/

Welcome to Vernon: Touring the Inspiration for the Real-Life Industrial Hell-town of ‘True Detective’

JULY 24, 2015
by MOLLY LAMBERT

My first trip to Vernon, the city that inspired True Detective Season 2’s fictionalized “Vinci,” was on a whim. At dinner, I told a friend about my intention to drive to the nearby city, which is just five miles south of downtown Los Angeles. “Why would you want to go there?” he said with genuine shock. “It’s really creepy.”

And he was right! After dinner I creepy-crawled through Vernon late at night. I was clenched with dread for the 20 minutes we spent driving through the industrial city that spans just five square miles. Vinci is loosely modeled after Vernon — a former Mexican-American War battleground that developers in the early 20th century decided to turn into a purely industrial zone. With three railroads running through the area, it became a hub of production — bordered by the optimistically titled “City of Commerce” and close to “City of Industry.” While Commerce has nearly 13,000 residents, Industry is “an industrial suburb” — population 219. Vernon is even more sparsely populated — 112 citizens total.1 Vernon once housed a baseball stadium and even had its own minor league team, the Vernon Tigers. Since its inception, Vernon has been marked by a shady reputation — many have wondered whether it’s run by a corrupt family dynasty (the Leonis family) and whether it deserves its city status at all. And the city has endured a raft of political scandals — including voter fraud, misappropriation of public funds, and a history of questionable evictions. The Vernon aspect has been one of the things that has kept me engaged in TD‘s second season. If there’s one thing I love, it’s fictionalized California corruption, even if I can tell exactly what parts of his dog-eared copy of Mike Davis’s seminal Los Angeles critical history, City of Quartz, Nic Pizzolatto is pulling from.

But there are differences here. There is no casino in Vernon — the Vinci Casino is presumably the nearby Commerce Casino. The primary industry in Vernon is meatpacking — a terrifying bucolic mural adorns the side of the Farmer John building. There are also paper companies, clothing mills, and glass and plastic manufacturers. Most of the city’s residents are employees who live in government-owned housing. The house where Colin Farrell’s Ray Velcoro lives is in a row of small bungalows near the Flowserve Corporation, “One of the world’s largest manufacturers of pumps, valves, seals and components to the process industries.”

There are a few churches, a water tower, an elementary school, a library, and a handful of bars, restaurants, medical clinics and stores. But for the most part, Vernon is factories, big hulking blocks pumping smoke. The city’s motto is “Exclusively Industrial.” While there are plenty of people in Vernon — working at its many factories — the parking lots are locked behind security-controlled gates. There are people in Vernon at all hours, you just can’t see any of them, giving it the otherworldly feel of a town solely occupied by large machines. I pause by a giant unidentified mechasaurus, glittering with lights so it resembles an enormous bioluminescent deep-sea creature. Without warning, the machine makes a pressure release sound that catches me off guard and I yelp out loud. It sounds like a dragon exhaling. On the way out of Vernon we pass an eerie-looking bar with a blue neon sign, resembling TD‘s David Lynch-ian bar, Black Rose — proof of life in Vernon.

On my second trip, I am more prepared — or so I think. I have come with a camera and a friend to take photographs. But when we get there I realize there’s an issue I hadn’t considered: There’s nowhere to park in this town. Drivers can’t even pull over on almost every main thoroughfare. Vernon is virtually unpeopled, and those who are there are hidden behind those company parking lots and their security gates. There is no expectation that random travelers would stop in Vernon — there are no real attractions to stop for. And so there are no zones in which to pull over, keeping the wide roads clear for the Mack trucks that drive through the city day and night on their way to deliver and pick up goods from the factories. As an anxious driver, I am terrified of the giant trucks whizzing past me in all directions. My attempts to slowly trawl the streets so my companion can try to take pictures are waylaid by the enormous machines honking at me. I try to pull over in front of the Vernon police station to get a shot of the sign. A truck nearly crushes me and I start melting down like Dionne in Clueless when she accidentally drives onto the freeway.

The streets in Vernon are wide, but a far cry from the spacious roadways of the L.A. suburbs. Vernon’s feel more like a highway, a thoroughfare between the industrial interzones of the city limits. I had just assumed taking pictures in such a deserted-looking place would be easy, but I was wrong. Even parking in an unsigned alleyway, I never lose the fear in my gut that comes with being in a place where there are no people to be seen anywhere but in cars. Maybe that’s why Vernon feels so unsettlingly alien. Unlike L.A., there are no people living on its strangely clean and empty streets. We manage to get a few good shots while idling at traffic lights, but I am too paranoid to brake in any of the no-parking zones, worried that I might get pulled over by cops for disobeying the laws and also that one of those huge trucks will crush and then envelop my car. We park briefly in an unsigned alleyway to jump out and get a shot of the scary painted anthropomorphic oil barrel man on top of a recycling center, which my friend dubs “The Yellow King.” Sidling along the building on its narrow, weedy concrete margins, I am terrified of the vehicles whizzing past. It feels like a Mario Kart level come to life.

I suggest going to the one place where I know there will be parking — the bar. And there is, a whole hour’s worth of it, on a side street that dead-ends into a factory lot. I’m curious how much it will resemble the Vinci dive bar where Vince Vaughn’s Frank Semyon and Farrell’s Velcoro hang out. But it’s like any dive bar — dark, dimly lit, and smelling like beer. There are a few daytime regulars playing pool. The staff is gearing up for a nighttime event advertised with a poster on the door: “Liz’s Birthday.” I give the bartender my hard-boiled drink order: a 7UP with ice. There is no stage, and no sad chanteuse like Lera Lynn, the singer in residency at the Black Rose. There is, however, a jukebox with a glimmering border of turquoise and purple LED lights. A live version of “La Pelicula” by bachata group Aventura is playing when we walk in, which segues into “La Diabla” by Romeo Santos, Aventura’s breakout solo star. The TV mounted over the bar shows an exhibition game between Barcelona and the LA Galaxy. It feels like any Los Angeles dive bar where people come in to get a drink after work and watch sports. It’s not so spooky after all.

The bar owner, sensing that we are not locals, asks what we are doing in Vernon. I say “True Detective” and he nods with a shrug, making me think we are not the only local tourists who have come here in search of Vinci. After sundown, we cruise the streets a little while longer, stopping for directions in a turnaround in front of the giant dragon machine, which once again unexpectedly exhales and scares the living hell out of me. Vernon has cleaned up shop since the 2006 fraud scandal, and its corruption by the powerful few bares no reflection on the city’s small population or its large commuting class of factory workers. The city’s halo of creepiness is an illusion. It’s just a place where people work, mostly. But there’s something about those empty but heavily trafficked streets at night that summons the ghosts of other industrial towns, the genuinely deserted ones. With its grayscale color palette, floating beams of light, and rows of signs with frozen-in-time graphic design tracing history from the 20th century through the 21st, Vernon can be beautiful, too.

And if not, fuck them.

That drug scene was fucking amazing. Hilarious and depressing at the same time.

his storyline is the only one that elicits any type of emotional investment from me.

but i dont think he will get recognized critically.

Just gets stuck in too many paycheck roles.

I'm guessing he'll still get overlooked unless the last 2 eps are on that level too

But often really good even when the movies isn't that good.

Ani's druggy visions of the guy who raped her was a nice Lynch homage. That was a pretty clear nod to Twin Peaks.

I liked the writing of the scene with Vince and Stan's kid. That quote about certain events splitting your life forever was dope.

As noted above, Farrell is a goddamn beast. He may be "box office poison," but that man can act his ass off. And he seems to be getting better with each episode.

Anyone else think there was a legitimate chance of Frank dying at the end there when they discovered the girl? Good suspense.

What a surprise that the perpetually grim looking black police chief was at the sex party, lol. I'm surprised they didn't show him getting blown with the same facial expression.

>What a surprise that the perpetually grim looking black police
>chief was at the sex party, lol. I'm surprised they didn't
>show him getting blown with the same facial expression.

LOL

..

whenever I see that dude I have to re-orient myself to the fact that this show takes place in present time and not the 70's.

I think he was also one of Colin Farrell's Sergeants in Tigerland too

I liked the contrast with how Frank and Velcoro interacted with the kids. Frank was really natural when talking to Stans son and instantly bonded with the kid. On the other hand Velcoro and his son were so awkward together and had no bond between them at all

for a lil bit i thought i was only getting background audio
from one side of the stereo feed.

thought they coulda used something more suspenseful
but it sounded like the nutcracker nshit.

that was my only complaint.
these later episodes seem to be more focused
and tightly scripted.

Maybe the best technical element to any episode so far this season, save for maybe the sound editing in the shoot out. Absolutely had me on pins and needles-- almost Hitchcockian, like an old Herrmann score.

like I guess it definitely left me feeling uneasy, but mainly cuz I thought that score was totally not matching the rest of the show (slash series) and was totally off-putting to me. Like I wonder what that scene is like when you're not being stabbed in the ear...

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

(and it'd be safe to assume it is), your mindstate is a major factor in enjoying the drug. Anecdotal, sure, but I've had a number of friends that don't feel "ecstasy" the first time they dropped because they were so anxious. Meanwhile everyone around them is rolling balls, hah.

In a high stress environment like an illicit sex party, I can see Ani's experience being more or less accurate.

Mismatched scores always bug me, even though i appreciated it on some level. It was a little too cute, and I didn't really like being taken out of the scene like that.

was terrible and very very jarring.

at hearing Metal Face Doom sample that background music and do an updated remix to "Hey!".

because at first I wasn't sure if that was the music playing inside of house or not. The action and keeping track of McAdam's actions were enough for me to remove any confusion of the music though.

That fake looking full moon was a bit too on the nose, but to get too upset at that would be nitpicking.

>because at first I wasn't sure if that was the music playing
>inside of house or not.

being played in the house itself, but the loud volume for it when Kitch and Farrell were on screen let me know that wasn't the case. That's when I was confused at first, but so much was going on, so I was able to push the music into the background.

and he ran with it.

it annoyed me as well, though I wasn't feeling this episode as much as everybody else.

>and he ran with it.
>
>it annoyed me as well, though I wasn't feeling this episode as
>much as everybody else.

Because it's a secret cabal/women prisoner trope
Another meh
Except for the McAdams killing
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

the orgy music was another example of this, imo

whether the music fit or not, it evoked an emotion of uneasiness.

so painfully different than his supposed parents. I'm not sure whether I genuinely feel for the kid or if I find the whole scenario to be completely hilarious.

when the kid asked to watch Friends and then Farrel's reaction I damn near fell out.

their relationship is so stiff and awkward I thought it might make some sense for them to at least have a little bit of a rapport to justify an ongoing custody battle. they interact like they've never been in each other's presence before.

i died laughing

>so painfully different than his supposed parents. I'm not
>sure whether I genuinely feel for the kid or if I find the
>whole scenario to be completely hilarious.
>
>when the kid asked to watch Friends and then Farrel's reaction
>I damn near fell out.
>
>their relationship is so stiff and awkward I thought it might
>make some sense for them to at least have a little bit of a
>rapport to justify an ongoing custody battle. they interact
>like they've never been in each other's presence before.

He's the total antithesis of the precocious kid we're used to in movies/TV shows like this. I absolutely love how his scenes are written.

I'd check it out for sure

...that kid that's fairly antisocial, and couldn't be bothered to do normal interactions...nothing his parents are talking about matters

They finally have me caring about the characters... specifically Velcoro and Ani and sometimes Frank... Not that I overly care about them "winning" per se, but I at least feel for them

This was the first time this season I was checking the clock, not to see how much time was left in a bad way, but how much time was left like I didn't want it to end


@rob_starrk

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson


"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're

of riggins and vaughn.

has made a huge difference in a positive way.

this episode didn't shoehorn that Boston college indie bar circuit singer songwriter guitar woman in the episode as well. That was a welcome omission.

@rob_starrk

This is not a pile on of VV. I am with it now. I am all for the highly stylized dialogue and the moodiness.

I just can't tell if VV's character is suppose to come off as a bit soft, or it's unintentionally.

You see signs of people thinking he is week, like that dude he beat down. But the beatdown and teeth pulling kind of suggest otherwise.

But them Mexicans straight punked him though.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson


"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're

your average gangster/crime boss/these Mexicans he's dealing with.

I think he's just trying to tread that line between "legit" and "gangster" (both in quotes because he's not quite comfortable in either lifestyle).

that makes sense. he walked away and is now trying to come back. he basically has to reassert himself...nobody is going to roll out a red carpet for his return to crime.

that said, i'm not convinced he's just letting the Mexicans off the hook. the fact that he got out the game is proof that he's not a hot head...he's a long con thinker. they would've gotten murked if he acted right then and there...Mexicans were already set up at the location so lord knows how many more were there offscreen and they already outnumbered them with the characters we saw. it was a smart move to walk away right then but i wouldn't be surprised if he tries to get back at them in the next 2 episodes.

I just wondered how he got there. The deal sounded bad for him we he offered it. He came into the scene from a position of weakness and the Mexicans acted accordingly.





>that makes sense. he walked away and is now trying to come
>back. he basically has to reassert himself...nobody is going
>to roll out a red carpet for his return to crime.
>
>that said, i'm not convinced he's just letting the Mexicans
>off the hook. the fact that he got out the game is proof that
>he's not a hot head...he's a long con thinker. they would've
>gotten murked if he acted right then and there...Mexicans were
>already set up at the location so lord knows how many more
>were there offscreen and they already outnumbered them with
>the characters we saw. it was a smart move to walk away right
>then but i wouldn't be surprised if he tries to get back at
>them in the next 2 episodes.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson


"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're

And he knew the Mexicans were in the position of power. They knew it too.

>But them Mexicans straight punked him though.


no one mentions that Vince Vaughn's character punked them first when he kicked them to the curb when they visited the club. I have to imagine that three day arrangement they established was worse than what they had with the gold tooth dude.

He needed the girl so he could find his cash and in the process he crossed those cartel guys again.

They had him by the balls in that house, so he did whatever he could to get out of the situation and get info on the girl. Only thing he could do is "renegotiate" new terms with them.

He figured he could get by somewhat on his rep for the dirt he's done in the past, but he's not as hungry/hard/sharp/coldblooded as he was when he was coming up. Plus like always, the game has become more ruthless, and the players colder.

I couldn't tell if when his boy (the crazy looking quiet dude) said "Frank?" if he was saying they need to go, or if he was asking if they now need to do what is necessary.

Rachel McA and the one other girl we care about in the building were the only ones having date rape type symptoms...all the other girls were wide awake and freaking off even though they all took the same shit...what was that about?

>Rachel McA and the one other girl we care about in the
>building were the only ones having date rape type
>symptoms...all the other girls were wide awake and freaking
>off even though they all took the same shit...what was that
>about?

The other girl probably not bout that Molly life on the reg either

like the drug opened her up emotionally, and then being back in the place she grew up and surrounded by what she's surrounded by, she started having like a PTSD reaction. It's not clear why the other girl was in the state she was in, except maybe she wasn't handling her high well?

But yeah, I think the idea is that Ani was dealing with more than just a chemical reaction in that scene.

I took it as a first timer's reaction to that "pure" form...

It's bothering me that kid has red hair. Ray, the mom, and the alleged rapist all have dark hair. Unless they're purposely misleading, seems like a deliberate choice.

The alleged rapist seemed like he really had no idea what Ray was talking about. Ray's basically doing the same thing he did in the past. Got told who raped his wife and is all in a rush to take them out.

edit: Also possible the rapist is being setup. Not sure why, but seems like it could be a possibility since he has a mental condition.

Seems like they are headed toward Burris being the bird guy, but that feels too easy.

If Chessani's kids were the jeweler orphans, how did that benefit him? Surely he did it with a motivation.

>It's bothering me that kid has red hair. Ray, the mom, and
>the alleged rapist all have dark hair. Unless they're
>purposely misleading, seems like a deliberate choice.
>
>The alleged rapist seemed like he really had no idea what Ray
>was talking about. Ray's basically doing the same thing he
>did in the past. Got told who raped his wife and is all in a
>rush to take them out.
>
>edit: Also possible the rapist is being setup. Not sure why,
>but seems like it could be a possibility since he has a mental
>condition.

You're saying the DNA evidence linking the guy to Velcoro's ex-wife was faulty? I'm as cynical as the next cynic, but that would be pretty extensive corruption to fudge DNA results just to frame the wrong guy.

Definitely willing to admit I am likely overly suspicious.

The whole thing just strikes me as odd. Kid doesn't look like any of the 3 adults, and the guy sitting in jail for it has brain damage or something and has no idea what Ray is talking about. Meanwhile, Ray has now given up his rights to avoid a paternity test, and is ready to kill ANOTHER dude... ?

Seems fishy, all I'm saying.

end up being a factor... if this was an ongoing series with the same cast going into next season I'd def think something was up on this



@rob_starrk

I'm guessing this is the Tasha we keep hearing about. The gonorrhea led me to think so, since Caspere had it, too. Not sure why she would need to be killed in such a gruesome way, though.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

He's working for Geldof, and was trying to get the hard drive back from Caspere. He follows Ray, shoots him with the rubber bullets, takes back the hard drive. It's whether are not he's also Caspere's or Chessani's kid.

Looking back on the raid episode, it was interesting to see the look he has with Ray after Burris questions if the number of men they mobilize is necessary.

There is a lingering stare between the two.

he just stares in damn near a perverse way. like he's picturing how it's gonna go down when he kills you.

it hasn't been over the top but if you're paying attention you notice how at home he is when he's gotta let some shots off.

the orgy was pulled off gloriously. i think i have a higher tolerance for "jarring" music in a scene more than others, but even still, i thought it did well to express Ani's descent into drug-fueled madness. it also served to present all those 'men of influence' in a beastly light. plus it built tension up like a muthafucka.

V.

hot ass fire. Vince was fucking AMAZING this episode.

like, i'll feel like i have a grasp of what's going on, and then someone will start explaining what's going on, and i'm like, wait.. huh??

it feels like theres a million different moving parts to try to tie together with the land deal, blake, old police cover up, the jewels, the russians taking over, the female orphans identity, etc. this season really needed 13 episodes.

anybody that says they have it all drilled down after the 1st viewing is a liar lol.

This season needs a great finale (obviously).

Btw, found this on Redddit. Solid, simple breakdown. It's long but worth a look if your confused...

https://m.reddit.com/r/TrueDetective/comments/3fkniq/s2e7_what_the_hell_is_going_on/

I'm writing this to make sense of it myself, so bare with me.

The Mayor is basically the dirty ruler of all of Vinci. At the start of the season (as far as he and we know), everything in Vinci runs through him. Frank is a local thug that has done well for himself through various organized crime, including dumping toxic waste all along the corridor where the state plans to build some huge metro system (effectively making the land worthless so it can be bought cheap, then will be worth a lot once the metro is finally open). There's also the whole history of Frank/Ray....but that seems pretty clear and we just found out it was Blake that gave the wrong name, so Frank wasn't using Ray. Also Blake killed Stan because Stan found out about Blake's side shit.

Frank is hoping to go legit and make a lot of money, so he gives all of his savings to Casper, who is supposed to give it to the real estate company Catalyst that owns all the parcels of land by the soon to be built Metro.

Meanwhile Casper was in league with the Mayor's son and Blake (and the Russians?), to run an prostitute ring and gather blackmail on a lot of powerful people. It seems like the Mayor's son is trying to usurp his dad by buddying up with the new power taking over Vinci (the Russians).

The Russians are a little hazy to me, but I guess Frank went to Europe at some point and meet up with the Russians in hopes of doing a partnership. The Russians said yes, but have seemingly been behind all of Frank's recent downfalls (e.g. they're taking over his casino and club, bought out all of his men except that creepy guy), and they were going to kill Frank but that Osef guy backed him and allowed him to work for them. Frank says sure, but then proceeds to get all his money together to jump town and burns all that shit to the ground.

Anyways, someone kills Casper (don't think we know yet), and steals his harddrive full of blackmail. Casper was also in possession of these blue diamonds that have a lot of history (but the people that killed him couldn't find the diamonds, so where they are now is a mystery).

The first time the case closes, it was because Buress (I think it was him, he's the second in command white guy in the Vinci police station...also guy that killed Paul tonight) gave some of Casper's stuff to a Mexican girl (so Buress was probably involved with Casper's death). The Mexican girl was the one Frank was looking for, and the one the Mexican gang found/killed. Anyways that girl pawns that shit, which leads the cops to the Mexican meth lab or whatever it was. Shoot out...case closed.

No one believes the Mexican meth cooks killed Casper. But the guy running the state investigation (the Asian guy from Dexter) doesn't give a shit because he's been bought (he was at the party last episode) and is running for governor I think. So the black lady starts a special unit with our 3 heroes to do a special investigation.

So they start investigating again, they find out about parties and diamonds and all that shit. Ani kills the security guard at the party and is now wanted for murder. They use one of Ray's guns to kill the black lady, so he's wanted for murder. Paul is dead, so there's that.

My understanding of the whole blue diamonds business: back in the 80/90s, specifically during the 1992 LA riots, Halloway (black police Chief in Vinci), Buress (white police guy under Halloway), Dixon (fat guy that got headshot), and Casper all worked in the same department (Casper was the police accountant I think). They use the riots as a distraction to murder a couple that owned a jewelry store, and steal the rare blue diamonds. They use these diamonds to buy-in to the crime syndicate in Vinci (I'm not sure if this is with the Mayor or with Catalyst), and they all move to Vinci to take new positions with high salaries.

The couple that was murdered left two kids that are apparently important to the plot, one of them was Casper's secretary and is involved with the prostitute parties somehow.

Paul was in the army, then with some private militia group (Blackwater). Seems like they did some fucked up shit. Anyways, Blackwater now is security for Catalyst. Paul is gay, and Dixon took some pictures of him for potential blackmail. After Dixon is dead, Halloway's men find the pictures in Dixon's apartment to blackmail Paul and lure him to the sewers.

Sorry that was all over the place. Let me know if you have specific questions.

Edit (random add-on's): Ani's dad, the Mayor's dad, and Pitlor (the creepy guy that did surgery on prostitutes) were all a part of some hippie movement. I'm hoping this gets tied in more to the finale.

Ani's mom killed herself by walking into the ocean. Ani was kidnapped as a child and most likely sexually abused. The Mayor had his wife institutionalized with Pitlor, where she killed herself. Pitlor is dead I think, or maybe Ray just beat the shit out of him.

The missing girl Ani was looking for and found at the party wasn't missing, she in fact loves that prostituting life style. But one of her buddies (Tasha) was blackmailing the blackmailers (bad idea), and got caught. Tasha is the one that was tortured and killed in that random cabin. Tasha sent backups to Ani's "missing" girl's PO box.

but also helps illustrates how much of a mess it all is....they did a terrible job presenting all of this and conveying to us how important it all is. so much of this was just explained in conversation this week.

Thanks, but we shouldn't need this many companion pieces in the first place

>Thanks, but we shouldn't need this many companion pieces in
>the first place

and even with their aid it doesn't make it more interesting. it's not like they're pulling back layers to things that make the show more engaging (like GoT thinking pieces for example). it's more like "oh, cool...so that's what that was).

and where they ended up, or how all these connections somehow connect to ani's dad back in the day... and even the missing girl stuff... it all just starts feeling unnecessarily complex

we'll see if they can make it worth it in the finale.

>it all just starts feeling unnecessarily
>complex
>

As a nod to that Polygon writer Dave Tach, he called the Russians/Chessanis muscling Frank out of Vinci around the third or fourth episode.

I can NOT stop watching this f***ing show, but I was SOOO confused! This clears a lot up.

Goddamn my brain is fried.

I agree though, at the very least they should have had 10 episodes for this. There's no possible way that everything will be explained in the finale. I'd much prefer most of the finale running time to be used on exciting/suspenseful scenes rather than table talking.

Best moment since Colin beat down dude's dad.

It got off to a good start with the dialogue and tension, but once Frank smashed his drink into Blake's head in slow motion, with glass shards flying out of the screen like a cheap 3D movie and twinkling sounds blending with the music to a cut screen, it became a little silly.

Then it cuts back to Blake crawling on the floor and Frank rubbing his face into the carpet/wall with squishy sounds and bland music playing on and off. Frank softly holds Blake's neck while Blake gives out information. Once finished, Frank tries to choke Blake to death, so Blake puts his hands on Frank's shoulders and tells him he wasn't finished detailing his betrayal. Back to Frank softly holding Blake's neck while Blake gives out information. Frank feigns forgiveness, bland music fades. Blake gives out more information, bland music comes back in, Frank shoots Blake. Blake is writhing on the floor gurgling blood while Frank shares their origin story and delivers his punchline.

Blake was dead the second he walked through that door. There was no real intensity or scuffle and the only valuable information the viewer learned in the 6 minute scene is that Osip is having a 12mil handoff with Catalyst that Frank will try to hit. The writing was bad, the direction was bad, the music was bad, the sound editing was bad, and the acting was bad, partly because Blake was a one dimensional character and his scenes with Frank were always hollow. It suffered from the same issue a lot of this season has been bogged down by: Pizzolato swinging for the fences with unrealistic dialogue and the lack of a singular director to provide a consistent style to the scenes.


Surprised to hear anyone say it was perfect but maybe others see it differently, as this season has been pretty polarizing (see: orgy score). I thought the scene was a poorly handled one in an otherwise strong episode.

same thing they did with the Colin/Vince coffee scene...these dudes are sitting across from each other, guns drawn, it's super tense and they cut away to some other shit that has nothing to do with the situation. why? let the bitch breathe!!!!

I don't understand why, either

on an emotional level to see him call out this sleaze ball, own him, and get some good information. That's why I loved it so much.

I enjoyed the part when he set him down for a second and told him to clean up, was hilarious.

Not sure what you mean by bad acting...Vince knocked it out of the park.

could have done without the slo-mo but that was no big deal at all.

http://uproxx.com/tv/2015/08/true-detective-black-maps-and-motel-rooms-recap/

It also lays out the two groups of suspects for who did killed Caspare: either Burris & Calloway, or the two kids who survived the jewelry shop heist.

I personally prefer the Burris explanation, though I fear it's going to be the two kids. The killers being the kids certainly follow the themes of this season (kids getting their lives screwed up by adults), but it sorta feel like a cheat to have the motivation for them having done it being mentioned in episode #6. And neither would have been seen since episode #3.

same room.

i guess he was desperate and in a hurry, but i was waiting for the lady either start popping some racist shit, or telling her about how he used to 'play with the boys'

and now they're just sitting there waiting for him and he ain't coming back...so fucked up

though her situation was fucked up enough while he was still alive, so it may work out for the best.

she was already planning on raising the kid alone. still though...

the way they were forcing themselves to try to muster up some joy. it was painful.

is the 1 I wish had a next season... I feel like they could explore so much if they had multiple seasons with this story/cast

Especially feel Vaughn has really settled into his role

Kitsch and McAdams aren't on the same level as Farrell or Vince, and Farrell is a level above Vince as well.

if I were to rank she'd be in the #2 spot

Kitsch has barely been given anything to do outside of Episode #7, but in the six preceding episodes, all he did is give various pained grimaces. And the scene with him confronting his mother for stealing his nest egg was painful to watch, mostly because of him.

I laughed pretty hard at that.

I didn't mind him in the scene with his mother at all though. I was mostly just mad at him for being dumb enough to leave his money there.

>Kitsch has barely been given anything to do outside of
>Episode #7, but in the six preceding episodes, all he did is
>give various pained grimaces. And the scene with him
>confronting his mother for stealing his nest egg was painful
>to watch, mostly because of him.

and thank god
because i was NOT rewataching a bit of any of it to get clear the title is on point its pretty excruciatingly details and really shows how the writer sucks


http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/08/03/true_detective_season_two_a_guide_to_the_plot_of_this_confusing_season.html

What Exactly Is Going On in True Detective Season 2? An Excruciatingly Clear Plot Breakdown.

Why are we here?

Detectives Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell), Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) and Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch) have been tasked with discovering who killed Ben Caspare, a city manager in Vinci, California, who was found with his genitalia blown off and his eyes eaten out by acid. Caspare was murdered by someone wearing a crow mask—or at least, his body was transported by someone who had a crow mask on the passenger seat. He was a business partner of Frank Seymon (Vince Vaughn), a patient of Dr Irving Pitlor (Rick Springfield, yes, of “Jesse’s Girl” fame), and into freaky sex stuff. For some reason, his name is pronounced “Caspar” despite the “e” at its end.

Why are so many officers working this case?

Woodrugh, a California Highway Patrol officer, found the body. Bezzerides, a sheriff for Ventura County, has been assigned the case to uncover corruption in Vinci. Velcoro, a Vinci detective, is working the case because Caspare was a Vinci employee— and also to keep other law enforcement agencies from uncovering corruption in Vinci.

What was the nature of Caspare’s business relationship with Frank?

Frank had given Caspare $5 million, that, together with a $5 million investment from the Russian-Israeli gangster Osip Argonov (Timothy V. Murphy), was supposed to secure them a parcel of land from the Catalyst Group.

What was so special about this land?

The short version: it could be bought cheap and sold high. The longer version: Frank’s waste management company, Acheron Waste Management, colluding with Vinci Mayor Austin Chessani (Ritchie Coster) and the Catalyst Corporation, dumped Vinci toxic waste in this land, which was located “up north,” to drive down its price by making it unsuitable for agriculture. But Catalyst, Chessani, Caspare and Frank, among others, knew the federal government had plans to build a high-speed rail through this land “corridor” and would be willing to buy it at a much higher price.

So this plan went off without a hitch?

Please. Frank did sell his waste management company and gave the resulting $5 million dollars to Caspare. But Caspare was murdered before he turned the money over to Catalyst. With Caspare’s death, Frank’s money evaporated and so did his deal with Osip, leaving Frank broke and desperate and willing to pull (literal) teeth to get back into all of the illegal businesses he had recently forsaken.

But it turns out Frank would have gotten fleeced even if Caspare had lived. Caspare was in cahoots with Osip, and had been since Frank and Caspare had taken a trip to Europe to see Osip six months before the murder. Since that meeting, Osip has steadily been smuggling Eastern European women into California and buying up the liens on Frank’s two clubs, Vinci Gardens Casino and Lux Infinitum. (This is why Frank burned down his clubs in last night’s episode: Osip owns them now and Osip is his enemy.) When Caspare died, his shares of Catalyst were sneakily reabsorbed by the company, and redistributed to Osip and Tony Chessani (Vinicius Machado), the Mayor’s son. Osip’s deal will be finalized, presumably in next week’s episode, when he tries to hand off $12 million in cash to the Catalyst Group and Frank tries to steal that $12 million using a repeating shopping list.

How do we know all this?

Some of it has been scattered through the previous episodes, but in last night’s episode, Frank’s associate Blake Churchman (Christopher James Baker)—the one he smashed in the face with a glass in slow motion—kindly explained everything before Frank killed him.

Who is Blake?

Blake is an associate of Frank’s who has been working behind Frank’s back. In addition to confirming that Osip and Caspare had been double dealing Frank, he is also the person who told Frank—wrongly—who Velcoro’s wife’s rapist was.

Remind me about what is going on there?

Velcoro’s wife Gena was brutally raped. Velcoro heard that Frank might know who had raped her. Frank gave him a name. Velcoro killed that guy, ruining his own life, his marriage, and making him a lackey cop of Frank’s. But, recently, the man who actually raped Gena, according to DNA tests, was found and arrested. (The rapist is the guy behind the counter in this beer commercial.) Ray went to Frank’s house and held a gun on him at the breakfast table to find out if Frank had knowingly given him the wrong name, the name of a man who was not the rapist. Frank had not. Rather, Frank had gotten the name from Blake, who was looking to move up in Frank’s organization, saw an opportunity to get himself noticed, and had a meth-head bothering him.

Anything else we need to know about Blake?

Blake has, or had, red hair.

Why does it matter that Blake had red hair?

So does Velcoro’s son Chad, who Velcoro fears is actually the biological son of the man who raped Gena. But, you never know, he could be someone else’s biological son altogether. (Though, probably, he will just turn out to be Velcoro’s son.)

Is it possible for two brunettes to have a redhead?

Yes.

So Blake’s red hair could be a red herring?

Stop it, you have no idea how much more we have to get through— even just about Blake!

Okay, what else is there about Blake?

He confirmed that he killed Stan. Stan was another one of Frank’s associates, who showed up dead, with his eyes burned out like Caspare’s.

If Stan died the way Caspare did, did Blake kill Caspare?

No, Blake was very adamant about this: no one has any idea who killed Caspare.

Sorry to backtrack— but should I know who Stan is?

No. Stan. But before he showed up dead, he had appeared fleetingly, in the background, of two scenes. Since he died, Frank has talked about him a bunch and even visited his widow’s house. Blake killed him because Stan found out what Blake was up to and tried to blackmail him.

And Stan was going to blackmail Blake because he found out he was working with Osip and Caspare to swindle Frank?

Not just that. He is also involved with the sex parties.

Oh! The sex parties! What is the deal with the sex parties?

While investigating the death of Caspare, Velcoro, Bezzerides, and Woodrugh discovered that he was deeply involved with orchestrating regular high-end sex parties, in which rich and powerful men wearing tuxedos do business and fornicate with drugged women. Blake was one of the organizers of these parties.

Who else was involved in organizing these parties?

One of the guys involved is Dr. Pitlor/Rick Springfield. He does plastic surgery on the women who attend to turn them from “8 to 10s.” Pitlor was also Caspare’s shrink and, it turns out, the therapist of Austin Chesani’s first wife, who killed herself because, in Pitlor’s words, she struggled with “some of the traditions of the Chessani patriarchy.” Additionally, in the ‘70s, Pitlor used to hang around with Austin Chessani and also Bezzerides’ dad, Eliot (David Morse) who, at the time, was running a commune called The Good People.

More important to the parties, however, is Tony Chessani, the mayor’s son. We first met Tony when Bezzerides and Woodrugh went to Mayor Chessani’s mansion and Tony explained that he puts on “parties” for a living. In passing in an early episode, Austin Chessani said Tony had serious psychological problems. In last night’s episode we learned that Tony isn’t wild about his father either: He’s been plotting to take over for him in Vinci.

Caspare and Tony Chessani, in particular, used the parties as a way to acquire blackmail material—photos, video—on all of their powerful guests.

Where is all that blackmail material?

Presumably it is on Caspare’s missing hard drive. In episode two, when Ray, on a tip from Frank, checked out Caspare’s second, secret apartment, he saw a video camera hooked up to a hard drive. A moment after spotting it, a person in a crow mask shot him with riot shells. When Ray woke up, the hard drive was gone.

Who has it?

Well, that’s the big question. When Blake denies that he, or anyone he works with, killed Caspare, he is also saying that neither he, Osip, Tony Chessani or Pitlor have the hard drive. Another person who doesn’t have the hard drive is Jacob McCandless (Jon Lindstrom) the president of Catalyst. After repeatedly ignoring Frank’s attempts to procure another parcel of land, McCandless told him he would give him five, if Frank found the hard drive.

So McCandless is presumably on that hard drive?

And he’s not the only one. At the party where Bezzerides murdered someone, she saw not only McCandless, but Osip, Attorney General Geldof (C.S. Lee) and Vinci Police Chief Holloway (Afemo Omilami). It even looked like the party was taking place at McCandless’s house because he seemed to have an office there.

I’m sorry, can you show me some pictures of these people?


(just click the link from here in because yes those picture really do help)

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/08/03/true_detective_season_two_a_guide_to_the_plot_of_this_confusing_season.html


~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson


"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're

... definitely confused me a little. That, and I struggle to remember names, lol. I just know faces.

I didn't notice it before reading the Uproxx link above, but if you watch it again, she walks in, she see's Blake... looks up at Frank, Frank says something like "here we are", then she just kind of exhales and looks up like she knows the gig's up.

I want to believe it's just misdirection, especially since Blake didn't say anything about her, but if it's not, I wonder if Frank suspects it at all. Seems his only loyal friend is Nails.

The entire series she's been trying to telling Frank, "You know, we could just walk away..." Which could easily be an attempt to save him from Osip and the rest.

It seems like she just cares about Frank and not being rich, but her reaction to Blake's dead body wasn't just to calm.

Furthermore how is Frank supposed to just go to that meeting and get out alive? He had an impressive shopping list that he gave to the Armenians, but he'd need serious muscle to even attempt to pull of a robbery at that Catalayst/Russian mob meeting. I also noticed he was making deals with the Jeweler to exchange dollars for diamonds, are the blue diamonds going to come into play or is this just Franks way of cleaning the 12 mil he's about to steal.

but i could see it happening

>Furthermore how is Frank supposed to just go to that meeting
>and get out alive? He had an impressive shopping list that he
>gave to the Armenians,

Yeah we were talking about this at work yesterday trying to figure out his play. He's got one loyal soldier who's busy guarding his girl. He could probably get Farrel because what does he have to lose at this point? Of the 3 cops, Woodrough was their best shooter and he's dead. The Armenians will sell him guns but they barely trust him, so i seriously doubt they'd muscle up for him. The Mexican crew can't be trusted, so even if he promised them a fat payday, they'd just kill him right after (if they somewhow) pulled it off. Just not seeing it.

And he walks away with the dough.



>It seems like she just cares about Frank and not being rich,
>but her reaction to Blake's dead body wasn't just to calm.
>
>Furthermore how is Frank supposed to just go to that meeting
>and get out alive? He had an impressive shopping list that he
>gave to the Armenians, but he'd need serious muscle to even
>attempt to pull of a robbery at that Catalayst/Russian mob
>meeting. I also noticed he was making deals with the Jeweler
>to exchange dollars for diamonds, are the blue diamonds going
>to come into play or is this just Franks way of cleaning the
>12 mil he's about to steal.
>
>
>


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson


"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're

he somehow pits the mexicans against the russians, maybe tying it into the clubs burning down.

while they're going at it, frank dips in and snatches the dough. frank, jordyn, and nails skate to costa rica, and open up a bakery.

and why wouldn't they just kill him afterwards and leave with the money. They already don't like him and after the revelation that Osip owns all of his shit the club deal is worthless.

They have just as much a reason to kill Frank as Osip does.

I think more that he would just find away to sick them on the russians while he backdoors the money somehow.

>and why wouldn't they just kill him afterwards and leave with
>the money. They already don't like him and after the
>revelation that Osip owns all of his shit the club deal is
>worthless.
>
>They have just as much a reason to kill Frank as Osip does.

>I think more that he would just find away to sick them on the
>russians while he backdoors the money somehow.
>

Tell em the Russian's burned down the bar in retaliation to something they did. I guess I'm just trying to figure out how Frank is going to pull of his end game.

i dunno really. both ways sound flimsy. i hope its something more creative than "the russians would rather burn the clubs down than work with some spics" or some goofy sons of anarchy shit lol

>i dunno really. both ways sound flimsy. i hope its something
>more creative than "the russians would rather burn the clubs
>down than work with some spics" or some goofy sons of anarchy
>shit lol

We might get some Sutter.

But yea I could see him trying to start a war between the two as a way to pull of the 12 mil heist.

It's his series of books about Los Angeles from immediately after WWII until the late '50s. The season is heavily inspired by them, especially "Big Nowhere" and "White Jazz," the two of the series that haven't been made into films (the other two are Black Dahlia and LA Confidential).

If you do decide to read them, I'd advise against Googling James Ellroy and True Detective Season 2, unless you feel like spoiling the books before you read them. Which you shouldn't.

Cause I seriously thought of L.A. Con with the whole escort angle. This season is like one of those novels.

I feel like sooo much of this Season I've seen in other places (namely LA COnfidential) and I was wondering if Nic Pizzolatto ripped off a few major works LA Confidential, Chinatown, Miller's Crossing) OR if there are some themes so common in Noir works that you are bound to see them alot.

I mean some stuff is very generic and I am sure are common themes: Reopening a case that everyone thought was solved (LA COnfidential). Pulling off the heist and having a clean getaway available but blowing in by going back to do one last thing (Heat)

But some stuff I thought very specific to other films and books Party's with High End Hookers and Plastic Surgery (LA COnfidential), buying up land that will eventually become vaulable (Chinatown).

Folks who know Noir, is Pizzolatto a hack ripping off the genre or paying homage to classic themes and materials?



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson


"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're

He did still stuff from films like Heat and Chinatown along with stuff from the L.A Quartet series of books. It was just messy, he tried to blend to many into this story. I thought it was great that we was using the background of Vernor to create the city of Vinci for the story but then once PIzz started laying things down, he had one too many threads that were trying to connect to the main plot.

My wife finally got caught up last night. Her reaction to the last ep was priceless

lol

With the right cast, even most of the people who were let down by this season would be right back on board.

I imagine HBO would try to get him to agree to the single-director thing again, though I somehow doubt Pizzolatto backs down on that.

I may or may not have heard that R*cki and the Flash will be one of our detectives.

It was all fukunaga, Matthew and woody who pulled off season one
Everyone did their job to the hilt except the writer

This confirms it
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

The talent was slightly weaker than S1, but even still I think the headlining trio more or less acquitted themselves OK given what they had to work with, Ferrell being the obvious standout. But that's the thing - the writing was MUCH worse. This season ultimately follows three (no, actually four - forgot about Woodrugh there) banally self-destructive characters along the ride as they circle the drain. Which is fine if you care about the characters, or are generally compelled by anything going on in the story. If something like that was there, it was buried beneath Pizzalotto's various indulgences - the overwrought nihilism (which definitely wore on me as S1 progressed as well), the convolution, and certainly that insipid-ass conclusion I just watched. As soon as Frank and Ray parted ways, did anyone not know what was coming? Even if everything that followed was well done it still probably would have been disappointing, but moments like getting off the highway, looking up the tree, visions in the desert... laaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

But that moment with Ray and his kid was nice though.

Hopefully that will show through
I blame pizzolatto last time
And I blame him this time
Solely
It does make me very aware that good noir is very difficult to pull off and most people (mostly dudes) are really really in love with the genre period and as long as they get grit and mood and naked women they are happy

I'm usually low bar
But I hate hate hate bait and switch and pizzolatto is...he's what people hated about Lost ( I watched the first episode and bailed because I knew none of those plot/story promises would be kept) he makes too many plot promises
Some people really do want intricacy and plot ...fully realized plot
People want world building
I do like world building I read GoT of course I do!
So when it's hinted and promised that there more
And when he said it himself last season
There's nothing more to this
I realized he's just not up to par.
He's essentially a soap writer for noir

And the first season was essentially a moody buddy cop show
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

4th wall moment? lol.

occurred when Farrell's character was describing the Anaheim scene to Rachel McAdam's character.

how did they break the 4th wall?

but Farrell told McAdams Anaheim went to sh!t.

As much as I tried to champion for this season after that ending and putting the whole convoluted storyline in perspective, I'm disappointed. This might've worked as some condensed action thriller, but man all of that to have this half assed resolution? Basura!


Also what was that Terminator ass ending with Ani, Jordyn, Ray Jr., and Nails as the protector Terminator?


And after all of that Frank gets caught by the Mexicans? How did they find him anyway?

What was the exact moment that led you to looking at this season negatively?

being based on a part of L.A. that isn't mentioned once. The acting I felt was great and I was really pulled in by the character development of Frank, Ray, and Ani. The story, which has been mentioned in this thread as akin to the L.A. Quartet series was a big draw as I'm always into Noir, but it went from Noir to batshit and back to some lazy Noir.

We telegraphed a lot of this season like a season of SOA. Speaking of which, the ending for this season was like an episode of SOA season finale. Let alone that Terminator ass ending with Ani holding John Velcoro, future savior of Vinci.

Bottom line good acting and ok directing couldn't protect this season from bad material and half assed character development.

Was glad Nails lived, even though he nothing more than a protector Terminator for lil Ray Velcoro Jr. and Auntie Jordyn.

I'll be generous and say roughly the first half of the episode was good. However, it did not justify it's length at all. I'd say all of the life drained out of it after Ray and Frank shot up the meeting. With like over a half an hour to go, things couldn't have been any more blatantly telegraphed.

And, yes, of course the daughter was really Caspare's kid. Because they couldn't hit us over the head with the theme any harder.

An inferior version of a James Ellroy novel. Just read the "LA Quartet" instead.

>And, yes, of course the daughter was really Caspare's kid.

the girl that participated in caspare's murder was his daughter? I thought she was the jewelry owner's kid?

long enough to be be the father of the girl

@rob_starrk

>long enough to be be the father of the girl

i was under the impression that the girl was fucking caspare.

so caspare was unknowingly fucking his biological daughter?

Holloway telling Velcoro this is what causes Glen to flip out and attack Holloway while they're at the train station.

I didn't get anything out of that desert scene that I hadn't already learned about Frank as he torched his businesses. That whole segment could have been excised completely and the show wouldn't have lost anything.

Valcorro going back to see his kid was just dumb. (I did somewhat appreciate the gunfight in the redwoods, though, just because I like redwoods.)

Somewhere in all of this was an interesting story and some well-acted, interesting characters, but with four different "leads" (along with the bizarre, over-wrought Frank and his wife stuff) it lost too much focus and was too drawn out. I'm not exactly mad at it or anything, but for a moment there as Frank torched businesses and the cops did some dirt I felt some kind of something, but boy did that dry up quick as it dragged on way too long to land at that Terminator scene in Venezuela. For a second, I was actually hoping Valcorro would surrender and get arrested, just to go to jail to kill the original rapist. The whole "blaze of glory" thing was just too damn obvious...

>Valcorro going back to see his kid was just dumb.

this was the season we got and this was the season I enjoyed throughout. It wasn't season one, and at times it was a comedy when it didn't mean to be, but that was a great hour and a half of television (other than the actress who played Jordan, I never enjoyed her one bit other than untintentional comedy).

I could see the complaints about this show through most of the other episodes, but after this one I feel like people are still just angry they got forced to watch a different show than the one they were hoping for. Frank's last moment in particular was genius in my opinion.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

....I liked that each person dies or dooms himself when they let their guard down

wasn't a fan of McAdams character seeming to be in "new love" with Farrell...I get they've been through alot and have connected in more ways than one, but this is the SAME woman who barely wanted to hug her family and partner an episode ago.... it wasn't horrible, just wasn't a fan of that part...

...oh I REALLY wanted the one policeman to die...the one that shot homeboy coming outa the tunnels

....next season, instead of trying to incorporate so many elements and characters, I hope they make the story ALOT tighter

...overall, it isn't close to as interesting as the first, but it was still a cool little watch

>....next season, instead of trying to incorporate so many
>elements and characters, I hope they make the story ALOT
>tighter


Too many cooks in the kitchen in terms of both the number of main actors and the fact Nic Pizzolatto didn't write this season by himself as well. Clean up the show in both aspects next season and hopefully the third season will be solid again.

I thought for sure Al Pacino was gonna pop out from behind a tree and shoot him dead while holding his hand.

Why did Velcoro dash into the woods anyway? Why did he do it before his all-important audio message was sent?

What was the purpose of wasting so much time on Ani's rape story? Some wack ass attempt to give her character good depth?

i think between that, and the signal dying, and knowing he was being pursued it was just desperation at that point

>Why did Velcoro dash into the woods anyway? Why did he do it
>before his all-important audio message was sent?

it gradually got worse of the season and ended at it's lowest point. weak sauce

loved ray saluting his kid

frank hallucinating/dragging in the desert was a great visual

IMO the story/writing for season 1 was filled with serial killer cliches and wasn't any amazing story either, it was mostly better because of the woody/mcconaughey duo. I wish more time was given to Ray/Frank as a team - even though it was short lived, I found myself totally rooting for them, especially ray.

they shoulda left town ASAP after that....

...I was mad frank went home PERIOD....I bet that's where the Mexicans started tailing him

....Velcoro I understood....he just HAD to see his sone one more time...I wasn't mad at that...

the heist felt rushed, and too easy though

>loved ray saluting his kid
>
>frank hallucinating/dragging in the desert was a great visual
>
>IMO the story/writing for season 1 was filled with serial
>killer cliches and wasn't any amazing story either, it was
>mostly better because of the woody/mcconaughey duo. I wish
>more time was given to Ray/Frank as a team - even though it
>was short lived, I found myself totally rooting for them,
>especially ray.

what a fucking mess. all of it.

Glad it was only 8eps.

----------------------------
Same as it ever was!

Like why are they just riding around after pulling off the heist that will have them set for life?

Like Velcoro just gave up when he found the transponder. Seemed like he had a bunch of choices what to do at that point (like walk away from the car, go to a parking deck like he mentioned) but he just called it a day.

Also seemed like Vince Vaughn was in the clear with those Mexicans when he gave them the money but said F it and took a shot at dude for no reason (and how did he seem to forget the Mexicans were out there? How did he not wrap up that lose end?).

What did we expect was going to happen when they pulled off the Heist and there was 30 minutes left in the show?



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson


"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're

> Also seemed like Vince Vaughn was in the clear with those Mexicans when he gave them the money but said F it and took a shot at dude for no reason (and how did he seem to forget the Mexicans were out there? How did he not wrap up that lose end?).

Two of them were at Tony's mayoral press conference.

Why didn't Ray take the tracking device off or just abandon the car and steal another car?

It isn't like I need a happily ever after ending but Frank and Ray should have bounced as soon as they finished the heist or Frank should have bounced as soon as he got his new passport and papers.

I think Frank had the diamonds in his suit and that is why he didn't give it to the Mexican.

> I think Frank had the diamonds in his suit and that is why he didn't give it to the Mexican.

Yup, a big reason why he didn't give it up. Also, Frank's always been the type never to "lay down", and that intense pride meant he wouldn't have given up the suit regardless.

They were making a point that Frank's pride/ego is what killed him.

>Like why are they just riding around after pulling off the
>heist that will have them set for life?
>
>Like Velcoro just gave up when he found the transponder.
>Seemed like he had a bunch of choices what to do at that point
>(like walk away from the car, go to a parking deck like he
>mentioned) but he just called it a day.
>
....I think at that point he's given up cause he doesn't realize he has ANOTHER son ..LOL and has decided they'd all be better off if he tries to kill those guys himself, which is basically a suicide mission .... he was doing a great job b4 he just jumped out from behind that tree like it was some big plan....THAT part irked me...


>Also seemed like Vince Vaughn was in the clear with those
>Mexicans when he gave them the money but said F it and took a
>shot at dude for no reason (and how did he seem to forget the
>Mexicans were out there? How did he not wrap up that lose
>end?).
>
...that also was dumb but mad made sense for the character....he kept underestimating those boys, and they KEPT showing him he needed to take them more seriously....

>What did we expect was going to happen when they pulled off
>the Heist and there was 30 minutes left in the show?
>
I knew they were doomed when they said "peace" after the robbery

After taking his money, after punking him with the girl, after punking him for using his club. You can only take it up the ass so much, so he pretty much chose to die on his feet at that moment. Not a smart move, but i understood where he was coming from with it. Plus i don't think he forgot about them as much as he didn't think they would factor into this since he was skipping town. There was no move for him to make with them.

>Also seemed like Vince Vaughn was in the clear with those
>Mexicans when he gave them the money but said F it and took a
>shot at dude for no reason (and how did he seem to forget the
>Mexicans were out there? How did he not wrap up that lose
>end?).

affected this season? I had a hunch back in post #245, but this season felt like it written to be almost the complete opposite of Season 1.

Overall I liked the season (those Polygon articles were clutch), but there were still a number of things that didn't sit well with me.

That being said, I'd still absolutely tune in to a third season. Despite some of the awkward moments this season, I dig NP's character studies and subtle nuances that his writing dives into.

It lacked the finesse that Fukunaga brought to the table from a directorial standpoint, which was the biggest problem for me. The writing was relatively consistent with the writing in Season 1-- but the imagery was on another level last season. (People like to shit on the writing this season as if it's different, but it's mostly just that McConaughey and Harrelson are just goddamn affable from a personality standpoint, and Farrell and McAdams and Vaughn are... not.)

A real fucking crusher of an ending emotionally-- it couldn't have ended any other way, I imagine, but still, Jesus Christ. The recorder getting crushed. The message not sending. The tag with Mayor Tony Chessani. Brutal brutal stuff.

I'll be ready for Season 3. As I'm sure will most of the naysayers.

What if Burris was the one that put the fatal shot into Holloway? In the confusion of a crossfire, that shot in his ribs was wayyyy low. He could have taken that chance to clear his way up, without anyone suspecting a thing.

plus he had been shot

but if he was already shot and presumably on the floor, then he'd have an even better angle at Holloway's ribs.

In any case, it's more a neat theory in line with the cutthroat nature of Vinci's inhabitants rather than something that might be certain.

smart theory anyway though.

but he was holding his arm that had been shot

The only real frustration that lingers in the sense of missed potential -- what IF we had scenes really showing the deeper complexities of Woodrugh, instead of just the surface level angst shoehorned around the other leads' extended brooding. What IF the true villains were revealed more plainly in a clear light besides a very rushed montage at the end. What IF inspired directing once again teased out a mysterious setting always teasing at more just outside the frame.

But besides that? Interesting, at times great, performances. Crime storytelling that could only exist on HBO. A coherent narrative that gives you the satisfaction of moving through a beginning, middle, and clear end.

So yeah -- I am INFINITELY more excited about True Detective season 3 than I am about anything Leftovers, stupid horse racing (remember the fucking horse racing?), the sad, lifeless carcass of True Blood, etc. and so on. Please bring on more HBO. Even if it misses again, it will be an interesting miss, but I'm holding out hope Pizzolatto can take some lessons learned from missed opportunity this year.

... I would've liked another two episodes or so. Just for continued world and character building.

But everyone says that this season I really enjoyed was incredibly slow and boring and awful. So what do I know?

so if they could have paced it out more so each character got their own episode? Yeah, I would have liked that.

Give us a bit more reason to buy Ani and Valcorro. Let us really explore Woodrugh besides just seeing him fight with his mom. Give us more reason to hate Tony Chessani besides just seeing him be a d-bag in his fat mansion. Let us spend some time in Venezuela or something. So yeah, I don't think you're crazy at all. Like I said, any frustration for me mainly lies in the feeling of missed potential, not in poor content.

All of the best shows (The Wire, Six Feet Under, Sopranos) had 10-13.

The problem with this season was the combination of too many characters with too little world building. If you give more time to tell the story, you can flesh the minor characters out and give them some sort of personalities. That way, the audience cares about Stan being killed, rather than him just being some guy in the background of two scenes. Or Frank and Nails connection means something when he trusts him to take his wife to Venezuela, rather than just having him explain it literally seconds before they run off.

But as it stands, this show was trying to do too many things in too little time, and very little of it worked.

This was wrapped up SOA style and that was my biggest problem, I can ignore the writing and some of the plot holes, but they just wrapped this up in a messy bow.

I mean we just watch Vaughn, Farrell, McAdams give great performances and even Taylor K to a lesser extent for this to be the end.

He won't get them, probably, due to the general negativity that's surrounded the show since before it aired. And that will be a goddamn shame. Dude beasted this season.

.

I'm certain all the actors have been dragged down by the negativity this season has draw, which stinks since the first season got so many positive reviews. I'm sure they all thought their careers would have gotten the revival McConaughey got partially as result of his work in season one. Outside of Taylor Kitch, they all did the best with the material they were given.

I wonder how much grief Pizzolatto is getting from social media because of this season.

I enjoyed the 2nd half of the season a lot, people hating it is whatever, I could care less... but the overall negativity is blending in with the acting... Which was superb on many levels... VV and CF hit their strides in ep. 6 and really finished super strong... I hope they still get recognition but it's highly unlikely due to the bad stigma this show seems to be carrying right now

@rob_starrk

When he was given stuff to play, he did well with it.

There's only so far the closeted gay dude with PTSD who's given limited screen time and dialogue can take it.

but that trailer park scene with him and the mother barking at each other was painfully bad in terms of the over acting. Like ABC afterschool special type levels bad.

He's given pulpy borderline-campy trailer park material to chew on, not many other ways to play it.

>He's given pulpy borderline-campy trailer park material to
>chew on, not many other ways to play it.

Yep yep yep

I want to hug those actors
They did their best w what they had
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

but his character sucked too...

the actors in the cast should have been giving WAY better material than what they got.

There were some bright moments but those were far and few in between the muck and shit of this season...

I feel like the eps would have been stronger if Pizzolatto only had one director do all eights eps...

these eps made me realize how much I missed what Fukunaga did in Season 1 and the very specific location of Louisiana and how it added so much to the flavor of the show...

I didn't see that this season. Though Justin Lin did a solid job with the two eps he directed...

not sure if I'm fully in for season 3 yet or not...

wasn't crazy about the finale. between that goofy heist, and the length it felt a bit too Kurt Suttery. This was the only episode that felt like a chore.

I really didn't care for the heist bit either, honestly. But watching the clock, you knew everything was going tits up for the next 30 minutes

after they got the money. He's useless to them at this point but he could be a potential problem for them alive. I also felt like they would have killed him if he gave up his suit just on GP. Seemed like they were ready to let him go before he asked for a ride tho

and I'm pretty sure they ALL started driving away before he said something.

They were out in the middle of the desert, miles from anywhere. It wasn't like he was going to be able to walk out there back to civilization, with or without a serious knife wound.

It would have just sucked.

wasn't the remainder of the money from the heist in the trunk of the car he originally drove? He could have made it back alive assuming he didn't ask for his car back, but he would have been left with only the diamonds if he had kept his mouth shut if I'm interpreting that scene right.

he used some of it to buy the diamonds

>wasn't the remainder of the money from the heist in the trunk
>of the car he originally drove? He could have made it back
>alive assuming he didn't ask for his car back, but he would
>have been left with only the diamonds if he had kept his mouth
>shut if I'm interpreting that scene right.

I was pretty sure he put them in the inside pocket of his jacket, which why he flipped out when dude demanded the suit.

But the "give me your suit" thing also shows that both parties weren't under the assumption that Frank was being left to die (originally).

I'm thinking in Frank's head he can't give up the suit cuz of the diamonds... which is a fine reason in itself.

But it's on his "road to perdition" that we see his pride would never have let him give up his suit, diamonds or no.

they wanted the suit just to further embarrass him by leaving him to die in the desert naked and alone. When Frank attacked, he got the shank, which actually just made his last few moments more merciful, with a shorter walk to his final collapse. The Mexicans missed an opportunity with the diamonds, but besides that they got a million cash and killed their rival. That was the plan. There was no scenario where honor or anything else was going to leave Frank alive. Frank tried to bargain, asking for a ride, then they asked for the suit, just to humiliate him further. He was never emerging from that desert alive.

the original plan was to kill him, obviously because they dug the hole. When Frank gives up the dough, Gonzalez says something like "that buys you something", and they begin to leave (i believe they were legit leaving). Frank asks for a lift, that's when homie tells Gonzalez he wants the suit, and they try to punk him again.

Now at THAT point, I think Frank's dead weather he gives up the suit or not

that was some scooby doo shit

"It's the bird mask!"
"Oh cool. the sliding door is open"
"hey what's behind this black curtain?"
"Hey, that looks like the same shotgun that.."
*under carefully placed magnifying glass* NON LETHAL BULLETS
"It is!!"
"And surveillance photos... of Holloway, and Burris!"

"Wait, i hear a voice in the other room"

Jackpot! it's the girl that can tell us everything!

Perfect timing!

"hey remember that guy from the movie set. they looked like they knew each other!"

I've seen it all up and down this post even, people saying season 1 wasn't some great script or story but that it was just carried by Matthew Mac and Woody. That's wrong. True, they put the story over the top and made it most special. But the story wasn't remotely as pretentious or convoluted as season 2, and the season 1 script and story put those characters in positions where you cared about them - either pulling for the heroes or yearning to see the bad guy get caught.

>That's wrong.

It's not wrong. And it's not a diss to point out the relative consistency in the style of the dialogue between seasons. Just because last season didn't have "blue balls in your heart" doesn't mean 95% of this season wouldn't have fit in perfectly last time.

My opinion. As someone who enjoyed both seasons. Last season more, but this season plenty.

they talk about how the same kind of threads that tied s1 together in terms of the ideas of time and storytelling (via flashbacks and how the characters related to each other and the idea of telling the truth vs lies and the subjectivity)
got pretty much completely jettisoned in s2 for some other themes that were never really clear and weren't necessarily compelling
they also talk about mr. robot, which is crazy good.

http://www.vulture.com/2015/08/mr-robot-true-detective-cinematic-tv-shows.html
-----
No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. (c) HL Mencken or some other motherfucker.

pointlessly obtuse plot devices and laboriously obvious characters don't make for good storytelling.

it was entertaining enough from episode 4-7 to keep me going to the end, but all that was wiped away by one of the most got-awful finales in a long time. I wasn't sure I could roll my eyes and unintentionally laugh so hard at Velcoro's ending (*zoom into "MESSAGE UPLOAD FAILED"* / *audience gasps!*). but he was just one of many horrible missteps over the last 90 minutes.

there's not much to go back to here. my attitude for future installments of this series has turned pessimistic.

that combined with the fact that velcoro and his kid had a less than zero onscreen connection made the supposed urgency of having that message delivered seem completely farcical.

I felt nothing at all there.


> I wasn't sure I could roll
>my eyes and unintentionally laugh so hard at Velcoro's ending
>(*zoom into "MESSAGE UPLOAD FAILED"* / *audience gasps!*). but
>he was just one of many horrible missteps over the last 90
>minutes.

It was pretty convoluted and Farrell was the only lead that I cared for (McAdams was better than expected tho), but I still thought it was solid overall.

I'm looking forward to season 3.